I was in Asheville, NC over the weekend with a friend. What struck me while we were hiking in the mountains there was all the different stages of life going on simultaneously in the forest. There are baby trees, teenage trees, adult trees, dying trees, and decaying trees. There are lichens inching their way up the bark and vines using the older trees to catch the sun speckle. There are mushrooms cleaning up last year’s wet, brown leaves and the other dying vegetation and turning it back into soil for the baby plants and insects to consume. Life turning into death, and death turning into life.

I don’t find this morbid. Right now in my body are atoms that have existed throughout time. I think that’s amazing to think about: to wonder where they might have been and what/who they have been a part of. I find it reassuring and calming to think on the one hand that my atoms will someday be the atoms that are nourishing another creature or plant or human and on the other hand that I am the stuff of the cosmos. My atoms did not start with me, nor will they end with me. We are a product of recycling and will someday spread our atoms to be recycled into something else. It’s beautiful. It gives me a sense of connection and continuity that goes beyond genes and families and location and time. We are part of a spectacular universe. You are the stuff of stars.