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Transcript
- I am currently holding a trowel in one hand and a fern frond in the other, feeling like an archaeologist who has been given a second chance to fix history. There is something profoundly, quietly desperate about trying to preserve a world that has already vanished. Let’s unpack that for a moment. When you think of prehistoric creatures, what do you see? Usually, it’s big. Massive bones, roaring sounds, dust-choked landscapes, the whole cinematic blockbuster treatment. But when I decided to build a terrarium mimicking the ecosystem of extinct creatures, specifically the Carboniferous period, I wasn’t interested in the roar. I was interested in the silence. The humidity. The way light filters through a canopy that hasn’t existed for three hundred million years. It started as a whim, really. A Tuesday afternoon scroll through botanical supply catalogs that turned into a late-night obsession with sphagnum moss. But as I layered the gravel, the charcoal, and the soil, I realized this wasn’t just gardening. It was a act of imaginative restitution. We are taught that extinction is final, a closed door. But inside this glass jar, under the soft glow of my desk lamp, I am creating a universe where the giant millipedes and dragonflies still rule the forest floor. It feels illicit, almost. Like I’m hiding a secret from the rest of the modern world. There is a specific kind of loneliness that comes with maintaining a closed system. You become the sole guardian of its atmosphere. If the temperature shifts by two degrees, if the ventilation is off by a fraction, the delicate balance tips. And in that tension, there is a mirror to our own lives. We spend so much time trying to control the external chaos—news cycles, relationships, careers—but here, in this six-inch cube, I have total agency over the microclimate. It’s giving… existential, isn’t it? We look at these jars and see plants. But really, we’re seeing our own desire for permanence in a temporary world. The Carboniferous period ended because the climate changed, because the continents shifted. Life went on, but it changed. By building this terrarium, I’m not just planting ferns; I’m acknowledging that everything ends, yet choosing to nurture what remains anyway. It’s a small rebellion against entropy. Every time I mist the walls, watching the droplets slide down the glass like tears or rain, I’m saying: 'Not today. Not yet.' I want to talk about the specific creatures I’m trying to evoke. The Meganeura, those giant dragonflies with wingspans up to two feet. Imagine them hovering over your head right now. They don’t exist anymore, but their silhouette is etched into the fossil record. In my terrarium, I’ve placed twisted branches of driftwood that suggest their flight paths. I imagine them darting between the horsetails, hunting smaller insects in a world without birds. It’s strange to think about how we reconstruct these worlds. We rely on science, on fossils, on chemistry. But we also rely on imagination. As a literary editor, I know that storytelling is the bridge between data and emotion. Facts tell us the Meganeura died out due to falling oxygen levels. But stories make us feel the weight of their absence. When I look at my terrarium, I don’t just see moss. I see a graveyard and a nursery simultaneously. It’s a place where death is composted into life. The decay of the old growth feeds the new shoots. It’s messy, it’s humid, and it’s alive in a way that feels ancient. People often ask me why I don’t just buy a plastic dinosaur toy and stick it in the dirt. Why go through the trouble of sourcing specific pH-balanced soils, or learning which mosses thrive in high humidity? Because details matter. In editing, we cut words that don’t earn their place. In terrarium-building, every element must serve the ecosystem. If you add too much water, it rots. Too little, it dries. It’s a discipline of precision. But it’s also an act of love. Love requires attention. You cannot love a thing you ignore. By spending hours curating this miniature landscape, I am practicing deep attention. I am looking closely at the texture of a leaf, the curve of a stone, the way shadows fall in the early morning. In a world that rewards speed and superficiality, slowing down to tend to a tiny, silent world is a radical act. It forces me to be present. It pulls me out of my head and into my hands. And honestly, after fifteen years of reading manuscripts and chasing deadlines, my hands needed something real to hold onto. There’s a concept in geology called 'deep time.' It’s hard for human brains to comprehend. Three hundred million years is a number so large it becomes abstract. But when you look at a terrarium, you are looking at a snapshot of time. The plants inside are growing at a pace that matches our perception. They are slow, deliberate, steady. They remind us that we are not the center of the story. We are just one chapter in a very long book. This perspective is comforting, in a strange way. My worries about emails, about whether I said the right thing at dinner, about the state of the media industry—they shrink when viewed against the backdrop of the Carboniferous. The earth will continue. The moss will continue. We are part of a continuum. Building this terrarium connects me to that continuity. It makes me feel small, but not insignificant. Just a small, caring participant in a vast, ongoing process. It’s a humble place to be. And I find I need humility more than I need validation these days. So, why am I telling you all this? Why bring you into my study, into this quiet corner of my home, to talk about dirt and dead insects? Because I think we all have a hunger for connection to something older and larger than ourselves. We scroll through feeds filled with fleeting trends, but we crave roots. We crave things that last, even if they are made of glass and soil. I invite you to try it. You don’t need a PhD in botany or a house full of space. You can start with a mason jar, some charcoal, and a few resilient plants. You can create your own micro-world. You can decide what era it represents. Maybe yours is a desert scene, dry and stark. Maybe it’s a tropical rainforest, lush and chaotic. The point isn’t the accuracy. The point is the act of creation. The point is the pause. The point is remembering that you have the power to cultivate beauty, however small, in your own immediate surroundings. Let that be your anchor. Let that be your quiet rebellion. Take care of your own ecosystems, whatever they may look like. I’ll be back next week with another exploration of the weird and wonderful. Stay curious.