The Valley Doesn’t Need You

I work as an internet marketer. I stare at a screen all day, working in an artificial world. Nothing about it is tangible. The internet is a human invention, developed and maintained by humans. Its technology requires servers, code, wires, satellites, and electricity, along with the constant time and care of everyone who works in that space. Without that collective effort, the whole thing would quickly fall apart.

The little valley in this photo requires none of that. The technology Mother Nature uses is divine. She sustains her own existence and will outlast any of our crude human inventions. This particular location, found directly off Bogus Basin Road, has looked like this for centuries without our assistance and will continue to exist long after we’re gone. Lively, textured, vital, and beautiful.

Consider the contrast. We build things that begin to decay the moment they are complete. A bridge starts rusting on its first day. Code becomes obsolete before it’s fully written. Nature does the opposite. It grows, self-corrects, and thrives without help from us. Unlike the internet, this valley doesn’t need a maintenance crew to keep it alive.

Try as we might, we can’t truly give life to anything. At best, we grant only temporary existence. And even then, everything humanity creates is immediately subject to entropy, the endless disintegration of all things.

Standing in that valley off Bogus Basin Road, my screen and my work feel insignificant. Everything I spend my days maintaining, temporary. Everything here, indifferent to my maintenance entirely. That contrast is clarifying in a way nothing on a screen can replicate. It is the surest, fastest way to find humility, gratitude, and peace.

It resonates because I am of the same technology as that little valley.