August 17, 2023

"You are comprised of 84 minerals, 23 elements, and 8 gallons of water spread across 38 trillion cells.

You have been built up from nothing by the spare parts of the Earth you have consumed, according to a set of instructions hidden in a double helix and small enough to be carried by a sperm. You are recycled butterflies, plants, rocks, streams, firewood, wolf fur, and shark teeth, broken down to their smallest parts and rebuilt into our planet's most complex living thing.

You are not living on Earth. You are Earth.”

~Aubrey Marcus

We had friends staying with us this weekend and Saturday night we made a double date of it on the prairie to watch the Perseids meteor showers. We could see the outline of the Milky Way and a couple of shooting stars from the driveway but we all decided we wanted to brave the mosquitos and take a ride into the prairie. The four of us crammed into the cab of the ranch truck and bounced our way about seven miles from home and away from oilfield light pollution. Damn it was dark out there. But oh my God…a friend told me once about a late night ride she took between an island and the Panama mainland. She described the stars as a carpet. Another friend lives in New Zealand and has shared this description of their night sky. I can finally say I’ve seen a sky carpeted with stars and I was fortunate enough to be seven miles from home. The Milky Way felt close enough to touch. And the longer you looked at the stars, the more stars and planets and moons became visible. I’ve never felt such bliss as I did watching the night sky, seeing giant meteors leaving trails of smoke. The smoke no doubt falling to Earth. Star dust. More spare parts returned to the Earth. I was ebullient to be so terribly small under that night sky. Spare parts.