The modern world is divided. We see this pretty much in all areas. It’s either one thing or another, A or B, black and white, and we’ve been taught to divide things into living and non-living.
On one side we have organisms: plants, animals, fungi, bacteria. These things metabolise, they grow and reproduce.
On the other we have rocks, minerals, water, atmosphere. These inert things are like a stage on which life performs.
It may seem a small thing, this division, but it’s actually a big deal and flawed.
At first glance, lichen on a rock may seem simple: a living thing on a non-living surface. If you observed the lichen on the rock long enough, you’d see it dissolving the rock below.
The lichen is extracting minerals through mild acid secretions. In return the rock releases calcium, iron, and potassium. These are the raw materials the lichen needs to grow.
What looks like a living thing on a dead surface is a slow, thousand-year negotiation. The lichen is actually making soil and the rock is sustaining the lichen.
This relationship is a marriage. Soil itself is the product of this partnership.
Soil is the long result of this symbiotic relationship over vast geological timescales.
Everything that grows depends on what the living and non-living have been doing together for longer than we can even imagine.
The atmosphere works the same way. Atmospheric oxygen is biological in origin, produced by countless generations of photosynthetic life.
The calcium in your bones came from rocks and was recycled through ancient organisms.
The air you breathe is also a result of this long-term interaction between life and minerals.
There is no clean line between so-called living and non-living. There is a beautiful dance and conversation among all things, which is what we call the world.
The plant you’re sitting with is part of this. Its roots are dissolving minerals from the stone below the soil.
This is an ancient partnership. So ancient that you need to become quiet and still and present to catch even a glimpse of the process.