Since the Institute's relocation to the Mount Baldy Complex, our work has returned again and again to a single question: how much of an environment belongs to the material present within it, and how much belongs to the relationships among matter, location, observation, and time?
The Institute examined 47 geodetic monuments in the western United States. Six exhibited unusual behavior: the monuments had moved with the regional terrain, but their residual motion was directed opposite to the regional trend.
An unfamiliar amoeboid organism collected from a shallow pool began aligning itself along a repeatable direction that did not correspond to any known environmental factor we could measure.
The work at Russell Ranch demonstrates that landscapes can contain multiple geological histories simultaneously — consistent with doctrinal descriptions of locations where separate conditions occupy the same ground.
Throughout, our approach is unchanged: instrument failure is a satisfactory explanation when a failure capable of producing the recorded result can be demonstrated. Otherwise, the observation stands, and it is recorded.