The answer

is always to touch grass, even when it seems like that’s what you were just doing. Touch more grass, then. Touch it more deeply. Poke it and prod it. There are things you can watch for hours out there. There are lessons to be learned in every square inch of Everything.

All of this to say 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 see it as a way of freeing the living trees that support them. I like seeing how the living tree recoils and bounces back to a more neutral position. But this particular tree was bigger than any others I’ve attempted to release, so I didn’t know how to approach it.

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 in the process: Every action has a consequence, and quite often the consequence is harm to a living thing. Or a lot of living things.

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?

So I moved on. And 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.

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.