The end.
It's where everything starts.
In nature there is death and decay.
Both are inevitable and both essential.
Taking a walk through the woods is one of the best places to witness this relationship between life and death and death's relationship with new life.
Do you notice new life when you are moving through the environment?
The new shoots of flowers,
Leaves,
Trees.
Do you see the fruiting bodies of mushrooms and fungi?
Do you see the raptor feeding on top of an old stump?
The blue tick collecting caterpillars and spiders for its brood?
As winter begins to lift its veil,
Are you desperate to find those verdant signs of new growth?
When you next notice the tracks of a badger which has moved through the soil and trampled a trail of flattened vegetation,
Spare a thought for the thousands of things which had to die in order for this to happen.
For a badger to exist there needs to be food,
Shelter and water.
A badger is an omnivore and is just one species I have picked to illustrate my pondering for today.
You see a badger feeds on berries and seeds and mollusks and insects and amphibians and reptiles and small mammals.
Those berries come from plants which emerge from the soil.
The seeds do too.
The mollusks often feed on the soil,
The leaves.
Without the soil and the new leaves which emerge from the soil,
Those mollusks wouldn't and couldn't emerge.
Those insects they feed on plants mainly and other insects and on carrion too.
The amphibians mostly rely on feeding on insects and other invertebrates in their adult life.
As juveniles or rather as tadpoles they feed on algae and vegetation as do the reptiles who are mainly carnivorous but they'll eat vegetation too.
The small mammals are mostly omnivorous eating a wide range of plants and insects and mollusks.
So you see everything depends on the soil or at least a medium on which vegetation grows.
What is soil then?
Soil is born from death and decay and erosion,
From the end of things.
When anything in the natural world,
Plants,
Fungi,
Insects,
Animal,
Faeces,
Rock,
Wood,
When this all reaches its natural end in its present form it all falls to the ground and a process which is known as pedogenesis begins.
Pedogenesis is the word which is used to describe the formation of soil and it involves all of the things which represent the end of everything else coming together often with the help of the effects of the weather and other factors like earthworms and microorganisms,
Bacteria and mycelia as they begin to use the remaining nutrients and minerals in these waste products.
The remnants of living organisms and inorganic matter literally become what every single other thing on our planet,
Our environment depends on.
You see there's no such thing as the end because the end is always the beginning,
Once more on and on forever.
Have a wonderful day today noticing all of those things which emerge from the end.
