Mike Rowe quotation that is oddly connected to what I did this afternoon:

"It's like panning for gold. Without the, you know, GOLD."

Yeah, I'm panning for soil critters. After doing the extraction you're supposed to look over the remaining soil to capture anything that was missed.

First I tried crumbling the soil in a tray and visually inspecting it - didn't find anything.

I tried using a dissecting scope, though it was hard to get the tray under there - nothing

Then I tried soaking the soil to see what would float to the surface - nothing

Then I tried looking at the floaty stuff under the scope - nothing (other than root-bits, seed coats, and chaff)

Then I ran it through a couple of soil sieves (which look sort of like the old-time panning-for-gold pans) and picked through it - nothing.

The distressing thing is that I don't know if there's nothing to find (which is a possibility though a slim one, I'd think) or if my technique is such that I'm not finding what there is to find. (But I'd think if there WERE, I'd at least be spotting worms or beetles or something.)

And I am once again wondering if my ancestors were wiser than I. I used to talk about, back when I was studying mycorrhizae in grad school, how I'd grow corn for 20 days, harvest it, and then inspect the roots for the fungi. And how if my ancestors' ghosts met up with me and asked me what I was doing, the conversation would go like this:

Me: "I'm growing corn so I can research the tiny fungi that live in its roots."

Shade of my Ancestor: "Forsooth, why art thou doing that?"

Me: "So I can eventually get a degree, get a job, and earn money so I can buy food and not starve"

Shade of my Ancestor: "Why dost thou not grow the corn to maturity, harvest the ears, and eat that, so thou dost not starve?"

And you know, I'd have a hard time answering that question.

(And no, my ancestors - as far as I know - were not Quaker. I'm just trying to make it sound archaic)

One of the things I learned from my uncle who is into genealogy is that one of the great-great grandfathers (? or maybe it was a great-uncle) abandoned his family so he could run off to California for the Gold Rush and pan for gold.

And some 160 years later, his descendant (well, maybe not DIRECT descendant if it was a great-uncle) sits in a windowless lab and "prospects" for nematodes. Which will never make her rich.

I think part of the reason I need to do things like knit and quilt is that the sheer abstractness of my career - the fact that it really isn't tied directly to anything involved with actual, you know, survival, would drive me crazy after a time.