Old Growth

Perhaps life did not always exist on this planet. Yet at any time we can experience the results. Like it or not, it is the mysterious work of our own hands that returns to entertain us generation after generation in unthinkable shapes, colors, and forms. 

Maybe the image in my mind of this lonely blue marble (only half illuminated at any given moment) afloat in a vast and endless sea of darkness, leads me to ponder how it was that single-cell entities emerged that could so easily spin sunlight into substance. How is it a place that was once lifeless rock could make way for salt water, humpback whales, and scientists with neuston nets measuring the health of ocean ecosystems worldwide? Even now, we are the victory and battlefield all at once as life evolves in thriving layers accompanied by shifting shapes of a darkened hemisphere unleashed beneath us in all her disturbing splendor. And so this will be for a very long time.