The Thin End

All life moves. Or, more precisely, all life moves purposefully.  This is true even for trees and plants.  Movement is essential for maintaining life.  Animals migrate; plants disperse.  Some form of migration is an ingredient of all life.  For many organisms, it is a key function of reproduction.  We don't reproduce merely to create a new organism, but also to disperse the population - finding new fertile ground, or resources. Reproduction is a form of migration. Reproduction isn't merely to replicate. Reproduction produces change and diversity.  While we may have strong resemblences in families, we also have differences.  Creating a difference is how evolution works.  In this sense, nature is a continuous exploratory process, finding what works best.  Nature senses change and responds.  Some of this is immediate and physiological or behavioural; some of it is over generations.  If we look at a forest over long periods of time...

When you approach a plant or a tree, you would perhaps be surprised how much it senses your presence. This isn't surprising when you consider the intimate relationship between animal and plant life. The trees harness the sun's energy, and we scatter its seed.  When we take from our ecosystem, we must give something back. We could share our planet instead of assuming it was ours. Plundering our forests, laying waste with our concrete jungles, polluting our rivers and streams, making noise, a mountain of human detritus, like a scar on the landscape.  Imagine, while we are driven into lockdown by a virus we cannot see, imagine how the forest feels about us...now it takes a moment to breathe, and the silence allows the birds to fly free, imagine. There stood a tree in my childhood days And there grew grass under sunlight rays But where are these now so rare? Under the concrete lain so bare. My children will not know In the world in which they'll grow. They'll re...