But is there life on earth?
I'm on vacation this week from my paying job so i took advantage of the opportunity to spend some extra time with my kids. The oldest is working, so the two younger ones (ages 15 and 13) and I went to the James River to enjoy the cold water. I decided to swim across to a sandy beach area on the north bank.

I love this stuff. The kids reactions made me aware of how obstacle ridden such a small feat is. First there was the coldness of the water. NO, first there was the blowing up of the tiny 2-person "boat". And before that there was stopping at the convenience store for drinks and sustenance, even though we had just finished lunch. So, the drinks went into the boat (sort of an air raft, really).

So, meanwhile, past the coldness of the water, which was okay because it's a hot day. Our first real monster was a humungous, blood-sucking killer fly. It was truly large but wether it actually sucked blood we never found out. We spent so much of our time either under water or swatting it around it didn't get a chance to suck anything.

Second major hazard was the furry rocks. Most of the large boulders have tons of stuff on them, either slurry mud or algae or water weeds or all three at once. My son panicked every time he put his foot on one. But I reminded him that's why he wore those thick sandals into the water. My daughter and I laughed at him. (which probably wasn't polite). We had "furry rock" warnings. So my son survived lots of killer sea weed.

The third hazard was from the "wierd little underwater bugs". I don't know what they were, but about halfway across I was waiting for my kids to catch up to me as I stood about half out of the water on one of those huge boulders (no fur). My daughter got to me first and pointed out that my thighs were covered with tiny bugs. They looked like a cross between a mosquito and a fruit fly (tiny, hair thin bodies with huge grey papery wings.) Dousing my legs in the water didn't remove them. I had to rub them off with the palms of my hands.

Of course there were the usual hazards of fatigue, elevated bacteria levels (which got really smelly by the banks), rapid current and not knowing what was really under the water.

Which is not to say it wasn't worth it. The beach on the opposite bank was lovely. I stretched out on the raft while the kids sat in a shallow channel shooting water out of a huge water gun, chasing the gun and hunting for fools gold. (And they spent some time just lying there letting the water wash over them.)

The trip back was pretting uneventful. We had swum upstream to get acrosss, so a short hike further upstream gave us a vantage point to drop in and just float back to our point of origin. That and there were lots of rocky ridges so that we practically walked across.

Eons from now, scientists on foreign planets will find the fossil remains of the killer flies, sea weed and funny little underwater bugs, but they wont find us. Through ignorance and fear we will have allowed ourselves to be overcome by a lower order of life.