Fern

It is an old plant. Not this one. This one is not very old, but its genes are. Its genetic code and its anatomical expression - genotype and phenotype - are older than anything that flowers. Flowering plants appeared in the Mesozoic period, about 150 million years ago, along with small mammals, birds, and the mighty dinosaur. The genetic code for ferns was old then; this unfurling had been witnessed by untold life forms for an eternity before the dinosaurs and proto-rodents nibbled on its unrolling fronds. They had grown into trees once, an initial dominance, the age of the fern, in the Pennsylvanian epoch. They had grown into forests and developed seed bearing species. Their work of filling out the various ecological niches has come back to haunt our present in this: Their carbon-catching processes, the photosynthesis of a sun shining bright 300 million years ago, now fuels our unquenchable thirst for energy today. They are coal and oil - their bones and cells, the work they did - the carbon caught rebound with oxygen and sent aloft. These fern, here in my yard, evolved, they say, from a small group that survived their intial dominance. They retreated from seeds, opting to stick with spores. And as its forefathers and mothers have done for eons, these fronds produced sporangia this past week, the spore capsules that carry its code into a new generation. The recent rains seem to have stimulted the process. The heavy grey leaves, they are covered. The sporangia are soft and spongy to the touch; their spores will be carried across the yard, perhaps, or to the edge of the Mill Pond. It is the ability of living things to adapt in their own time that gives some species a staying power, or so says a book that I am reading. Complexity and variability within stable bounds. Life.

Some folks smell victory at this point. A turning political tide. The end of this neo-liberal travesty called the first six years of the 21st century. I say they still have a trick or two up their sleeves. These are not idle men when it comes to power. Their stakes are different than ours, this is a certainty. But perhaps the recent rains have stimulated spores of other sorts, seeds of democratic sensibility and civic engagement. May we seek the persistence of the delicate fern and adapt where necessary when we have overreached. Enough with the distractions. Turn off the television. Go witness life.