On an Escarpment Above the St. Croix River (The Ear)
Various species of birds twitter and whistle, telling something or other to each other of which I am mostly ignorant. But listening in is important because it confirms one realization— communication is not exclusively human. Birds do it. Trees do it. Biologists have shown that trees communicate through the roots. Communication is everywhere on this planet even though humans have pretended for so long that it is their exclusive domain. Animals are not dumb. Neither are plants. And I doubt the dirt beneath my feet is dumb, either. What's unusual in this world isn't life, but inertness. Does this concept point to anything real? Even the air is alive with microbes. That is clear. But is the air alive with itself? Could those molecules—oxygen, hydrogen, water, and so on—somehow be communicating, too? It may seem mentally imbalanced to think so, but just a few decades ago people who thought trees communicated were considered a little loo-loo. Anthropocentrism may have had it...