"Odyssey" by Aldo Leopold

Another story I have recently read out of "A Sand County Almanac" by Aldo Leopold is "Odyssey". I really did enjoy it and saw there were ways I could relate it to some of my class lectures. In this story Leopold relates to this thing he calls X and Y. If you don't know or can't figure out I should say, what these two things stand for, then the whole story is sort of confusing. It is kind of like a riddle. I have come to the conclusion (whether it is right or not) and X could be red phosphorus, and Y could be mercury. Neither of these things have related to what I have learned about in class recently, but I have read this story before, and tried to figure out what X and Y might be. I have had little luck, but in being asked what elements X and Y could be, those are the two that made most sense to me. This story helps explain bio-geochemical cycles mostly when talking about Y, but also touches on it with X. When the story talks about X being moldered underground and then sprouting a plant which is then being eaten or how it produces a plant that is burned and the smoke goes up into the atmosphere that talks about a portion of the abiotic factor of the cycle. When Leopold talks about Y in terms of its trips through the watershed that goes into talking about another element of the abiotic factor of the cycle. When reading about x and y they both give examples of what ever these two things are and their part in a cycle, the cycle they are talking about is the bio-geochemical cycle. This explanation of these elements in terms of the bio-geochemical cycle really made me think of them as a small molecule. It made me look at these things and think of them on a small scale than I think I normally would have. I feel sort of disturbed when I start to think of the atoms and molecules in my body. So much of the things we eat and drink are so bad for us, who knows what that is doing and how it is effecting the molecules in our body. I don't like not knowing where the meat or vegetable I purchase at the store come from, who knows what has been done to them chemically and that is what I am putting in my body...That is a disturbing thought to me.