Of Vital Unimportance
As this planet rolls itself into a new year, incremental and unbidden, I sit on the crosspoint of two logs in a bitter brown wood. The insistent chirps of non-migratory birds waft overhead and the green water laps opalescent against moss banks. Despite the stable whir of nature all around me, the landscape feels dormant and unmanned, as though the docents of the forest are away on vacation, leaving only stoner squirrels and decrepit vines to keep watch. The soil beneath my feet lies still and silent, absent the slow, titanic breaths which usually punctuate my steps. Though this silence does not bother me; I relish the opportunity to dissipate into the cold air, silent participant in the off-season rhythms which move gentle and at ease when the summer birds are away.
It is this feature of the unmanned which most gratifies me when I take my time away—the ability to become liminal, systemic, and blend into inconsequence. I think it is a pitfall of modern thought to assume humans somehow are separate from the natural world. Rather, I feel it more apt to conclude that we are integral pieces of the planet which supports us, though we often lose our way and feign a separation that should not exist. Humans are no less natural or native to earth as the birds of the sky or the grass of the field; we are endemic to this planet, just as all life with whom we can enjoy synchrony. This knowledge allows me a certain peace I find difficult to maintain in the places made rigid by human society. In the woods, I become unimportant and unnoticeable. I am just another creature which breathes and eats and lies down, no different from the beavers in the creek or the deer in the meadow or the frog on the tree.
But then again, it would be dishonest to pretend I belong in isolation, devoid of contact with the kin of my species. It is my direct kin who build me up and know me deepest, who can understand the weight of feeling and the need to build worlds. Relationships create us, both those with the ilk of our kind and those with the ever-breathing earth all around us. This is a feature we bear in common with our untamed family which soars on the wind and floats undersea. As I sit in this bitter brown wood, I watch a pair of ghostly white egrets wading in the bog. I observed these two in this exact spot months ago, and it seems they have found companionship in one another as their kin have gone south. They dart about the mud both ersatz and mythical, both intimately terrestrial and silently wondrous. Even more, two blue herons coast above the tree line, kite-like and enigmatic. The pair is already building their brutalist nest of large sticks and lichen on the top of a pine, and their grayish forms blend seamless into the latticework of pewter foliage that cushions their life here.
As I lose myself in the forest, I am again met with instances of connection. Red berries burst alight against the fallow landscape, fed by the generosity of the ground and raised by the beckoning of the warm sun. A beaver twists dutiful beneath the water. She’s collecting sticks and mud to graft onto her home as her young wait inside for the warm air to return. Even in the dead of winter, the small lives around us persist in supporting one another and contributing to the cycle of life as it spins relentless into time unknown. Perhaps, as always, nature has a lesson to tell. Perhaps in a time where we are uncertain and fear cataclysm anew each day, we would do well to support one another as need be. The little fires burning insistent against the bitter cold wind remind us that we only see survival when we see each other, and do the work that is needed for each other.
So as I exit the mouth of the trees, opened wide and lined with bare branches, I think of the year ahead. The next few hundred days lie blank and faceless in front of me, ready to be named and made good use of. This year is certain to be hard, yet it is certain to be sweet.
