Pangaea was an ancient super-continent that once incorporated all the Earths major landmasses. It is thought to have begun splitting up about 200 million years ago resulting in the major continents with which we are familiar today. The tectonic plates upon which they rest continuously shift, rending them apart and, in some cases, have pushed previously unassociated masses together. They are not stable and unceasingly move. If one examines the globe, carefully comparing the coastal outlines of individual continents, one can discern how they once fit together many millennia ago. In some cases large pieces have separated from one mass, drifted inexorably across large distances and collided with another. As one plate subducts in impact with, or receding from another, over eons of time mountain ridges and valleys accordingly form and disappear. Towering ancient mountains on the eastern coasts of both North and South America have diminished in this manner. Newer mountain ranges, the Himalayas of South Asia, the Rockies and Andes of the Americas and the Alaskan range were and continue to be formed by tectonic plate collisions. One can imagine the force and power applied over time immemorial that have built and destroyed continents and mountain ranges. It is said that core samples from the top of Mount Everest reveals residual seashells and ocean sediments, demonstrating that it was once at the bottom of a prehistoric sea.

     We have difficulty grasping the vast expanses of slowly unfolding time inherent in the expansion and contraction of continents and mountains. 200 million years is an unfathomable period of time. Human comprehension is ordinarily much more immediate. We are impatient, need-driven and immediacy-oriented creatures. Our needs are often tied to present instances of hungers and thirsts. In the context of tectonic movements and creating continents, even our most progressive anticipatory thinking of five, ten or twenty year plans are momentary. Among our life-long, daily appetites and thirsts we are driven to eat, drink, fuel our vehicles, heat our homes, be compensated for our labor, spend time with our families and find meaning in lifes confusion and chaos. Our needs weigh on us moment by moment through the course of our lives: each lifetime a momentary blink compared to the plates of tectonic time moving beneath us. We are intimately aware of our appetites and have little or no awareness of tectonic time. As difficult as understanding such apocalyptic processes are, we are driven to develop post hoc means by which we can make sense of them. Understanding and knowing why are among our species' most compelling needs.

     The coastline of Alaska is rugged testimony to the movement of continental plates. Rimmed with volcanoes, jagged spires of up-thrusted rock, and fjords made by the edges of plates grinding past, over and under one another, it appears as primordial and mystical now as it likely did hundreds or thousands of years ago. Attached to Asia in the late Pleistocene, Alaskas is the coast of the ice-encrusted land bridge that enabled early nomadic, aboriginal tribes from Asia to populate the Western Hemisphere. It was a frigid time of lower oceans, massive glaciers and, for hunting and gathering people, a constant quest for food. Following the coast, or through ice-free corridors between glacial walls, people found their way to populate two continents. As the nomads immigrated southward, centuries passed and the atmosphere warmed, glaciers thawed, the Ice Age lifted, the seas rose and the way back to Asia was closed. Following hunger and thirst from day to day and year to year, unaware of the geographic events closing their passage, the inescapable process of bifurcating two massive continents from one another occurred. The Western Hemisphere was separated from Asia. This slow process lends itself to our process of understanding based on deductive reasoning from the evidence at hand.

     However, the cycles of climate change and movement of plates beneath our feet or under the sea is sometimes not evenly paced, imperceptible or well understood. Deductive reasoning does not always produce predictability. In 1964 the most powerful and violent earthquake and tsunami ever recorded in North America suddenly and improbably, in a period of minutes, destroyed cities, towns and villages over thousands of miles of coast line, causing damage as far away as California. That the Earths mantel can and will move, reshaping the profile of continents and ocean shores is probable and expected. But how, when and with what immediacy of force or subtlety it will occur does not have a probability that can be specifically known.

     As we mature in our experiences, building and assuming captaincy of our lifes vessels and directing their courses, we are sometimes aware of the powerful influences surrounding our respective voyages, destinations and guiding stars. Often we are not. Time may give us to become aware of trials swirling around and within our lives and, perhaps, another more subtle awareness will dawn. In his insightful book, epistemologist Nassim Nicholas Taleb, refers to Black Swans (book by the same name). These are unpredicted major events and associated criteria that result in far-reaching and irreversible change. A Black Swan is a metaphor (it was once thought, wrongly, that Black Swans do not exist) for an unexpected, improbable event for which we seek an after-the-fact explanation. Black Swans are unlikely events that catch us totally by surprise, leaving major impacts in our social, cultural, political and/or economic lives. And, after such an event has disrupted our ships course and direction, attempts are made to explain them as if they were, or should have been, predictable. Taleb notes that the fact that they are not predictable has great implications for our understanding of risks and planning courses of action. The tectonic plates of life can and will unexpectedly and rapidly move, disrupting our usual and customary stability in unanticipated ways. Then, we attempt to discover how predictable this should have been. Often the resulting explanations are wrong! Examples for these events include the recent earthquake and tsunami in Southeast and South Central Asia, the trauma of September 11, 2001, the sweeping impact of the internet and home computer, or the advent of the current sudden and precipitous international economic crisis. Despite our human tendencies for analyses, these kinds of events do not lend themselves to greater prediction or accommodation by post hoc rationalizations for future Black Swans. Our knowledge of slow longitudinal events over the passage of eons of time, our assessments of the ebbs and flows of world-wide climate change cycles, or the maintaining or ones course in turbulent times are not effective in predicting when or how such improbable Black Swan events will occur or what their long term impact will be.

     Almost sixty years ago, when I was a small boy, my family moved from Southeastern to Southcentral Alaska. There were no roads and commercial air travel was impractical. The move was done by ship from Sitka to Seward across the treacherous Gulf of Alaska. Shortly after leaving port the ship encountered a major storm of enormous waves, powerful winds, and nautical danger. Resolutely, the ship maintained course. Soon, everything not tied down began sliding over the decks and the crew began roping tables, chairs and heavy objects in place. Some small freight containers on deck were lost overboard. There was talk of the cargo in the hold coming loose and additional cargo webs were employed to hold things down. Almost everyone became seasick: except me. This was the greatest carnival ride ever! I was too young to understand the dangers involved and began roving around the tossing deck. Finally, one of the mates summoned my pale, nauseous and worried parents and admonished them to keep me in their cabin for my own safety. Finally, after two days at sea, the ship safely entered Resurrection Bay. Despite hurricane force winds and tumultuous Gulf of Alaska seas, the patient and steady ships propeller guided by an experienced skipper brought us to port. The tectonic plates of our journey included the ship itself, the competent crew, the skilled skipper and my dutiful parents in spite of their sea-induced nausea, resulting in a successful Gulf passage. I was completely unaware of the forces governing my journey. The mountains and continents created were not of rock and stone pushed from the bowels of the earth, but of memory and metaphor etched in the vision of a boy who learned to love the sea and admire those who make rough waters safe.

     That distant experience was early training as a ships captain on uncharted seas. I have since taken my place with other captains, each plotting journeys to an ultimate destination to which none of us have been. Many intermediate voyages have come, gone and continue, all contributing to each captains skill. Many of our experiences are like tectonic plates that separate us from and carry us toward continents in our respective journeys. Many are the tsunamis that have torn our shores and rent our sheltered, fragile firmaments. Likely, as they have been for us, we are, or have been, tectonic plates in the lives of others, moving steadily and reliably in some ways or unpredictably shifting suddenly and chaotically in others that we did not know or intend. A modest turn may adventitiously have been an unnoticed or a minor annoyance rippling the surface of the great waves of our journeys, or it may have inadvertently become an improbable, enormously destabilizing disturbance pounding the shores of expectations in others. Either way, as best we can, despite our experiences and our skills as captains, the waters we sail are largely uncharted. Those who have gone before have left notes, both legible and understandable and not, and largely incomplete.

     So, as we cross our great ocean, fair and following seas and threatening storms come and go. We check our compasses and radar, verify our destinations, secure our cargos and reassure our passengers. Confidently, we gaze into the distance as if our destinations were clear and our courses correct. On days of fortunate, clear and smooth sailing, we are certain our course is well chosen and our leadership sound. During nights of emergent storms, clouds and rain, winking lights betray the presence of our companions at sea, sometimes at great distance, sometimes so close that we touch. We wink in return as if to say, I know the way. Follow me. It is fair to ask: Do we know the way any better than they? Meanwhile, in the bowels of our Earth, of our lives, tectonic plates move our continents, carve our shores, shape our mountains, and generate tsunamis, sometimes imperceptibly, sometimes chaotically and improbably. A Black Swan is coming.

     Never mind. Im hungry and thirsty. Its time for lunch and a cup of tea.

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