Most of the people I know are aware I’ve become an avid bicyclist since 2017. This has allowed me to ride the trails all around the city where I live.
There’s one particular trail that runs through a protected wildlife wetland area that I get to by riding a path alongside a busy highway. Not exactly a pleasant place to ride a bicycle. The noise from the traffic drowns out my music.
One morning I observed a prairie falcon swoop down and catch a prairie dog. Yeah, yeah, yeah... circle of life and all that shit.
Unfortunatly, the falcon’s breakfast entree wasn’t meant to be. The prairie dog fell to the ground, landing on the path just as I rode by.
It was dead.
As I rode by over the coming weeks and months, it started with the smell, the putrification, the little birds and other critters picking at the remains, the wind blowing the fur away and summer thunderstorms washing the sidewalk every so often.
I’ve been wanting to write this for some time.
Over the course of this past summer, I watched that little prairie dog completely disintegrate, leaving only a stain shaped like its body permanently embedded in the sidewalk.
This made me ponder how completely insignificant life can be if one doesn’t strive to always be moving forward. Always be observing, discovering and learning new things.
We’re here for a while, doing what we do. In two or three generations there will probably be noone who knows what we were all about and what we accomplished.
And, in the end, everything ends up an anonymous stain somewhere upon the Earth.