19.

For thousands of years humans have been repurposing the skeletons of trees and rocks to further our developing world. Cutting down living things older than we can imagine, skinning their bark to fuel our fires and using their bones to furnish our homes.

When you sit on a wooden chair at a wooden table, you do not think of the life that the tree had before it met its end. How old was it? What forrest did it stand in? What did it witness in this world before if was cut down? Do we sit upon the bones of a child? Or do we sit upon one that stood for hundreds of years and witnessed the comings and goings of our ancestors over generations?

Are we aware that we have created a living graveyard that does not receive the mourning it deserves? I wonder if they tell tales of the murderers with four limbs that invaded their forests and have never left. Everyday we take advantage of and use scraps of their corpses with no second thought. But trees are not the only living kingdom that we use the bones and flesh of.

Rocks we cleave open to examine what lays inside. Or in the days of old, used for weaponry. Or for the pavement we walk on, parading back and forth over the cut, sanded and shaped flesh that we take advantage of. Or the houses and castles that were built upon the thousands of broken bones from previously beautiful structures of nature, crafted over centuries. It seems that anything in this world has a harrowed relationship with the human race.

We also brew and drink tea with the dry and grounded skin of flowers that grow wild across our meadows. Or eat their bodies as part of a home cure for various ailments. Even in a salad just for beauty and fun. The flowers and plants sometimes become encased within a welcoming stone set. Giving them the ability to slow their descent into the nest life. The stones giving them a new form of life. Preserving them for millennium, letting is know that they all came before us. We are nothing to them. Small specks of life scattered throughout space and time.

We are constantly reminded of how short our lifespans on this earth are by the rings of age we find by cutting a once glorious tree in half. The more rings we find, the more significant we become. Akin to the wrinkled and weathered skin of our elders, the rings in a trees trunk can show is so much. The strength and ability to grow in these climates. To escape the clutches of humanities greed for oh so many years.

We don’t treat our elders that we, so how come we treat natures elders this way?