Before the light reaches the ground, the nest is already moving.
There is no beginning.
Some ants are carrying food. Others are tending the young. Some remain close to the brood. Others move through passages that are too narrow for anything larger than an ant. Bodies touch bodies. Antennae meet and separate. A change in scent passes through the darkness.
The nest is warm.
Then it is warmer in one place than another.
An ant moves towards the warmer place.
Another moves away.
Neither is searching for the colony.
They are moving through the conditions that surround them.
The brood is hungry.
An ant finds them.
Food is transferred.
Another ant arrives.
Then another.
The movement continues.
Outside, the ground is cool.
The first ants emerge.
Light has arrived, but there is no need to look for it. The world outside is a field of surfaces, smells, temperatures, obstacles and traces.
An ant crosses the ground.
It encounters a scent.
It stops.
It changes direction.
Another ant has passed this way.
The trail is faint.
The ant follows it for a while, then leaves it.
There is food somewhere beyond.
The ant continues.
A small piece of something lies beneath a leaf.
It touches it.
It is useful.
The ant takes it.
The weight changes the movement of its body. The ground beneath its feet is different. The route back is not simply the route by which it came.
It finds the trail again.
Other ants arrive.
The piece is divided.
Carried.
Moved.
The nest receives it.
Something has entered the nest that was not there before.
The brood is fed.
The ants that carried the food move away.
Nothing has been completed.
The sun rises higher.
The ground warms.
The nest changes.
Some passages become warmer; others remain cool. Ants move between them. Brood is carried from one place to another. Eggs, larvae and pupae are shifted according to conditions that change throughout the day.
An ant carries a larva.
Another approaches.
Their antennae touch.
The larva is transferred.
The first ant moves away.
The second carries it elsewhere.
The brood has moved.
No ant has moved the colony.
And yet the colony has changed.
Outside, the trail is stronger now.
More ants follow it.
The scent becomes part of the ground.
One ant finds food.
It returns.
Another follows.
Then another.
The trail grows.
A path has appeared where there was no path before.
But the path is not a line drawn on the earth.
It is a changing relation between ants, scent, food, ground and nest.
An ant leaves the trail.
It explores.
It finds nothing.
It returns.
Another leaves.
It finds something.
It returns.
The trail changes.
More ants follow one direction.
Fewer follow another.
The colony's movement changes without anyone deciding that it should.
A shadow passes over the ground.
The ants near it change direction.
The shadow moves on.
A bird lands nearby.
The ants disappear beneath leaves and into cracks in the soil.
Some remain outside.
A disturbance reaches them.
They turn.
Others respond.
The nest changes before anything enters it.
There is a vibration in the ground.
An ant stops.
Another stops.
Then movement begins in another direction.
The disturbance fades.
The ants resume what they were doing.
Nothing has been explained.
Something has happened.
The heat increases.
The exposed ground becomes difficult to cross.
The trail shifts towards shade.
An ant reaches a dry patch and turns.
Another follows.
The path changes.
Food is still there, but the route to it is no longer the same.
The colony does not choose another path.
The other path becomes possible.
And then it becomes used.
And then it becomes familiar.
Inside the nest, the air is different.
There is moisture here.
There is the smell of the brood.
There are the smells of food, soil, bodies, waste.
The passages are crowded.
Ants continually meet.
Each encounter changes something.
A worker returning from outside encounters another worker.
Antennae touch.
Something is transferred.
The second ant changes direction.
It enters another passage.
There it encounters another ant.
The movement continues.
A message has not travelled from one ant to another.
Rather, each ant has altered the conditions in which another ant moves.
The nest is full of such alterations.
Afternoon.
The light begins to weaken.
The ground cools.
The trail changes again.
Some ants return carrying food.
Others emerge.
The flow reverses in places.
The nest receives what the outside has provided.
The outside receives ants from the nest.
There is no boundary that remains still.
The colony breathes through movement.
It is not one body.
It is not merely many bodies.
It is what happens between them.
A dead insect is found.
Several ants gather.
They pull.
The body is too heavy.
More ants arrive.
They pull again.
The body moves.
A path is cleared.
The insect enters the nest.
It is no longer where it was.
The ants are no longer where they were.
The colony has changed.
No ant needed to know how many ants were required.
No ant needed to understand the whole task.
Each responded to what was happening around it.
The whole emerged in the responding.
Evening comes.
The air cools.
The outside movement becomes less intense.
Ants continue to travel.
The nest becomes more crowded.
Brood is moved again.
Food is distributed.
Waste is carried away.
A damaged passage is repaired.
A small opening is closed.
Another is widened.
The nest changes shape.
It is built by ants, but not according to a plan held by any ant.
Each ant encounters a place that is already partly made.
Each changes it.
The next ant encounters the change.
The nest is continually made and remade.
Night.
The ground is dark.
The ants continue.
Some move outside.
Some return.
Some remain with the brood.
Others carry food.
Others carry waste.
The colony does not sleep.
Its activity becomes different.
A faint scent crosses the ground.
An ant encounters it.
It follows.
For a while.
Then the trail ends.
The ant searches.
Nothing.
It turns back.
Another ant follows the same trace.
It too searches.
Nothing.
The scent weakens.
The route disappears.
Somewhere else, another trail strengthens.
The colony's movement shifts.
The temperature falls.
The ants draw inward.
The brood is gathered where conditions are most favourable.
Bodies press against bodies.
Warmth is shared.
The night deepens.
There is less movement outside.
More movement within.
A larva moves.
An ant touches it.
Another ant approaches.
The brood is tended.
The work continues.
Nothing is announced.
Nothing is represented.
The colony persists through countless small differences.
One ant changes direction.
Another follows.
One ant finds food.
Another carries it.
One encounters danger.
Others respond.
One alters the nest.
Another encounters the alteration.
The colony is nowhere apart from these relations.
And yet it is more than any one of them.
Near dawn, the first change in the air arrives.
The temperature begins to rise.
The outside becomes possible again.
An ant emerges.
Another follows.
The old trail is faint.
A new one begins.
The ground has changed during the night.
The nest has changed.
The ants have changed.
The day has not returned.
Another day has begun.
And the colony begins again.
Not because it has remembered what it was.
Not because it knows what it will become.
But because every ant is continually changed by what surrounds it, and continually changes what surrounds the others.
The colony has no single place where it lives.
It lives in the relations among its members, in the nest they continually remake, in the trails they create and abandon, in the brood they tend, in the food they gather, in the dangers they encounter, and in the changing world through which all of them move.
Nothing has to mean anything.
Everything matters.
And out of that mattering, a colony lives.