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One of my favorite activities is to wake up well before sunrise and kayak to one of the barrier islands along the coast of Southeast North Carolina. These uninhabited islands, accessible only by boat, rarely see human visitors and are perfect for collecting fully intact, large sea shells. Our screened-in deck facing the backyard has, for better or worse, become a mausoleum for shells collected over several trips.

One early morning moment on the island stands out in my memory. I sat on a section of beach covered with shell fragments, not far from the surf. I noticed a tiny, fully intact spiral shell with coffee-brown stripes, no bigger than my pinkie fingernail. I couldn’t believe how tiny yet detailed the shell was. If I were a sand flea resting on that miniature shell, the structure would seem infinitely complex. This reminds me of the images one can see from electron microscope photography of elaborate tiny creatures. There may be a tendency to assume that earthly matter resolves into amorphous blobs because our eyes can only perceive so much detail. But what if we could develop visual skills to see tiny objects in greater detail?