As I stand outside, looking at all this color, all these details, all this vibrancy that’s the result of some cosmic accident once upon a time, I feel at peace. Even if just a moment. The timelessness of the trees—their wisdom, their steadfast resilience—it is beautiful against the breeze, springy, capricious. The transience of this all and the not knowing for sure why we have this small piece of the universe carved out for us (by creatures and people long forgotten) is so odd and unsettling. It is a fact and a question to which we don’t have all the answers, and at times it does feel like a cruel joke. But there’s nothing else to do about it, so we tuck these sobering thoughts away and concern ourselves with other things, some trivial, others not so much.