I saw a picture this week that made me pause. That doesn’t happen too much these days, being numb and overstimulated, adrenal glands more and more like shriveled up raisins.

The image was of honey bees, sleeping, nestled up together in pairs, feet touching feet, inside a flower, the delicate petals – always so soft and fragile in my hand – strong enough to hold and cup these resting workers. Overcome by the fruits of their labors, that a nap together, in the waning afternoon light, was the only evident next step.

I wondered – what else have I been missing all along? What else are we missing each and every day, our concept of time being just one in all the world’s beings?

The symbiosis of two creatures, or two events, taking time to co-evolve over millennia. The thumbprints of a tree replicating the thumbprints of a human, rings of knowledge, wisdom, observations, lived experiences of turbulence that cause the rings to thicken some years and thin in others.

Walking through the Pfeiffer Big Sur redwoods this weekend, between the rain storms, up onto a trail that was closed since the 2016 fire season, as far as I could see, rows of baby maples, no taller than me, stretching and competing for light. Only a few lucky ones would make it. There was likely a baby redwood or two in there, needing enough heat from the hottest wildfires on record to crack open its seeds and start the new life of its own, future generations as it were. And these maples, they would have otherwise never gotten the chance, the darkness of the forest floor before preventing any chance of success in their sprint into the sky.