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At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.

T. S. Eliot, 1942

These days I find myself silently repeating the phrase "by and by I'll soon be there." For those of you who have been innocent bystanders swept up in my general haste and waste rush towards something indefinable, I apologize. Maybe age is tugging at me a little more, but I would hope it's a sign of maturity and a tendency to enjoy the space of time that we inhabit.

Here we are, approaching a point in time, that in the bigger picture of the universe and our little corner of it, is completely arbitrary. Never mind that we are entering the last year of the millennium (the counting started at one instead of zero so the new millennium doesn't start until 2001, but we'll discuss more of that around the campfire). And never mind that a large portion of the world's population live by a different calendar. Regardless, it is our prerogative to make this year... meaningful.

To give perspective on our time, the closest estimation as to the formation of the universe is around 15 billion years ago. That's when the so called big bang occurred which put everything into being and instantly defined the laws of the universe. Our solar system swirled into a disk shaped gravity vortex about 11 billion years ago. Earth started to congeal out of the debris of our solar system about 4.5 to 3.8 billion years ago. Life seems to have emerged from the primordial ooze about 3.5 billion years ago. The fossils we stumble over in the Big Bend area, remnants of an ancient sea bed, are about half a billion years old. The amazing dinosaurs faded quickly about 90 million years ago. Humans broke from the ape lineage about 2 to 3 million years ago and when we discuss historic times we're talking about the last 10,000 years or so. The bristle cone pines that Dale so eloquently documented in "The Oldest Tree", live for about 4 to 5 thousand years.

Printing Press, 1454 AD On the communications front, human language is generally thought to have emerged from as long ago as 200,000 years ago to as recently as 50,000 years ago. The printing press brought us mass produced publication about 500 years ago. Television is only about 50 years old and here we are stumbling into the internet age. This age of the internet may prove to be as revolutionary as the printing press was in it's time. Civilizations advance on the sharing and collaboration of ideas.

In the classical Greek era, Plato warned us away from the written word, favoring the spoken word or the dialectic. He thought of the written word as "false knowledge" which would have a tendency to lull us into a belief that we had knowledge, when in fact all we had would be words on paper. Now we live in a world of varied media where words and images support each other for a richer experience. Someday, we might dispense with the written word and return to the dialectic and iconic images to guide us through life.

Cuneiform Tablet, 2300 BC 2000 years ago someone started counting with a calendar and here we are getting all excited about that somewhat arbitrary marker.

But a marker it is.

Each morning the alarm clock calls a mark, the train whistles a mark, lunch is marked by a gurgling stomach, or boredom, and day to day, by and by, each mark slips by like a crocodile under the water; stealthy and relentless.

Soon enough, and by and by, we find ourselves called together to mark another scribe in the ruler of time called a year.

Our annual trek to Big Bend has natural parallels with the geese going south in the winter, with the great migrations of African wildebeests and of North American bison. The Native Americans marked their time by these natural transitions and also used the celestial clocks to help remind them of coming changes.

In the Big Bend area, when the first European explorers arrived, there was a nomadic tribe transitioning to a more sedate agrarian lifestyle. Their ancestors arrived around 12000 to 6000 B. C. They were known as the Jumanos, or, "the people". They were overrun by the Comanches and the Mescalero Apaches. By and by, the Spaniards came, then ranchers grazed their cattle, miners unearthed mercury, and now it is our time to make our mark.

We are the new Jumanos.

This December marks the 30 years since the first time I went to Rio Vista. There have been flash floods, burning hot days, our faces are succumbing to gravity and the sun, the drug lords have risen and fallen from power, friends have passed on, the river has changed course, and yet it still flows on and for the most part, things remain the same. Again, in the bigger picture, the changes are insignificant.

I suspect that this new year will be like all the rest. "Paradise is exactly like where you are right now, only much, much... better!", says Laurie Anderson. Big Bend will probably be no better or worse than the years before. But even as arbitrary as the new millennium is, I suspect we'll manage to make this one the best ever.

So it is with pride and humility that I bring you this collection of stories and images. Thanks to those who contributed, to those who meant to, and even to the folks who slacked off. We all play a part in this grand scheme and I'm thankful to be able to share this experience with you... the FreeRangers.

Here's wishing you all some kindness of heart and clarity of mind in the future we call the new millennium.

Chris Jefferies...

The word for the longest measurement of time is kalpa, Hindi for 432 billion years.

Measuring Years

	A year is the time it takes for the earth to revolve around the sun once. A calendar year is 365 days.
	A solar or tropical year is 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds. This year is used for most astronomical calculations.
	A sidereal year is 365 days, 6 hours, and 9 minutes. It is sometimes used by astronomers, because it is the time it takes the earth to return to the same place in its orbit relative to fixed stars.
	Leap year occurs every 4 years, when all the extra hours, minutes, and seconds of the solar year are added up to make an extra day.
	B.C. means “before Christ” ; A.D. means anno Domini, Latin for “year of our Lord.”
	A cosmic year is the amount of time it takes the sun to revolve around the center of the Milky Way, about 225 million years.

Groups of Years

	Olympiad: 4 years
	Decade: 10 years
	Score: 20 years
	Century: 100 years
	Millennium: 1,000 years

How Often?

	Annual: Yearly
	Biannual: Twice a year (not equally spaced)
	Semiannual: Twice a year equally spaced; every 6 months
	Semicentennial: Every 50 years
	Centennial: Every 100 years

The Aztec and Mayan Calendars

The people of these ancient civilizations used two calendars. One was a sacred calendar of 260 days that marked religious feasts. The other was a secular (not religious) calendar of 365 days divided into 18 months of 20 days each. The extra 5 days were added throughout the years, much like the time we add each leap year. Today, many people follow a religious calendar as well as the secular one.

Religious Calendars

	The Jewish calendar is reckoned from 3761 B.C.
	The Jewish New Year, called Rosh Hashana, occurs on the first and second day of the Hebrew month Tishri, which can come in either September or October.
	The Islamic calendar is based on a lunar (moon) year of 354 days. It is calculated from the Hegira, in A.D. 622, and grouped in 30-year cycles. (The Hegira was the flight from Mecca by Muhammed, the founder of Islam, to escape persecution.)

From Kids' Almanac—Life—Calendar

Did You Know?

Both 2000 and 2001 are years based on a fundamental calendrical flaw. The 6th-century monk Dionysius Exiguus recast the calendar so that years would be counted from the birth of Christ instead of the beginning of the reign of the Roman emperor Diocletian. Dionysius miscalculated the birth of Christ, which is believed by many scholars to have been 4 B.C. Had the years been recalibrated accordingly, the millennium would have occurred on Jan. 1, 1997.