Life exists in networks.
Well, that is to say, our human interpretation is that life exists in networks. Cycles. Systems. Webs. Connections.
However you wish to express it, there are interactions between various forms of life in ways not often as physically obvious as this vine and branch.
Vines are a small facination for me, as it boggles my human brain a bit, how a vine is able to wrap around something, or find anything, without sight, smell, or hearing. Even its sense of touch is not what you or I would understand 'touch' to be.
In the Carolinian forests of the Niagara, one can find very large vines, huge ones in fact. They hang onto trees as the trees grow, and end up being as thick or thicker than something one might see Tarzan or Robin Hood swinging across tree to tree with.
Or, there's Ivy, which adorns of the walls of many buildings and houses. Not only are dwellings improved in a decorative sense by ivy, but there is plenty evidence out there it helps keep a house cool in the summer by absorbing sunlight that would otherwise be absorbed by the walls, thus actively assisting in reducing one's carbon footprint. Add a "green roof" to a home (if possible) and the negative carbon impact of the displacement of ground cover is nearly nullified.
Life exists in networks. When we allow nature to take ownership over itself, and to work with us, we respect our part in that network. When we let ivy grow up our walls, allow indigenous wildflowers and grasses on our lawns to grow, allow microbes to consume our green waste in order to compost, we're accepting and embracing that network. If we could find a ways to do that in all aspects of our social lives, crises like climate change would simply not exist.
