Day 37: Paper thin

Birch bark, Amherst, NH, March 2008,

Nikon D40, 35mm focal length equiv. 142mm, Exposure 1/800 sec @ f7.1, ISO 200, no flash, exposure bias -1/3

© Steven Crisp [Click on the photo to enlarge]

I've been watching my wounds heal from my Tel Aviv running debacle, and it is pretty amazing what the body can do.  

OK, so maybe it can't regenerate new limbs, but it certainly deal with blunt force trauma, and regrow new skin.  

For example, I had a big deep cut on my left hand, and after a couple of days it scabbed over.  Then slowly, but surely, new skin replaced the scab from the outside in.  What was about the size of a nickel is now just 1/8" across.  

Thankfully, I've left that alone, and not yanked it off like I did to white birch bark when I was a kid.  And I'm sure within a week it will be fully healed.

The body is an amazing thing.  We give so much credit to doctors when they set fractured bones, or give us antibiotics for bronchitis.  But really, all they are doing is creating the conditions favorable for our body to heal itself.  That's the miracle.  What an amazingly well-evolved design.  Truly unfathomable.

So listen to your mother:  leave the white birch tree alone, and don't pick at the scab.  And keep your own body's immune system strong, so that it can deal with whatever debacles comes its way.

• Donation:  to the Center for Food Safety, in an attempt to keep genetically-engineered (GE) food and genetically-modified organisims (GMOs) out of the food chain, or at a minimum, explicitly labeled as such so that we can choose to eat all-natural and organic foods.
• Exercise:  8.2 mile run around Stuttgart Schlossgarten (75 mins) and warm, sunny walk with Carol and Frito on Böblingen hillside (60 mins)