There was no one else there; that's right, not a single other person did we meet up with on the whole circuit. The track wound through an area of lush rainforest, with some of the tallest and oldest trees I've seen.
Groves of palms reached for the sky, their canopies a lacy network far above us. The silence was a gift. The combined aromas of rotting vegetation and living trees were strangely heady. The soft humidity seemed to be the comforting breath of the forest. All combined to create an atmosphere of primeval fecundity, a glimpse of a world before humans.
Most of all it was a huge ecosystem reminder of the relationship between life and death. There were strangler figs slowly killing their host trees. In any gap where larger plants had died or fallen and sunlight could penetrate the canopy, numerous seedlings had germinated and were competing for nutrients and light. The dead trees and fallen leaves, as they decompose, are a source of nutrients for new life. A rotting stump might support mosses and seedling trees. Even living tree trunks support new plants that have taken root in any available niche.
Our gardens are smaller scale examples of the way that death and decomposition drive new life. We use many once-living plant materials as mulch and fertiliser. Added to these are multitudes of dead bodies of insects, birds, frogs, lizards, spiders, micro-organisms and other (mostly unseen) denizens of the soil. As they decompose, they release nutrients that feed our chosen plants. Without the process of decomposition vegetated ecosystems would die under the weight of their own detritus.
Similarly (though without pushing the analogy too far), how often do we hear of the death of a grandparent or great-grandparent at about the same time as the birth of a new baby? It is all part of the cycle of life and death, in the rainforest, in our gardens, in our lives.
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