I’m so tired of humans, myself included. I live in a city and that means hordes of us at every turn, even when we’re supposed to be staying away from each other. I saw a man at the farmer’s market with a t-shirt I want. It read, “Ew, people.”
Luckily, there’s a whole big world of non-human goodness to turn to. Birding is a new passion, and I’ve also been researching insect behavior for my novel, which features a bug-obsessed women who heads to Costa Rica to look for her long-lost father. She feels more kinship to trees and beetles than to people, and finds that looking at how the non-human world adapts and thrives can teach us a thing or two about being better humans.
Consider the army ants, the carnivorous nomads of the insect world. They have no fixed nest. Each night they bivouac in a lattice made of their own bodies, linking jaws and limbs to form a net that supports more bodies. In the morning, they unclench and get back on the trail. What that says to me is that home is provisional but essential, and that we, collectively, are our own shelter, our own home.
Or consider the plants and fungi that live in geothermal soil. Apart, they tolerate temperatures of up to 100 degrees. But when the fungus grows inside the plant, together they can withstand temperatures of up to 160 degrees. To bear the extremes of this world, we need to join forces, to grow into each other. That is if we can stand each other. I know we’re all trying.