Sungold
We have been reading Braiding Sweetgrass, published in 2013. It’s still in high demand at our local library, on the reserve list. “The author, a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer, has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers.” She says that “the awakening of ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world.”
I have always embraced this natural relationship, and have spent much of my life outdoors in nature. Specifically I contemplate and marvel at photosynthesis. When a photon of light from the sun bounces into a leaf, its energy excites a chlorophyll molecule. That photon starts a process that splits a molecule of water. The oxygen atom that splits off from the water instantly bonds with another, creating a molecule of oxygen, or O2. The chemical reaction also produces a molecule called ATP and another molecule called NADPH. Both of these allow a cell to store energy. The ATP and NADPH also will take part in the synthesis part of photosynthesis.
So it’s responsible for not only the plants that give us food, it makes the oxygen we breathe. How cool is that! Reading about this reminded me of a somewhat whimsical KTK I wrote a few years ago, so here it is again.
In the beginning there was nothing
Then Ceiling Cat said “Let there be light”
And there was still nothing
But now you could see it.
So, say you’re in the center of the sun, and some hydrogen atoms fuse to produce helium. Why not? There’s really a lot of pressure in there. That releases two neutrinos, two positrons and energy in the form of gamma photons. Although photons travel at the speed of light, the center of the sun is full of or even consists of plasma so they can’t go very far and they bounce around going every which way, but finally they make it up to the photosphere. This can take as long as a million years and some say 500 million years. By this time you’d think they would be getting old but we know now that moving at the speed of light they don't age at all because Einstein.
Next our photon shoots toward earth still at the speed of light and that takes around 8 minutes.
You have a plant growing in your yard. It is the culmination of millions and millions of years of evolutionary refinement. This has produced chlorophyll in its leaves which has the remarkable, even miraculous property of being a molecule that can absorb light energy and store it as sugars. So our photon hits the leaf and performs the miracle which results in the growth of the plant. The photon has done its job. And what do you do? Pick the weed, or ignore it. Better to grok it and admire and revere it. A weed is just a plant in the wrong place. It might even be a flower.
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