Naked Nature

Berkeley, Friday, November 7, 2025 10:53 PM

Man, writing this with some background noise on the other side of the wall. There is not much to do about that. But it is a huge distraction.

On this topic.

We step every day on earth, mud, or soil. Or likely, very few people step on those surfaces everyday. Many people would step on wood, concrete, asphalt, or probably not leave the building or the room in the whole day.

Then we are stepping on either a processes earth material or a plant based material (for the case of the wood).

But beyond the infrastructure we have created as human beings, we forget sometimes the origin of things. We forget to understand that step on a tectonic plate called lithosphere, which is very thin in comparison to the mantle of liquified rocks that are underneath. Somehow we are on a large ship, floating on the mantle.

We also move. In the case of the North America plate is moving every year west and north west. We move about an inch per year.

In that process we collide to the Pacific plate. That process creates earthquakes, but also uplifts the terrain and makes it rough.

The uplift of parts of the terrain is contrasted with erosion. Uplifted rocks would weather, and then break it down in smaller pieces such as gigantic boulders. Those boulders are also broken in to smaller pieces to gravel, sand, etc. They get rounded while traveling through rivers. They get rounded by crashing to other rocks, pebbles, cobbles, sand. From where clay comes? From where silt comes?

Rocks have minerals such as nitrogen, phosphorous, magnesium, zinc, oro, silver, etc.

When floods happen the suspended sediments, smaller grain size, such as silt, small sand, clay, would deposit on the floodplain. That would fertilize the soil.

Plans have growth uptaking minerals and water.

Plants can break rocks. They form soil. Organic matter is very important for the formation of soil, or humus.

Where do we step on?

At this rate, depending on which ship or tectonic plate we continuously travel, North America might join Asia in some distant future.

But also by naked earth it is interesting to analyze the shapes of the terrain.

We and animals also have influence on the “natural” shape of the terrain.

On another topic, and for a a future: What is the impact of traveling carrying a heavy amount of water?

What is the impact of walking carrying a 5 gallon bucket full of water?

Does gigantic reservoirs on the earth have an impact on the weight for plate tectonic movement?

Are they affecting the normal uplift rates as well of the terrain?

If you think in the universe as a scale, then the earth is not to big. If the earth is not that big, also everything is connected. If we build a gigantic reservoir in a canyon, are the impacts only local, or are the impacts also elsewhere?

What are the benefits of building a swimming pool in a building or at home? What are the benefits or building several swimming pools? What are the benefits of bringing such a heavy loads of weight with water to your own scale. And if there are so many in the world, what are the benefits of all the additional weight or load on top of each tectonic plate? I guess are there any consequences related to weight?

How much weight can our ship carry? Is that unlimited? At the end we are floating on a mantle.

The earth is small and beautiful.