by George Jacobi
I gaze across the late summer Fenton at the glittering schist and garnet-infused wall of the Grist Mill. On the little beach below my feet, last night’s raccoon tracks and a lethargic green frog. Not a dramatic scene, this cozy nook has an evergreen grove, a meadow, a pond, and some local history to go with the deciduous forest and the trickling river. And that’s just the visible vista. A hummingbird briefly hovers over the goldenrod by the mill. “And what can YOU tell me about consciousness?” I write, but when I look up from my notebook, she’s gone.
How does the world appear to a hummingbird? That hummingbird distinguishes hundreds (thousands?) more colors than I, the usual ones plus combinations of each micro-hue with ultraviolet red, green, yellow, and maybe purple. What does that iridescent ruby throat look like to another hummer? She’s not telling. Furthermore, some of her twittering calls are above her OWN hearing as well as mine. Why is that? All around me in this simple woodland is a universe of things I cannot sense and thus cannot truly know. As Loren Eisely once wrote, “wild reality always eludes our grasp.”
Below the gristmill wall, a bumblebee plumbing the yellow blooms also sees UV wavelengths. Goldenrod advertises where its pollen is with UV light. Never mind the hummingbird or insect eyes, how did a PLANT determine which hue was important to a bee, and figure out how to do it? Evolution on a vast time scale, yes, but is it reaction or response? Does your opinion depend as much on your language-centric brain as it does on the flower’s neurobiology?
Underneath my feet messages are passing back and forth right now via the mycorrhizal network. Mushrooms are the only above-ground evidence of the complex economic connections below. Within miles of impossibly thin white mycelium (fungi), trees are trading carbon for sugar, water, and other nutrients. It’s not just a freight line: warnings of disease are delivered, provoking increased nutrient support to a tree in danger. These SOS transmissions pass through the air too, via volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
Research now shows us that like trees, plants such as goldenrod also react to stimuli; they send imperceptible alarms to others when attacked, through airborne chemicals. Then they fight back. Is this “communication” in a different form? Within themselves too, electrical signals pass through a plant’s vascular system along with water. What’s more, some plants remember. They recognize relatives. They can hear water. Is this “awareness” in an unimaginable form?
Treehoppers across from me in the same thick foliage ARE communicating, using their stomachs to vibrate the leaves they stand on. It has been heard, translated into sound, and it’s not just percussive–but melodic. They sing?? Why?
A little crab spider walks nearby. Spiders like it can fly. It’s called “ballooning”. They exude silk, which catches the breeze…but wait: when there is no wind, they STILL take off. Their silk has a negative charge, which repels the also negatively charged plant where they stand. Pop! They LEVITATE, probably catching the wind only after gaining some altitude.
And now, far above, I see a pair of wheeling broad-wing hawks, who can somehow detect earth’s geomagnetic field. Soon, when they decide to migrate for the winter, they will unerringly fly south.
Between the sky and the earth, surrounding me in profusion, are lives whose complexity and abilities are unavailable to our own senses. We try to define them using our own perception. But our consciousness doesn’t extend to other beings; in fact, it only sloppily does to our own species. Emotions can hide our already erratic and fleeting awareness, and pheromones (one more sense we’re unaware of) determine our opinions as much as listening and watching.
Hidden in the damp moss at the base of a maple tree swim microscopic water bears (tardigrades), which can survive no oxygen, no water, enormous radiation, and vacuum for possibly hundreds of years. Even tinier; in the fall sunshine around me neutrinos and other cosmic particles–STARDUST–invisibly sail by. I perceive little of the rich living earth, let alone the universe. Mutation seems magical. Where on life’s continuum does sensation become response become instinct, then become intention, awareness, and maybe consciousness? And who decides? Science tiptoes closer and closer to anthropomorphism, wearing indigenous moccasins. That just makes me happy.
Bumblebee photo: Michelle Poudrette
Strongly suggested reading: The Immense World, Ed Yong and The Light Eaters, Zoe Schlanger