Once, I read a story about an atom that had cycled its way through many forms.
A curious root dislodged it from a rock deep underground. It became a part of a plant, and then a leaf, then a moose, and a man, and then back into the soil, into a hawk, a stream, into a fish, and finally back onto land.
But once it made its way to the sea, its journey was over. The atom was lost, swimming in an ocean with no return home.
Watching the rain yesterday, I couldn’t help but think about how our atoms are recycled through time and space, how the tiny atoms now falling from the sky, bouncing on the concrete, nestling among the shards of shredded wood were once something else. Where did they come from? What might become of them?
The sky is usually clear here, a soft blue, with occasional clouds punctuating its vastness with color and texture and form.
Rain is a rare and surprising occurrence, coloring the world an unsettling gray.
But I like the way it makes the Earth smell here, the way it hangs on the leaves and the needles and the trees.
The way it creates pockets of ethereal reflection, allowing us to see the world in the way, perhaps, it was meant to be seen. It draws in lights and forms in a manner that feels somehow more true.
I wondered what the world would feel like if the water could just flow, if it could sink into the ground and follow the natural grooves and curvatures along the hills and valleys, down past the lengthy plateaus, beyond the concrete and built environment, and into the ocean, another step in its cyclical journey.