As I grow closer to my expiration date, I remember living among the primeval forests in Sequoia National Park, many years ago. It was a lesson in perspective and scale, a meditation on the transience of human life, the sovereignty of nature and the folly of believing that we have dominion over wild things. Many of the Brobdingnagian trees were old but still had a thousand or more years to live. Paul Bunyan would have been at home there.

Edward Abbey said "The purpose of the giant sequoia tree is to provide shade for the tiny titmouse." He was reminding us that small things are important parts of nature too. An ecosystem where giants dwell would be inefficient and incomplete without the slime mold, the newt and the copepod. Solid stone, born of particles of sand, is crumbled by living veneers of tiny lichens. A drop of water holds the promise of a river. However large and old living creatures grow, they all spring from microscopic cells and help make nature's engine run. These truths give solace to me in my old age.