All of Us Stardust
Remembering our most fundamental existence
Earth Sensory Perception is a subsection of Our Uncertain Future and represents a compilation of essays on animistic nature connections in the modern world.
NOTE: June’s Intuitive EcoWriting Workshop, Writing Our Way to Home and Belonging is Tuesday, June 25th 6-8pm MT. Registration closes June 20th. More info below.
WE ARE ANIMALS
The sun is mild in the early morning as I walk through the local park. I hear the cry of birds circling treetops and wonder where their nests are hidden. What is it about the echo of birds that causes me to feel the wildness? Their call and response through the forest crowns speak of a different world, an eternal time. They are the primordial theropods from a time before time when giant conifers, ferns, and tree-sized horsetails grew wild. Now, we have domesticated the wilds into neatly trimmed lawns, graveled paths and tree-lined roads. We are certain of our place in existence at the center of existence. But we are deeply wrong.
We think of ourselves as separate beings on a path of dominion, but we are wild. Somewhere deep in our being we are still wild. The birds know it. They call out to us to alert us to their existence. “Hello, hello, hello, greetings,” they patter, or sometimes from papa ravens and cliff swallows guarding nests, “We see you. Go away.” They see us as possible predators and as the animals that we are. When the mountain lions stalk us in the night forest, we are animal. When the black bear charges us away from their cubs, we are animal to them too.
The trees feel our feet, they feel us pedal over the earth, our vibrations on the ground over roots, we are animals. We walk as if we are going somewhere, but animals walk to find food, to graze, to socialize. They walk all day long and sleep and chase and mate and return to the den. Is this so different from what we do? We may have societal constructs and programming, we may think big thoughts about those constructs and programming, but at the end of the day, we aren’t doing much more than walking, sleeping, chasing, mating and returning to the den.
As humans we consider the existence of animals other than ourselves low on the human-centric hierarchy. We even have a word for it, food chain. A hierarchal structure of species where animals other than humans are all food to us. We see only predator and prey, big and small, herbivore and carnivore and ourselves at the top. We think we are superior because we forget that we are nothing without plants, nothing without herbivores. Our whole existence hinges on their existence. We cannot be superior to them because we must humble ourselves to our codependence and give thanks for them.
The birds call again. They sing a song for the morning. They call us back to the wild. They call us back home because we forgot where home is. We forgot. We forgot who we are. We are animals.
We, all of us, came into existence in direct correspondence to this habitat. It was not created for us, and we were not created for it, but we developed together symbiotically. Humans and all other existing animals all evolved to breathe this atmosphere, to be nourished by these plants, to walk on these lands and to be hydrated by these plentiful waters.
We don’t simply co-exist with Nature, but we are Nature. Fundamentally, we are of this Earth, 100% organic, natural beings. Everything about our anatomy functions perfectly with the natural world because we are of the natural world. There is no separation in which humans exist in one realm and the mountains, forests, rivers and birds exist in another realm. We are not outside of the natural world, separate from it, we are part of it.
Simply, we are Nature.
WE ARE NATURE
I write Nature with a capital N to illustrate the personification or animism of Nature, but also the Nature that is inclusive of humans. The nature that we conceive of in our modern mindset is only the natural world, the green spaces, the plants and animals and parks, but that is a mental disconnect. We are a part of Nature, and so I capitalize this persona of Nature that we are a part of, the entire interconnected web of existence on Earth.
Consider how we are an integral part of our ecosystem. We may consider how dependent we are on trees for our survival, how they provide the oxygen we need. Have you considered that trees are also dependent on us for survival? During respiration, we exhale carbon dioxide, which trees then take in to synthesize into food using sunlight, photosynthesis. As a byproduct of this process, trees generate oxygen that we then inhale so we can breathe and stay alive. Plants and animals are completely dependent on each other for survival. There is no separation between the two. There is no hierarchy in which one needed more than the other. This is an equal partnership, one that humans continuously abuse.
Richard Powers writes in The Overstory, “You and the tree in your backyard come from a common ancestor. A billion and a half years ago, the two of you parted ways. But even now, after an immense journey in separate directions, that tree and you still share a quarter of your genes.” In fact, plants and animals have similar molecular structures. While our blood is red due to the metal iron as its center atom, plant blood or chlorophyll is green due to the metal magnesium as its center. Otherwise, they are basically the same. We are not so different from plants, the same “blood” coursing through our bodies, green or red.
OUR BODY IS AN ECOSYSTEM
The human body is an ecosystem in and of itself, which supports a trillion micro-organisms, including fungi, viruses, bacteria and parasites. These creatures are in every part of our body from our gut to our skin to our eyeballs to our excrement, everything. Most of these microbes are beneficial and help us in ways that our bodies wouldn’t be able to do for themselves like protecting us against infection. Microbes in our gut will help us by breaking down food we ingested. In turn, they absorb the nutrients they need for their survival.
There are 10 microbes in our body for every one human cell. Our microbiome contributes more to human survival than our own genes do. When you die, your microbiome will feed off your decomposing body before returning to the earth and entering a whole new community of microbes in the soil where they cooperate with the new community to decompose your body.
When we die, we become the soil.
This is an fundamental part of the greater ecosystem. You spent your whole life accumulating nutrients and carbon from your world, near and far, until one day you die, and all that yummy nutritious goodness is deposited into the soil in one localized spot where you lay. Your body then begins to create a whole new food web for microbes, insects and scavengers that eventually supports new plant life. Our bodies are an essential part of the natural world. We need our microbes as much as they need us.
ALL OF US STARDUST
From earth to earth you are Earth earth, but more than that, you are galaxy dust, you are universe detritus. There are six elements that make up all life on Earth. Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur (CHNOPS) are the building blocks of everything from plants to animals to humans to the planet to the stars and the Milky Way. We are all composed of the same materials, we are all earthlings and of this Earth.
As Carl Sagan famously said in his 1980s series, Cosmos, “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”
EVERYTHING IS NATURE
Actually, everything is Nature. While humans are quick to distinguish ourselves from the natural world, we are also quick to distinguish between those things we deem natural versus unnatural. But consider that everything that exists on this planet is from this planet. (Okay, perhaps it’s from cosmic stardust, too.) A better distinction might be between things that are organic versus synthetic, but everything is technically natural. The cars are made from metals. The furniture is made from trees. The plastic whirligigs are made from petroleum, also known as fossil fuel, formed from the remains of ancient marine organisms, such as plants, algae, and bacteria.
Even in the city we are surrounded by Nature. Not just our food or the stars or the pigeons or the trees outside your stoop, but the building and cars and park bench and the computers and clothes. Everything is made of CHNOPS.
Even though we dislike plastic because of how long it takes to decompose, we need to recognize that everything is of the Earth, of Nature. The problem is not that plastic exists but that we overproduce it. The overproduction of materials that do not efficiently decompose has begun to pollute our planet. Because we are out of balance with the natural world, we have not been able to understand fully until now that overproduction of these synthesized products is unsustainable for our habitat and therefore harmful to us, to Nature. They are still Nature. The problem is not the pollutants themselves but the rapid rate at which we are producing pollutants so that the Earth does not have time to flush them out and clear them.
Recognizing that everything on this Earth is of this Earth allows us to further dissolve the delusion of separation between man-made and natural, man and Nature.
We are Nature and Nature is everything. Everything is composed of the same materials. Everything is interconnected and interdependent.
For most of human civilization, the majority of humans understood this as well as they understood the necessity of eating, so what happened to change everything?*
*Stay tuned to find out as we dive deeper into how our modern human consciousness lost our connection to and separated from the natural world.