An Autumn Reminder — Remembering Our Place in the Universe

This article was written by Rachel Taylor, our head of content and communications, and was originally published on her website and Medium account.

A friend recently remarked that woodlands provide a very visual reminder that we live on a lump of rock floating in space, orbiting a star, on a tilt. As I wander the woodland and crunch through the first leaves to have made touch down, I reflect on this. He is right. I’d just never really thought about it like this before.

The yellowing of leaves, the glistening of frost, the sprouting of new plants, the blooming of flowers, the fruiting of shrubs all indicate the point at which we are in our planet’s evolution of our sun. It’s tempting to think of seasons as solid blocks defined by the solstices and equinoxes. But the natural world doesn’t quite recognise these defined parameters. In nature, the seasons fade into one another as Earth tracks her course as she has done for time incomprehensible.

Our seasons are thanks to Earth’s elliptical orbit and tilted axis. And with that, we are reminded that we live on a planet — a planet amid a huge vastness of space. As a kid, I used to weird myself out thinking about this vastness — all that distance, all that time, and me as a tiny inhabitant of Earth, just one celestial body in a galaxy of over 100 billion stars, each likely to have at least one planet orbiting it. It used to make me feel physically unwell, truthfully. My partner tells me he suffered the same existential crisis when he was young. Maybe it’s something we all go through — I’m not sure.

The mysterious mechanics of our universe are mind-boggling. And perhaps this stuff is supposed to be beyond our comprehension. But our knowing species has figured out perhaps what none other has — we understand we live on a planet and we see the worlds beyond our own, or at least, we know of their existence. That knowledge can be difficult to digest — at least it was for my infant brain.

But seeing as though we have this knowledge and this planetary perspective, let’s lean into it and reflect on what that means. In all our explorations, we are still the only known planet to be home to complex beings. We hunt dark recesses of our universe for evidence of life but to no avail. Life as we know it proves incredibly fussy. The conditions conducive to the bounty of species that have evolved here on Earth are pretty precise. It reads like Goldilocks and the Three Bears: not too hot, not too cold; not too this, not too that.

So out of all of the billions of planets spinning around stars out there, what defines us and makes us unique is life. That’s freaking cool. But down here on Earth, it can be hard to see this. Life is abundant. And because of this, we often take it for granted. It’s not difficult to see how.

But we shouldn’t take life for granted. In fact, we can’t, not as we enter a sixth mass extinction, driven by global ecocide caused by one single species — us humans. In all its forms, we must cherish life, protect it and conserve it. We must celebrate it, champion it and stand up for it. As a knowing species, we have a duty of care to maintain what makes our planet unique like our life depends on it — because, frankly, it does.

The more logical side of me knows that Earth has undergone tonnes of iterations in her lifetime. I pray that whatever we throw at her, she’ll recover. The more emotional side of me grieves at the thought of all that loss, of all those species gone and all those ecological relationships that have evolved over aeons of time unpicked.

A grand unravelling is underway, and we are setting in motion planetary processes that we can’t undo. It’s within the realm of reality that our home will become lonely and barren. Lonely and barren, just like all those other planets. Whereas Earth is where life should thrive.

As we move through the seasons and witness the natural world undergo its cycles, let’s pause for a moment to reflect on how awesome it is to be here, alive, on planet Earth.

Inspired by conversations with Andrew and Emma of Miscellaneous Adventures and Elle and Rupert of Living Alive.

This article was contributed by Rachel Taylor, Campfire Stories head of communications and content. In addition to working with Campfire Stories, she co-runs Another Escape, a lifestyle journal for those who love the outdoors, telling stories of that inspire nature connection, environmental stewardship and regenerative lifestyle.