Invasive Species

The Worm Turns

As the leaves in Vermont turn beautiful, countless colors, and the valley becomes crowded with tourists, one wonders at how little we seem to learn from our fellow species. That the beauty of dying arouses our wonder. Because it reminds us to live this moment, not cling to some imaginary future.

Most species have been here eons longer than we have. Some 98% of all the species that have found their way to our planet, have gone extinct.

Much the same can be said for stars, planets, solar systems. Most of the light we see in the sky on a clear night made its way to our optic nerve hundreds of thousand, if not millions, of years ago. Most of them have extinguished, died, spun into oblivion.

Lots of tsk tsk about the astonishing impact our species has made on the planet.

There’s no doubt that we’ve used our most prized possession, our intellect, to leave archeological treasure for some someones from somewhere to venture here a few million years from now, and wonder at what we did with that intellect.

Separated ourselves from fellow species, created technologies that devoured resources essential for our ongoing survival, impacting the climate so as to make it uninhabitable for a species like ours.

But we haven’t been here long, and the planet, and, no doubt, new, unforeseen species, will find it habitable for the few billion years our sun will continue to provide a habitable environment.

We’ve had a fascinating run. At least we find it fascinating. The unfathomable odds against a species like ours evolving from one celled organisms, contribute to our perception of its being miraculous.

So, despite our powerful drive to survive, which we share with all fellow species, we are, like all of them, subject to energies, mysterious and beyond our management.

I know. I’m 84. Easy for me to be copacetic about all this.

But what if, rather than grieving the reality that we’re here for a season, not forever, we were to celebrate our amazing odyssey, however brief?

An invasive species, without doubt. Thanks to fellow species for entertaining us for a season.