Odyssey- A Sand County Almanac

After reading Odyssey from Aldo Leopold's book, A Sand County Almanac, I think that it is possible that the element or molecule that X and Y are represented by is H2O. Or maybe it is just hydrogen, or just oxygen. It is hard to tell, but we know that this molecule helps initially build a flower that eventually feeds an Indian, after going through a few stages. It is kind of crazy and mind blowing to think about how a single molecule can go so far. I would love to know where each atom and molecule that is inside of me has been. I have no clue, and they could have come from somewhere across the world. It can depend on the air I breathe, what I eat, what I drink, among other things. Another section of this reading talks about a plants roots and pumping nitrogen out of the air and into the plant and eventually into the soil. This is how the prairies get their nitrogen rich soil, from legumes. We talked about the nitrogen cycle, and it can be related to this passage. It also references the water cycle. The passage talks about a molecule in the soil getting carried downhill by rain. Plants get "impounded" by atoms (rain). Even when animals or plants die, the atoms get reused by other things. They go back into the soil and could create a plant, which feeds animals, which feed humans. Everything in the world is interconnected. All of the cycles work together to make life. If we got rid of say, the water cycle, there would be no life on earth. Each cycle plays an important part, and each atom or molecule plays an important part. 

This photo I took of the Brule River makes me think about a molecule in there and how far it must go before something interferes with it and it gets picked up and taken somewhere else.