IF ONLY REDEMPTION were as easy and inevitable as the passing of time. So instead of the ceremonial resolutions we make for ourselves today, maybe it’s enough for some of us to have merely survived another year on this wonderful and troubled earth.
Which has me thinking about extinction — of nature, of me, of us. And for perspective on life and death on this first day of 2024, I’ve naturally been turning my thoughts to liverworts.
Not that I would equate the breadth of human experience to a group of obscure plants with tiny leaves that can be shaped like liver. In their furtive ways, liverworts have never created anything as wonderful as antibiotics or peanut M&M’s. Lacking flowers and sensuality, they’ve never enjoyed sex (even dinner and a movie), a Mary Oliver poem, or Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (an annual performance of which I am attending here in Vermont today). (But see the postscript for lascivious liverwort photos.)
On one count, however, liverworts do have us beat: longevity. For any of us marking the new year, the only certainty is that we’ve moved one year closer to our personal extinction. For humanity itself, in the not-too-distant future, “naturally” or hastened by our own doing, or both, our species will certainly vanish forever. (Predictions of the exact or approximate date of our end time vary considerably).
Liverworts of course do not ponder extinction — they defy it.
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