Life is just sort of piled up in piles. There are piles and piles of life everywhere, and they all sit on top of one another and just keep piling in a never-ending and growing mountain. Ordinarily, we don’t realize we’re in a big pile, just a tiny component of a tremendous, pulsating mass. We don’t realize that there’s life underneath us and life on top of us and life inside of us, and somewhere in this huge pile through complex labyrinths, we’re having our being in a borrowed biological unit. In some kind of bizarre and chaotic organization, Nature has placed us in this living net.
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| Life on top of life in the form of tree ears. |
I was struck with the mountain of life when I looked at this
tree trunk. There it stood on top of the
earth and inside of it as well. All
around it there was life. There were
bugs in its roots along with bacteria and mycelium. Heather grew around its base. On its trunk were moss and lichen and tree
ears and more bugs, and all of the life that was on the tree trunk had life on
top of it as well. The tree ears sported
algae, and the moss and lichen carried their own bacteria and bugs. The air swirling around and around it also carried
invisible life, and it all kept going on and on and wouldn’t stop.
Everywhere, everywhere there was just life. It simply kept on living, even when it died. It just kept on going in one form or
another. It wouldn’t stop growing and
changing and becoming. I looked at
myself, at the life beneath my feet and on my skin and within my body. It was everywhere inside me and around me,
and the idea was maddening. I heard
millions upon millions of voices, and they all chanted the same thing over and
over: I AM. They said, “I am,” and I said it with them. I am!
