It’s 7 pm and Iʻm biking home from campus. The warmth of a 48 hour heat dome pushes against my cheeks to remind me that summer is here. But this warmth is much more than that isnʻt it? Itʻs drought. Itʻs meteorological anomalies. In some cases itʻs death. And for some unlucky species, it is extinction. I used to stay up all night thinking of the existential threat of death of life. I remember when I was taught that current extinction rates are at least 1000 times higher than natural background rates of extinction. I used to panic about the world ending, thinking about the cumulative effect of societies’ mistakes, and our tendency to live as if tomorrow will be today forever.
I was certainly more anxious than the average kid, but being raised in the 21st century how can children not be? There is an urgency we’re conditioned to feel in every footstep as we trudge through our everyday lives. Our state of existence constantly looms under the shadow of the Anthropocene. Threatening to extinguish not just the light of humanity, but all other species who get caught in our wake, long before their due time. At some point I realized that I needed a new framework of conceptualizing the reality of our fleeting existence. Over time, I've become less saddened by extinction. Or at least less saddened in the same ways I used to be. Today, I think of extinction, and to a lesser extent death, as an opportunity to remember and find meaning in a universe not necessarily meant to make sense. By acknowledging these things we create validity in life and accept the impossibility of everything. I think this is why bones are so sacred in Hawaiian culture. They are the only remnants of our existence that persist beyond the memory of ourselves. Theyʻre what connect present and future generations to the spirit of our kupuna. The link between the dead and living is essential. I've realized that memorializing our ancestors is not unlike memorializing our natural world. Our most ancient of ancestors. Conservationist and philosopher Aldo Leopold referred to ecologists as living “alone in a world of wounds”. In academia, I've become comfortable with the vastness of these wounds and the daunting task of describing and preserving the memories of our world. Recently, I've been helping a dear friend, David Boucher, re-classify an endangered Hawaiian plant from one species into three. The Kauai Delissea (Delissea spp.). Heʻs dedicated his life to propagating rare plant species and preserving Kauaiʻs rare flora. By studying and re-classifying the Kauai Delissea he helps humanity remember the colorful strokes of the islandʻs canvas. Itʻs a powerful thing to reclassify groups of living organisms. The way we can will a species into existence. The process of realizing the genes that make an organism unique with the hope that it may not be permanently scrubbed from the natural world. Memory and documentation is our way of finding significance in our existence. And being comfortable with our inevitable fate to fade into the aether of the universe. Through research, writing, and poetry we constantly attempt to impose an order and understanding on wilderness. In return we are awed by the impossibility of the task, the overwhelming scale of nature, and the underwhelming supremacy of ourselves. A beautiful article by Marion Renault, describes extinction as an anti-climactic affair. They explain how, “[extinction] has no dramatic flourish—no final explosion or last gasp—to signal a lost cause’s conclusion. We simply listen until silence itself says something meaningful.” But the land, ocean, and sky have a memory. They remember. The molecules, genes, and organismal particles that travel through the worldʻs currents are imprinted into the the DNA of our surroundings. Ultimately, the world doesn't need our remembrance as much as we need it. Our ecosystems are constantly attaining equilibrium and they do so through extinction. The world moves on and species are reborn to live their own triumphs and struggles in a new millennium. Our memories, reverence, sorrow are not necessary for the celestial gears to continue churning. But they are, at the very least, what the universe deserves. Delissea populations continue to dwindle but Dave, myself, and many other conservationists push to preserve and help future generations to remember and honor the fleetingness of everything.
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