Samuelson’s Rocks

“Evolution is the mother and father of mankind,” he wrote. I wonder what he meant. I wonder if he believed what Darwin believed, that evolution works by chance and necessity. Did he mean to say that humans have nonhuman ancestors, or did he mean to say that we came to be by chance and necessity. I wonder what “nature” meant to him – what he meant when he wrote, “Nature is God.”

Was it in his mind that we are nothing but the stuff of chance and necessity? And if it was, why did he engrave these words on stone? How did he feel?

The following photograph shows the view looking north across the desert valley east of Samuelson’s Rocks. What did it mean to John Samuelson?