I didn’t think a Sunday afternoon stroll through one of Seattle’s more stately neighborhoods would tire me as much as it did. But traveling through time can be exhausting. Our group of eight walkers made it through 4.6 billion years in a little over two-and-a-half hours. Every step (if you have relatively long legs) represented nearly a million years. 

It was a venture in “Deep Time,” a way of viewing Earth from a sensory perspective. More than a class in geology (although the experience would fit into a science curriculum nicely), “Deep Time” allows us to experience Earth’s story from the ground up, including how and where we humans fit in. 

You can take a “Deep Time” walk on your own with help of a free app. Instead, our small group was led by Richard Hartung, an Earth advocate. We began our walk on the grounds of St. Mark’s Cathedral on Capitol Hill. Our pace leisurely, we stopped every few billion years while covering 4.6 kilometers (a little less than three miles).

Scientists generally agree that Earth began to take shape from a mass of gas and rocks revolving around a faint sun. A billion or so years later, a huge collision threw off enough debris to form the moon, the beginning of our seasons. Not until 3.8 billion years ago did life begin to emerge in the form of single cell organisms. If the thought of humans evolving from monkeys disturbs you, rest assured. It’s those single cells, said Richard, that were “our common ancestors.”

By the time we reached Lowell Elementary School at 11th and Mercer streets, almost an hour had passed, and it was 3.1 billion years ago. That, said Richard, was when those single cells began to come together in “community.” How perfect, I thought. Lowell school is all about community. Its progressive programs serve many children from unhoused families. Students come from families speaking thirty different languages.

Soon we entered Volunteer Park, reaching the halfway point. About 2.3 billion years ago, oxygen was beginning to move into Earth’s atmosphere, for which I was thankful. We’d climbed a slight grade which had me breathing a little more deeply. Things started happening at a faster pace: endosymbiosis, a couple ice ages, earth’s revolutions slowing down and the sun brightening. As we walked past Lake View Cemetery, where Bruce Lee is buried, insects began to emerge some 425 million years ago. The coal that is mined today began forming 360 million years ago.

Millions more years flew by as we strolled: volcanic eruptions, dinosaurs, continental drift, an asteroid hit the earth and killed off the dinosaurs. Two-and-a-half hours from our starting point, the glorious Rocky Mountains and Andes emerged. Twenty-three million years ago, primates arrived, and my knee — the one I fractured earlier in the summer — was beginning to ache, just a little.

To make an unfathomably long story ridiculously short, homo sapiens appeared on Earth at the very end of our walk, just 200,000 years ago, or about eight inches from our finish line.

When we talk about history, we tend to think of it as human history, notes David Abram, one of the developers of “Deep Time.” Our “real history,” he says, is the history of the land itself, Earth, with which we are “embedded, entangled.” 

Throughout the walk, Richard noted the various times when Earth heated and cooled in cycles that lasted for eons, causing devastation. My notes on that are fuzzy because his voice was often drowned out by planes overhead, en route to and from SeaTac International Airport, burning upwards of a dozen tons of fossil fuel per hour.

I recalled a friend who tried to calm my concerns about climate change. “Mary,” he said, “there’ve always been cycles of Earth cooling and warming.” True, Richard would reply. But the change we’re experiencing now is coming one hundred times faster than any in the past. His final question to our group was a challenge: “What do we do?” We sat quietly, mulling various strategies. 

I believe we must begin by caring about our relationship with Earth. When we care, we become more aware, we ponder our daily decisions, practices, and habits that impact Earth. Ancient Greek wisdom understood Earth to be Gaia, the mother of all life. Chief Seattle echoed that insight: “The earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves.”

We must learn to appreciate Earth as the mother who has generously nurtured us. As babies we are suckled, but now we have sucked our mother dry. She is old and very sick. It’s hard work to care for the old and the sick. It demands personal sacrifice. I’ve been there and learned  that caregiving is also a joy-filled opportunity to love. Now is the time to love Earth and all her inhabitants tenderly and deeply. She is, after all, our mother.