We are rooted to the air through our lungs and to the soil through our stomachs. We are walking trees and floating plants.

Burroughs frames human life as continuous with plant life: our lungs “root” us in the atmosphere as plants are rooted in air and light, while our stomachs tie us to the earth through food and soil-based nourishment. The image collapses the usual hierarchy that separates humans from nature, insisting instead on shared biological dependence and exchange—breathing, eating, metabolizing, and returning matter to the world. Calling us “walking trees and floating plants” is both humbling and ecological: it emphasizes interdependence and the idea that civilization does not exempt us from the elemental cycles of air, soil, and growth that govern all living things.