LIVING WITH DUST

Rex Burress

Soon after I vacuum the house, dust seems to spread again, coating everything with its pale ghostly film. “Over and over again,” like autumn leaves, dust is slowly pulled down by gravity.

In vacuuming, light-weight dust particles are stirred up that take as much as two hours to settle back to the floor! Included in house dust are microscopic dust mites that feed on flakes of human skin! Although the mites don't live on people directly, they and their debris are in rugs, clothing and beds. They weren't a problem until clothes became the norm, and nude bodies are free of dust mites, although there is other life that lives on and in human bodies!

What is dust? The dictionary says dust is “fine dry pulverized particles of matter that disintegrates.” So, like atoms that invisibly occupy the atmosphere, dust is matter gradually descending among the molecules...partly derived from soil, decaying creatures, skin cells, [watch the dandruff!], comparable to sand that disintegrates from rocks.

Hence we have dust covers, dust jackets, and dust wrappers to protect objects from dust, and dust mops and dust pans to gather dust! Dust could be called diminutive dirt, although dirt more readily makes mud. Mud slung, we know, is dirt lost, whereas dust disappears with furniture polish. By the way, feather dusters simply spread dust from one place to another.

I was amused by Henry David Thoreau's dust experience. When he was at Walden Pond in his small 1847 cabin, he spoke of three pieces of limestone on his desk; “I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and I threw them out the window in disgust.” Books are dust catchers, too, but they are too important to be thrown out, hence dusty paper piles!

One of the downsides of drought is dust. I experienced one of those dust storms while living in Phoenix one time, and it was scarier than a thunderstorm. Drought reminds us of the Great American Dust Bowl of the 1930's, when wind picked up overworked dry top soil and spread it afar.

Desert dust, especially from the Sahara desert in Africa, is the origin of most atmospheric dust, which would seem to be a negative, except dust is also the great disperser of light. Dust specks reflect sunlight to give us colorful views of tangible things on earth. Without the diffusion, daylight would reveal a black and white world of extreme shadows and bright light.

One of the phenomenons of the desert is the dust devil. The whirling masses of dust can commonly be seen in the summer on the Nevadan plains where atmospheric imbalances of heat produces twisting wind currents, not so unlike a tornado but on a smaller scale.

“Dust thou art...” is a rather disquieting fact of life, but the whole scheme of a sustainable environment depends on the cyclic distribution of matter. Decay, aided by the termite-fungi-erosion complex of decomposers, is a prime source of dust that contributes to soil—the foundation of life. Human bodies add to the humus too, although dispersion of cells might be delayed by burial containment. I am told that when graves were relocated from the Lake Oroville region to the Pioneer Cemetery at Thompson Flat, nothing was left of the bodies under tombstones, and simply a shovel-full of the soil was used to represent the grave occupant!

It is also disturbing to think that about 33% of air pollution is caused by road dust, consisting largely of pulverized tire wear and oil exhaust!

“Hope raises no dust.” --Paul Eluard

“Is it sin, which makes the worm a chrysalis, and the chrysalis a butterfly,

and the butterfly dust?” --Max Muller

“Obviously you cannot rely on a plan that involves sprinkling water forever

on mine tailings to control the dust.” --Huge Lapointe

 “Nothing gold can stay.” --Robert Frost