The Brevity of Our Lives

This parmeliaceae is part of the family Fungi.  Lichen.  It grows nearly anywhere from rainforest to arctic.  And it's been around for some 400 million years. Imagine a time when large forests began to grow on Earth.  When tectonic plates were on the move raising the Northern Appalachian Mountains and the Caledonian Mountains in Europe.  Where much of the land lay under sea.  It was the Devonian Age or the "Age of Fish" because of the curious creatures that roamed the plentiful seas.  So long ago when North America, Greenland, and Europe were one land mass.  To be transported back is a dream.  I look on the lichen that grow on an old maple tree like ghostly frilly lace.  Spiral-shaped lichen attaches to a rock, resting up against my garden.  Five billion years from now the sun is predicted to envelop the earth.  But I wonder what the world will be like 400 million years from now.  As I write my dog is by my side.  We went to the vet yesterday.  I cried.  She is 100 in dog years and suffering from arthritis.  "How long does she have?"  I asked the kind vet.  "Well, maybe a year."  The brevity of an individual life in the context of the history of the world awes me as I struggle to embrace beginnings and endings.