There Aren’t Even Any Endings

We just find new ways to grow.

It’s difficult to walk through a rainforest and fear death.

Scrambling through saplings growing out of nurse logs fallen across rotting stumps rich with moss, ferns, and fungus.

Everything underfoot and overhead a verdant, fecund mess — churning, fractal growth with wonder at every scale.

Each tree an ecosystem unto itself. Each tree a node in a vast, evolving network. An eagle’s scream. Black piles of berry-ridden bear shit. Rivers thick with salmon. This sign.

Dappled light on infinite green calls to mind a line from Neil Gaiman’s American Gods: “Not only are there no happy endings, there aren’t even any endings.”

A rainforest renders self-evident life’s destiny to become other life.