This Moment

Now let’s zoom in closer.

The Earth isn’t the same when you fly over it at three thousand feet and look for signs of humans. It’s easy to lose your bearings. All the reassuring textures of daily life are lost. Gone are the sensuous details of wild strawberry jam, a vase of well-bred irises with stiff yellow combs, the smell of wild scallions beside the kitchen door. But it’s a grand perch for viewing our tracks on the ground–visible everywhere and just as readable as the three-pronged Y’s etched into the snow by ravens or the cleft hearts stamped by white-tailed deer.

–from The Human Age by Diane Ackerman

Ackerman’s new book is a love letter to this moment in time in which humans and nature are entwined like sweaty honeymooners. Her language is flowery and a tad too ornate. But this book gives me hope. Let’s celebrate this moment. It’s all we ever had, anyway.