Out to pasture

"If the Stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile. " - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ever think about the "stuff" your made of? The stuff that makes you possible? I don't mean "snips and snail and puppy dog tails" if you happen to be a boy or "sugar and spice and everything nice" if you happen to be a card carrying member of the cooties club (girls). I mean the very atomic/molecular structure that is behind every nutrient, cell and resource that your body needs to sustain itself.

Now push back the clock before you even existed, in fact push back the clock billions of years into history. If you believe the law of conservation of mass then you understand that matter can never be created or destroyed. This means that every atom that exists now has, in fact, always existed. Sure, atoms have separated and combined to achieve different functions in our universe but at the core they've always been around. This means that the atoms that grace the most outer layer of your skin may very well be gliding across the atoms that make up the keyboard you used to surf here. And so it may happen to be the case that maybe, and a big maybe at that, these very same atoms had at some point in history shared the interior of an ancient star that has long since passed into the dark recesses of cold space. So who ever you are and whatever life you choose to live for yourself you are still connected to the world and universe around you. You're made of star stuff, of history and maybe a few puppy dog tails after all.

Photographed this older mare up at my sisters farm this fall. As you can tell by the colors of the trees the season was more than half over. The horse was separated from the others due to age, poor vision and general lack of health. A beautiful animal quite literally out to pasture...