White-backed Vultures in the Maasai Mara, October 2022
Composers make; decomposers unmake. And unless decomposers unmake, there isn’t anything that the composers can make with.
Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life
One
A mother Lion and her cubs polished off a Wildebeest, while a crew of Vultures, Eagles, and Jackals milled behind them impatiently for their turn. This scene plays out millions of ways, everywhere, at all times, but only certain biomes can support the size of life that makes it this dramatic and bloody to witness. I thought about it while I was watching a Northern Cardinal twist and turn in the air after a little Cabbage White butterfly.
Two
One of my favorite ways to make myself angry is to read about longevity science. At a recent academic convention in Boston, police had to be called in to break up an overcrowded presentation on “rejuvenation technology” that was breaking fire code.1 Billionaires love this shit, this opportunity to tack on more years of living. This obsession with this form of “life” is in itself an utter and complete death — prolonged life that requires further manufacture, and which fails to address the environmental and capitalist factors that impact aging, bolstering a system that lacks the ability to decay and to give back those elements which it has taken.
A decaying log in the Harrier’s Pond at Treefriend’s Marsh, June 2023.
Three
A great portion of the pastor’s sermon at my Nana’s Evangelical memorial service last fall had been about death as unnatural, a temporary human punishment until we can reclaim our bodies eternally. This fear of death, so bare at a celebration of a life of all places, was a thousand needles to my brain.
I work intimately with the deaths of road-killed animals. More often than not this is rites said in the car as I pass on the highway where it’s too dangerous to stop. But every once in a blessed while I encounter an addressable situation where I can move the creature somewhere off the road, where scavengers can more safely access them and where they can more easily decompose.2
There is both a physical and a spiritual component to this work, the crux of which hit me repeatedly during that service: decomposition and care for the spent body is not at odds with the continuance of the spirit. It is, in fact, an honor to the spirit.
Now
I finished Entangled Life a couple of weeks ago, and among a million other things I keep marveling at the specialties of fungi — the ability to digest wood, to distribute nutrients, to learn to feed off even cigarette butts. There is something for everything, to keep the circle going. So the composers can keep composing.
This essay was originally published on my now-retired Substack on July 7, 2023. It has been migrated and updated on May 25, 2024.
Notes
- Police got called to an overcrowded presentation on “rejuvenation” technology — June 17, 2023 in MIT Technology Review ↩︎
- If you try to do this yourself (and if you’re not squeamish, it is an excellent way to help protect scavengers like Raccoons, Hawks, and Owls as well as promoting proper decomposition): never, ever touch a dead wild animal with your bare hands, or with any materials you intend to use again. I keep disposable gloves and bags in my car for this purpose. Once I move the animal, I wrap the gloves and bag(s) I used in something else clean (a paper bag, another pair of gloves) for later safe disposal. I have also seen recommendations to wrap a plastic shopping bag over the head of a shovel, use this to move the animal, and wrap the bag in another bag to dispose. Regardless of how covered you are, disinfect immediately with hand sanitizer, and give your hands and arms a good scrub once you get home or to your destination. ↩︎