Nature tells complex stories of ephemerality and interconnection, sometimes most legibly when it interacts with culture. Around 2020 the mass of the Earth’s human made materials – including buildings, vehicles, infrastructure, appliances, and equipment – surpassed the mass of all living things in the natural world, including all marine life, soil microbes, plants, trees, birds, and insects. Living things will again find their way toward new and adapted iterations of their former selves.