I have never studied much about Darwin, so I didn’t know about Wallace. Thanks for the heads-up.
"The great event of his professional life was the five-year voyage on the Beagle ...We may not have the opportunity that Darwin did to go on an eye-opening sea voyage to exotic locales, but we have access to things he did not.
On his trip he looked at nature and read about rocks -- he read the first volume of Charles Lyell's revolutionary book Principles of Geology, which explained that the Earth is much more ancient than anyone had imagined and made Darwin think in terms of deep time as he looked at local formations. This double vision, short biological generations set against deep geological aeons, was crucial to everything he would do afterward, and the fun of the Beagle voyage is that the juxtaposition was immediate, right there for the seeing, not bookish and learned."
We can easily travel through mountain ranges, where engineers have cut through solid rock to ease our passage on modern Interstates, and we can see the thick volumes of pages patiently transcribed by an ever-patient Watcher. Pages brimming with information about ancient seas and mighty rivers, solid rock twisted like kneaded bread dough by titanic forces, and in the most delicate pale filigree, turgid and cryptic marginal notes about the passing of obscure plants and animals no human eye has ever seen.
That vision can be ours, as well. The magnificent vista of deep time, and endless almost-repetitions, in a slow-moving flip-book that tells an exciting, magical story.