My Fountain of Youth
A last quest
In the four-dimensional space-time continuum, it makes sense that the Fountain of Youth must be far away.
Can you even get there from here (no matter where “here” is)? There are no roads. Or at least, as Google Maps politely informs you: Sorry, we could not calculate driving directions to Inukjuak, Quebec, Canada.
The tiny village (1,757 inhabitants, 439 dwellings) is one of the northernmost settlements in the Inuit-populated region called Nunavik — itself thinly populated (about 13,000 people), though comprising a third of Quebec’s total land area.
It is not the geographic location normally associated with the legendary Fountain of Youth, as in Ponce de León’s exhausting yet fruitless search through the Florida wilderness in the 16th century.
Originally a fur-trading post, Inukjuak is perched on the eastern shore of Hudson Bay, with a climate that, despite recent temperatures creeping ever upward, still must be considered polar. Covered in ice much of the year, there is lichen but no trees, and just enough soil for berries, the most beautiful of which are poisonous. The flat and barren landscape exposes the continental crust’s bare bedrock, otherwise buried deep underground. The words “harsh” and “bleak” come to mind — enticing to curious scientists but no country for creationists.
It is here, at the ends of the Earth, that geologists may have found Earth’s beginnings.
In the early 2000s, they stumbled upon something called the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt, so named for its distinctive hue. If its age is indeed 4.3 billion years, as they assert, the rock would be 500 million years older than any previous find and only 200 million years younger than the planet itself. And within these rocks, subsequently were found fossilized microorganisms, the oldest traces of life ever discovered.
I say “stumbled upon” because the geologists were not actively searching for the oldest rock in the whole of earthly creation. Instead, they were looking for figurative gold — minerals and other natural resources that the Quebec and Canadian governments might wish to exploit.
In this respect, the Nuvvuagittuq finding was exactly like many other important discoveries: strange, unexpected, and accidental. Columbus wasn’t seeking America. Alexander Fleming happened upon penicillin in a stray petri dish. Wilhelm Rontgen certainly didn’t set out to discover X-rays.
And this is how it should be in a world where destiny, design, and fate have largely been displaced by the randomness implicit in the science of evolution. Even if God did indeed create the Earth, did he intend for the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt to discredit the Bible’s book of Genesis, much less intend for humans to turn out the way they did?
In the time of Covid, when even a trip to the grocery store took on the fraught characteristics of a medieval quest, this ancient rock became my Holy Grail. And my Fountain of Youth: If everything is relative, standing next to — and actually touching! — a 4.3 billion-year-old rock will make me as young as I’ll ever be.
But am I now too old to make the arduous journey?
To be continued….
