The answer
is always to touch grass.
I went for a walk in the woods. I noticed a dead tree leaned up against a few living ones.
I'm in the habit of assisting gravity in
bringing dead tree-parts down to the ground.
I like seeing how the living tree recoils
back to a more neutral position.
This particular tree was bigger than any others I’ve attempted to release, so I didn’t know how to approach it.
old habits
I kicked it.
A big chunk of bark flew off, the kind that seems like it's ready to get knocked off by the littlest of shakes,
or, in this case, a kick with some kick.
That’s when I saw a group of ants crawling around where the bark had been. I looked at the kicked-off bark and saw even more ants, going in and out of the nooks and crannies.
I damaged the superorganism and learned a lesson: every action has a consequence, and quite often the consequence is harm to a living thing. Or a lot of living things.
super what?
school
The trouble
with being so large an organism
is that you often can’t see the damage you wreak.
The trouble with the human attention span is that it isn't long enough to sit with the implications of our destructive actions.
I won’t be sitting by the dead tree,
monitoring the ant colony to see how
it adapts. And even if I did, I wouldn’t
be able to see deep inside the tree
carcass, where most of the ant colony
is likely still thriving. I would never
be able to see the full iceberg. And even
if I could, what would be the point of that,
really? To reduce a beautiful waveform into
an ugly particle?
just the
fine particulate matter
So I moved on.
That’s when I saw a big black ant walking briskly through the grass. Something seemed to be attached to it. I crouched down and saw that the attached thing was another ant of the same size, but seemingly dead. Every pine needle and blade of grass was an obstacle, but the ant only appeared more insistent on its path with each passing second.
It dropped the presumably dead ant a few times
to change positions. Where was it going? I
really wanted to find out, but my legs
objected to my staying in a crouched position
for that long. And I was being bitten up
by mosquitos. And I have
a human attention span.
zzz
Moments like these make me wonder a lot of
things. The main thing I wonder is why. But
I know the answer is blowing in the wind or
something.
odyssey