The power of nature, of earth, air, fire, rock, and water, of the immensity of cosmic and geologic time…is beyond anything any of us tiny, insignificant humans can ever really contemplate or totally understand…but we can try.

When we climb a multi-million-year-old rock face such as Yosemite or Looking Glass, wade in an ancient living river like the New or Yangtze, fish a thriving estuary such as the Everglades, dive an ageless reef, explore the depths of a limestone cavern, hold a handful of beach sand from a New Zealand or Carolina beach, wander the sheltered rich coves of the ancient Appalachians or Amazon, or traverse the frozen expanses of the Columbia glacier….we see first hand the products of deep time and we must stand in awe and wonder at the power and beauty of nature and the incredible spans of time, evolutionary experimentation, gravitational and geologic forces that it has taken to arrive all of us–the luckiest survivors–at this moment.

You, the being science calls human, that is reading these words, you are alive, thinking, and understanding these words I am writing due to the millions of environmentally dictated successful mutations passed down in the DNA of millions of interconnected creatures stretching back through deep time to the first spark of life on this planet. You are connected through your DNA to me, to that fruit fly, to that houseplant, that snake, that cat, that bacterium clinging to your cat’s foot, the bird singing in the tree, the tree, the whale swimming in the ocean, and even the fossilized T-Rex buried in the depths of the earth…every creature, plant, bacteria, fungi…every living thing that is living and has ever lived on earth – you are connected to and are a part of them all–without all of them you, human, you would not exist. To know, to understand, and to accept this knowledge is just an amazing and incredible–and powerfully humbling yet upliftingly spiritual thing.

You are a way for life and the universe to know and contemplate its own existence.

This knowledge we possess is powerful, humbling, and could be very dangerous or extremely productive for all life on spaceship Earth. We must decide how we are going to use this knowledge – for “good” or for “evil.” The future of all life, all that is human, animal, and vegetable is in our hands.

Please, make good choices that benefit not just you and your “club” “group” “flock” “tribe” “clan” or “people” – but everyone and everything living.

Please learn and then teach your kids – or the “kids” of others if you are a teacher – about better ways to share, accept, relate, communicate, and coexist with each other and with nature.

Please share with them the workings of nature, art, music, and the sciences.

Please take them for long walks in the forest.

Please spend quality time with them and let them play, grow, read, create, make, do, experience, grow, and live for something greater than themselves.

Improvise, Adapt, Overcome, Evolve, Survive, Thrive.

Make good choices.

Do good things.

Be a good human.

One Love.

Imagine.

Unless.