Week in Seven Words #395

artificial
The wetlands we walk through are deceptive. They aren't the original wetlands, which were destroyed. They're a restoration. But the restoration is failing, because even though the obvious ingredients seem to be there, there are missing elements or imbalanced interactions that are turning the area into a woodland.

confining
The dog is boarding at a veterinary hospital, and I'm not allowed to take her outdoors. After she jumps at me and races around the small room and sticks her head in my tote bag, she sits on my lap for a while to stare out the window. Later, when I shoulder my bag, she realizes I'm about to leave. She presses her paws against my thighs. Her soft whining makes me feel even worse for her.

dedication
Her interest in the city's water systems and resources is inspiring. She's found an issue she's committed to and acts on it, giving talks, leading hikes, and volunteering to measure water contents. There's a purity to her focus.

horticulturist
A man yells, "Grow, grow!" at a plant box outside of his apartment building.

opening
A thick tree has fallen across the trail. Part of the trunk has been cut away to let people walk through it, as if it's a wall now with a doorway.

unbridled
I step off the curb, then quickly back on it, as a delivery guy on a motorized bike blows a red light and zooms past. The bike swerves as if he's losing control of it. Another delivery guy, waiting at the light, screams for him to stop. It takes the length of a block for him to slow down.

vaporous
After each deep thumping noise, the fountain sprays a mist of water as if it's the blowhole on a whale.

If I Can Make It There, I Can Make It Anywhere...

Smithsonian Magazine’s Top Ten Places Where Life Shouldn't Exist... But Does.

Granted you’d have to be a microbe of some kind to survive in most of these places. But what I really like is how pretty much any place - a lake of acid, a sulphurous sea vent – can be a home to something.

One especially amazing point:

More recently, scientists have resuscitated bacteria that have been on ice for millions of years. The bacteria were in suspended animation in the oldest ice on Earth, in a valley in Antarctica. Those a million or so years old revived relatively easily, and some of the oldest ones, which were covered in ice 8 million years ago, also showed signs of life.

How do these bacteria achieve this kind of suspended animation? What is it in their genetic makeup that enables them to do so?