Myths of Origin, p 434

There is not a stone here which has not borne up under a foot. There is not a branch which has not supported the tenuous, thin, wispy talons of a sparrow or starling. There is not a blade of grass which has not been explored, investigated, understood by the six legs of the sugar ant, or the ladybug, or the hundred legs of the caterpillar. There is no streambed here which has not felt the cautious step of a fawn’s hoof; there is no cloud above which has not cast its shadow across the cycle of death, life, birth, rebirth, renewal, and trust and development.

There is no cycle of life separate from all the others herein. No bird or chick exists without the trees, the grasses, the insects, the worms, the mulberries. No wonder of nature exists in a vacuum, and thence comes a symbiosis, a sympatico that allows for all and everything together to move in harmony, in unison, in a pattern of reflection and recognition that trace a path of universality through the waiting fields.

There are no enemies here, no predators, no prey, no worse or better, no contests. Oh, there are those who consume and those who fall to them, but this is not viewed as strife. In this wood, this idyllic scene, there is a parallelism and a partnership to such experiences. The grub does not resent the mole; the mole does not resent the owl; The owl does not resent the cougar; the cougar does not resent the passage of time, the arthritic creak seeping into the joints, slowing her leap, helping encouraging her miss, her failure to sustain herself, her failing then nor the end to stop normal progress and to then lay down and rest, thus becoming fodder once again for the grub, the worm; no, the cougar does not resent the passage of time or the grub, for all understand that this cycle is not so much a competition as a cooperation. There is benefit for all in the process, in the turning of this wheel of interaction, in the inevitable, irrevocable forces of evolution, gravity, time, patience, radiance, sunshine, wind, weather. The time for competition has passed. The time for partnership has arrived, and with this partnership all eventually succeed; not despite one another, or because of one another, but, simply, with one another.