We were with Sky on his last field trip to Western Australia. We were there not as mentors but as donors, through our foundation, the Agouron Institute. We are supporting the new field of geobiology and the students on this trip will be the founders of this new field. We came also as students.
At Duck Creek we mapped two billion year old formations that hold clues to what happened in that early part of Earth’s history. Though Sky was a student on this trip he also became a leader. After spending long days in the field he continued on into the night entering our geological mapping data into the computer.
We did not see any evidence of the darkness that was soon to take him. He stripped off his clothes and swam in all of the billabongs we encountered and when our trucks were stalled at a river he mapped the new route for us to cross it. During the endless miles of our trip we listened to our iPods, our songs old, his new. He seemed happy and in his element.
Like everyone who knew him the news of his death came as a shock to us and we feel a sadness that does not and will not quickly pass. And yet because he was among the first, the best and the brightest of this new field of geobiology he will be remembered. Around campfires in Australia, in Africa, in Greenland, wherever there are ancient rocks -- students thirty years from now will ask: Tell us about Sky Rashby… and the founders of this field, now old, will tell the story.
John Abelson, PhD
Melvin Simon, PhD
[Original Photo & note]
No comments:
Post a Comment