In a 1913 issue of Poetry magazine, Ezra Pound listed his rules for the Imagist school that included “the natural object is always the adequate symbol.”

And, like much in our march toward civilization that began millennia ago, humans have found it best to imitate nature when finding practical solutions to an everyday problem. One of the most fundamental could be the development of stairs, with builders following the blueprint of those naturally occurring, like the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland and the Grand Staircase in Utah, geologic forebears for what eventually became models for getting people up and down hills safely.