The soil upon which we walk tells countless stories of the myriad lifeforms that inhabited this Earth before us. Their transformation, growth, accumulation, and decay shaped and brought to being our bodies, our landscapes, the creatures we know, and the air we breathe. This piece tells the stories of six giant evolutionary steps in Earth's history. I call these evolution “myths” not in the sense that they did not happen—they did—but in the hope that by hallowing them in this way, bringing beauty and reverence to these stories, I can afford them with some of the same love and awe afforded to figures like Beowulf, Heracles, and Gilgamesh. That which we hold sacred, we imbue with sacredness. In learning and holding sacred the Earthʼs past, perhaps we can move towards the same for her present and future.

Tiktaalik is the fish who decided to walk on land, the great-times-several million grandmother of everything on land with four legs. In reality, they were amphibious creatures who spent their lives both in and out of the water, but this piece imagines a first foray onto land, a journey of discovery, doubt, and joy.

Delitzschala bitterfeldensis, the first known flying insect, resembled a dragonfly and lived on the sap of trees. They likely did not metamorphose as modern insects do, but instead hatched from their eggs as tiny versions of their inch-long adult form