The Universe is Alive
The Universe is Alive
July 4, 1998
The universe is alive. It moves all around me as I sit, still as a rock, in the middle of a meadow. Wild grasses and flowers surround me: yellow and purple vetch, white asters, yellow daisies and black-eyed Susans. I see milkweed, Queen Anne’s lace, bee balm, and mullen. I see many more plants with names unknown to me. They all blend together and blow in the breeze.
The sun is out and moving westerly. The time is late afternoon. The temperature is in the 80’s. The humidity is 30-40%. There are some clouds overhead moving easterly. Large spaces of blue sky between the clouds let lots of sunlight through the sky light. A cloud eventually drifts by between the sun and me. My patch of earth darkens temporarily, then brightens as the cloud passes by. The earth is alive and in motion. Ants are crawling everywhere. Many are moving chunks of earth to their cities, to use as building blocks. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of ants are within eyesight. They are moving around and over everything in sight. I can feel several exploring up my pant legs. I investigate their progress and find a wood tick too. What do they find? Detours and dead ends.
A black beetle trudges past my shoes. It has a direction, a purpose, and a destination in mind. He or she pays no attention to me. In a short time it is out of my sight and out of my mind, replaced by a small fluorescent green beetle that has crawled to the topside of a velvety green mullen leaf. It pauses. We look into each other’s eyes for a moment. It moves on. Grasshoppers hop to and fro from stalk to stem to leaf, hoping to find edible delights. They are a nervous species; to catch one, your hand has to be quicker than their eye. Then if you do catch one, they spit their dark brown juice on you. Today I just look.
I hear a cricket not far away. I cannot see it, but I know from the sound that it is rubbing its legs together, communicating its whereabouts to other crickets who may be interested. An eight-legged creature waits by the web it has spun. The spider tightrope-walks across its web to reposition itself without falling into its own net. The breeze blows through the web without doing damage. Perhaps the breeze will bring supper. The spider waits.
Honey-bees and bumblebees buzz about from flower to flower looking for sweet nectar. There are so many bees that I can hear a steady buzz in the background—surround sound. I can imagine the buzz extending to the edge of the meadow and beyond, into the woods and over the hills to flowers everywhere, surrounding the earth in a cosmic buzzing. I close my eyes and hum along.
When I open my eyes, I see regular flies, butterflies, and dragonflies. They fly through the air, flittering, fluttering, and at times hovering motionless except for their invisible wings. I can easily recognize several types of each species, plus several brown moths.
Now that I think about it, I have not seen, heard, or most importantly, felt, any mosquitoes or gnats. I know they’re out there. It’s just a matter of time before they find me. The ants know where I am.
While I have sat here, many birds have flown through my air space: a sparrow, a yellow finch, some type of gray bird, and high above (below a jet) three turkey vultures circle and soar.
On the boundary of the meadow, where it meets the woods and where the sky meets the earth, sunlight reflects from tree leaves: cottonwood, scrub oak, jack pine, and birch, as they move with the wind, adding to the cosmic sights and sounds.
The universe is alive and in motion. Today I am alive with the universe. Now, it’s time for me to be moving on.