coordinating with wild clocks and composing new rituals, we might also redesign the systems and infrastructures that sustain modern life. We are trapped in cycles of consumption that spin a fantasy of timelessness, of action without consequence, while “forever chemicals” and nonbiodegradable plastics pollute rivers, soils, and groundwater; but forests have no concept of waste. A forest is a loop, in which dead matter is fed back into the system, past feeding future becoming past. Establishing a circular economy would not just involve a radical shift in how we manage materials, it would be a dramatic change in how we think about time. In forests, time is shared; we, on the other hand, tend to hoard it. Industrial agriculture strips soils of their nutrients, robbing future harvests; the drive to pull as many minerals and as much oil as we can from the earth is a kind of temporal stockpiling. But our days could be told instead by forest-time and bird-time; by the hastening of the Arctic spring and the loosening of the bonds by which species make time together. We might even redesign political time. Imagine what could be achieved with a political calendar that was set by the wobble in the jet stream or the faltering migration of butterflies rather than election cycles.

As the minutes ticked by, I began to feel the pull of the clock on my attention once more. With one final glance back at the gleaming curtain of skulls, I picked up my bag and walked towards the exit, and home.