Slice of Life

by Greg

Under bike tires. Under boots and sandals. Under dog feet. The seemingly solid earth is shifting. Each mountain, plateau, valley, ridge, canyon and mesa is being built and broken. Stacked and torn. Pressed, twisted, wrenched, tilted, ripped and piled.

It's happening now. Beneath me. Yet to one human eye, a single life of observation, to one blink in a long, long history, the motion seems slow. Too slow, nearly, to be seen as motion.

Still, during the slice of my life I can see the evidence of this motion. And during a pause on a recent mountain bike ride with the dogs, the slices of other lives came to light. Insects, trees, plants. Ancient lives. Laid down in mud millions of years ago. Buried. Pressed. Folded. Lifted. Torn free. Details preserved. Returned to daylight by the act of peeling apart flakes of stone.

I find these slices of life appealing. Evidence of a history of change. Evidence of the resiliency of the forces of life, these plants, these creatures. Evidence of the lives they lived and the way they died. Evidence of the wonder that is too big to see. Too long to truly comprehend. Too complicated and convoluted to track.

But a sense of that wonder is drawn through my thoughts. My own life, preserved for now. Brushing against these small, ancient lives. Preserved. For now.