CRANOLOGY: DANCING, FEEDING, BUGLING

OLD, OLDER, OLDEST

How to describe age. In this photo we move visually across ages, past eons, and perhaps see a possible future if our species doesn’t exterminate life as we’ve known it. The visible grass is not too old, most leaves may have begun last fall. Yet, beneath thrive the roots, the crucial part of the plant we rarely see. Those roots may have been place for a decade or more. The cattywompus oak in the center could be a couple hundred years old, the trunk that is. If a previous trunk were chopped down by white invaders around 1840, the persevering roots could be centuries old. The abandoned rusting hulk of a truck is less than a century old and may not last another hundred years. The house tucked beyond the hill may be the newest thing in view. The cranes–well, no individual bird is likely to be…