For me Flagstaff is a city of memories, where my father and mother both died — each at the end of a long life. During my many visits fond memories formed of sister, brother, niece. Among ponderosa pines outside the town I once recovered from trauma and loss. The extinct volcano dominating the sky above the place must have its own rememberings, and the flatland too. In our first photograph we easily recognize signs left by evaporated water; mud cracks the same today as mud cracked then, all those millions of years past. Water has sent us a message from a deep age of the earth, a sturdy memory.

We may tune to signals from a fellow organism below: a petite lizard-like reptile, alive in the Permian 260 million years ago, left us a snapshot from a day in its life.