Farm Truck Update: The Battle Against Decay

Muh farm truck serpentine belt broke recently because the A/C compressor was seized. Fortunately, it's a relatively inexpensive repair and if I wanted to do it myself, it'd be really cheap. I won't be surprised, though, if that incident created conditions that ultimately kill the engine. If that happens the cost per mile for this truck will end up being very high relative to all the vehicles I've owned.

In a world of all-change and perpetual decay of our property and our meat chariot bodies it can be difficult to take pleasure in small victories in a no-win war. Man's belief in his supremacy over the primal forces of our world is shown to be the vanity of Ozymondias or as futile as Gilgamesh's quest for immortality. I'm reminded of this not only by rust and mechanical breakdowns or the gray hairs on my head, but by walks around our woods.

lake deposited clay forms the bed of the creek on our property

In the last ice age, not so long ago in geological terms, the land our house is on was under water. It boggles my mind because we're on a hill that's about 100 feet above the nearest body of water: Big Creek and we're about 600 feet above Lake Erie. The landscape that we perceive as permanent is actually very young and subject to wild changes.

The glaciers that flowed over the great lakes filled up lower areas until they were stopped by higher relief landscapes and the warmer temperatures of the south. As each ice age passed, the glaciers receded back up the valleys, but sometimes ice blocked drainage channels for many years, which is possibly how the lake formed.

As water flowed along newly deposited till and glacial debris, rocks and boulders fell out first, of course, then materials like sand did, and the finest stuff, which forms clay, was carried to standing water where it settled out. Eventually the lake drained and the clay was covered over and in some places it is cut through by moving water.