An afternoon on Mars

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B_6K-splRU

This panoramic view from the Mars Rover is oddly beautiful: a reddish, stony landscape with a variety of rocks, the hilly crest of the crater, ancient, dry watercourses, sand, and more rocks and stones.

And nothing else, no matter how far the Rover will drive across the surface.  Nothing else.

No sound but occasional random gusts of wind buffeting the surface of the rover.

And people want to travel there, and set up a research station?  Why?

Of course I understand--the lure of the unknown, which has drawn our relentlessly curious species over the next horizon for hundreds of thousands of years, since we first developed brains big enough and the vocal apparatus needed to share our thoughts--and our questions--with one another.  But all the earlier explorations on our own planet found more life--more people, animals, plants, cultures--just beyond the horizon. On Mars, they've found nothing like it--and even if they are looking for possible biosignatures of ancient microbes on the apparent delta deposit leading into the crater, these microorganisms--if they existed at all--will have been dead for billions of years.

I have no problem with these explorations; in fact, like most other curious humans, I find them fascinating. But I can't get over how appallingly lonely--how ultimately boring, despite the variety of rock formations--it must be on Mars, with no animals, insects, grasses, flowers, trees, watery oases, even mosses or lichens to enliven and transform the dusty surface.

How incredibly lucky we are to live--to breath oxygenated air, drink fresh water,  listen to the rustle of the trees or the call of birds, and contemplate wildflowers up close, on this wondrous, life-sustaining blue planet! As William Blake said, "Everything that lives is holy." 

If nothing else, these stark and barren new images of Mars can serve as a reminder of the fragile, sacred miracle of life, right outside our doors.