Space Travel Advisory: Nothing Ever Happens on Mars

Before you go to Mars, step out onto your front lawn. Maybe the air smells like Valentine’s Day, maybe it smells like Honda Civics or pine cones or seagulls. Take it in. Jump in the air and feel the quick, soft thud of grass and dirt beneath your feet. Plunge your hands into the soil and look at the green blades alive between your fingers. If you don’t want to be a tree-hugging hippie about it, at least roll up the newest copy of Us Weekly and kill a mosquito, or throw a coconut at a passing fixed gear bicycle. Just take this planet in.

None of this will likely ever exist on Mars. They say there’s plenty of carbon dioxide for plants to breathe, and sure, but the alkaline soil is full of rust and the mean temperature is -63

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J. Ryan Stradal is from the second-oldest town in Minnesota. His writing has appeared in Hobart, The Rumpus, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Nervous Breakdown, Facsimile, The Foghorn, and NFL.com, ...read more