The Earth is not as stoic as it seems. On the cosmic scale, it’s a pond of rock with a stone cast in, waves rippling and cresting across its surface. Glaciers that seem to us like walls of mute ice are rivers flowing and churning, carving their way down through the mountains and cutting through the rock like so much smoke in the air. John Muir searched for what he called the “noble avalanche,” humbled at the way the formerly inert came suddenly alive. He ran out of his cabin remarking on the wonders of the earthquake shattering the valley around him. That which is alive is not only that which breathes.