Tufted Titmouse at Window Feeder

Long Recovery

Life forms on planet Earth have experienced some half dozen mass extinctions in the last 500 million years or so, during which up to 95% of species disappeared. Prior to each extinction event, the mixture of species had slowly settled into a stable balance, wherein each life form had found a niche that saw it interacting in cooperative ways with surrounding species—in ways that tended to perpetuate the blend. Evolution had slowed to a crawl, because the environment had stabilized and life forms had little reason to change.

Then some huge environmental upheaval occurred. An asteroid or comet crashed down, many large volcanoes erupted, noxious gases were burped up from the bowels of the seas, or the climate dramatically warmed or chilled. Many of those species that had been enjoying a long-term stable equilibrium suddenly found themselves with life’s comfortable rug yanked abruptly from under them. They had become a little too relaxed and vulnerable in their comfortable world. They couldn’t cope with the new harsh conditions and soon became extinct. Other species—some of whom had previously been scrambling for survival on the edges—found themselves better able to cope with the new environment. They adapted, survived, and thrived.

In the eons following each mass extinction, life on Earth slowly settled into a new mix of species. In fact, novel varieties of life came into existence in this aftermath, as evolution entered the fast track. Over time, life once again entered a stable period… until the next environmental catastrophe.

And the next mass extinction is currently underway. What is unique about this one is that it is not being triggered by a comet, asteroid, or volcano, but by one of Earth’s own life forms: Homo sapiens. This new dying off—designated the Holocene extinction—is being driven by human overabundance and overconsumption. We are now the force altering the biosphere.

Earth is still in the early throes of the Holocene extinction. Where it will lead and how many species will disappear is anybody’s guess. Society seems to be unable yet even to wake up and admit it is happening, so we continue to aggravate the process.

What humans understand even less is the rate at which these changes are occurring. To Mother Earth, this is the fastest mass extinction ever to transpire. While previous extinctions took thousands of years to pass, this one is speeding by increasingly faster—spanning just a few hundred years. To Homo sapiens that’s a fair passage of time. To the 3-4 billion year period of life on Earth, however, it’s an instant.

What we understand even less yet is that the recovery from the Holocene extinction will seem endless to us. In the aftermath of previous extinctions, life required millions—even tens of millions—of years recover. In contrast, we humans have been around just a few hundred thousand years. No one can begin to imagine what continued evolution will bring to Homo sapiens in a million years’ time. Once the recovery is over, it’ll be a very different planet. I wonder what the dominant species will be like then. Hopefully, one that’s smarter than humans today.

First Ice of Fall

Terminable Time

Our human ability to project into the future far better than most critters is both a boon and a burden; the difficulty is that we know that someday we will die. Even though we seldom are inclined to acknowledge it, every one of us is conscious of this fact. Our time in this existence is restricted… one might even say very short. Compared to a tree, we’re here quickly and then gone. Compared to a mountain, we’re not even the blink of an eye.

Animals are less likely to suffer from the curse of knowing they have only so much time, so they happily and blissfully live in the moment, not worrying about it. We humans have certain advantages over our fellow creatures (say, sipping a nice cabernet wine) but our curse, the source of so much of our angst, is the foreknowledge that we will soon be gone. So there’s a deep understanding at the core of every human that time is precious, more so than gold, although this is seldom a conscious response.

Many of us try to use our limited time by obsessively filling every waking moment with furious activity. Modern technology allows us to accomplish a particular feat that required a dozen of our ancestors. So we multitask! A contemporary farmer on his own can tend to hundreds of acres with his machines, which enables him to plow while he texts! The business world esteems productivity and strives to drive efficiency ever higher—drawing evermore lifeblood out of employees.

Many of us understand that money and time are, in some ways, interchangeable. For example, I noted years ago that, having chosen to live a low-income lifestyle, I had to invest a lot more time in daily chores. Many people earn lots of money in order to be able to buy the time of others to do their mundane tasks, while they carve out time to ski or go sailing. Leisure time can be very pricey!

We thus are likely to adopt the belief that the more money we have, the more time we’ll have. That’s a false lure, however. Yes, there seems to be virtually no limit to the amount of money one may accumulate, but that’s where the addictive draw of material things comes in. When is enough, enough? Our insatiable desires can never be slaked. But if we pause and honestly look at ourselves, we can quickly see that, although time and money seem interchangeable, there is a limit to the amount of time we have. We may become a billionaire, but can’t become immortal.

Thus, many people ironically and paradoxically (even tragically) allow precious time to be wasted, even when they are fervently trying to hoard it. While their attention is diverted by making more money, their time slips away. Another irony of the human condition is that poor people often have more time than the rich—if only because they can devote more attention to it. More often than not, a poor person is more generous with her time than a wealthy one.

One of the salient paradoxes of the human condition is that, like love, we can enjoy our time so much more when we give it away. Both time and love are priceless, and yet when we freely mete them out to others, we discover that we can come to appreciate them more than we ever would if we try to hoard them. It’s not that we find others returning love or time to us in abundance (although this can happen); it’s that we really come to appreciate every moment and every gesture of love that we share. It’s a sacred contradiction: to get something truly precious, you must give it away.

The last rose of November