Reflecting on the ages

I'm on a bus from DC to NYC looking out the window at the scraggly overgrowths of greenery outside and it occured to me how despite the comparative youth of this nation, the land is just as old as Europe's, India's, or Jerusalem's. At the National Portrait Gallery it was so easy to forget that there were people here before and after the Europeans came and founded a nation.

But it is hard to remember some very fundamental things. It is hard to remember that each plant is as ancient as any life on this planet, that each one carries that incredible natural history inside its deepest core.