Looks like someone needs a new fishin' spot. |
I used to worry about saving the planet from pollution and
other toxins. But that doesn't concern me anymore. Turns out there's something
much bigger to worry about....
There's a special place along the river where I like to sit and just be. Years back I had a habit of going to this particular spot a
couple of times a week. It's within a heavily wooded shoreline and the trees on
either side of the sittin' spot frame the river and view perfectly. It was cool
to see the seasons change from that same vantage point. Spring to summer.
Summer to fall. Fall to winter.
I must have started there in spring, because I enjoyed quite
some time there before the littering started. Then every time I would go to
this spot back in the woods, there would be soda bottles and bait cups and all
manner of chip bags strewn about. The fishermen didn't even try to bag their
trash. They just left it—and the bags it came in—where they used it.
So each time I visited, I brought a bag. And I picked their
trash up. And I deposited it in the trashcans back in the parking lot. The same trashcans they passed every time they came there to fish. And after a
while I started thinking, "they probably think a fairy comes by and cleans
up after them. So I'm really just enabling their
behavior."
Gaia killed the dinosaurs for less. |
I thought of making a sign and posting it on one of the
trees. I visited less often. And after a while, I grew so weary and
disheartened that I just abandoned the spot altogether and found another.
After a month or two, it was spring again and I missed my
spot. So I thought I'd give it a try. I loaded up with bags and hiked back into
the woods to my special place, braced for all the trash I would find there. But
there was none! Nothing!
I plunked down in my spot and took in everything. The sun
sparkling on the river. The beauty of the opposite shoreline. The ducks and
ducklings paddling by. And I looked up to see the fresh green leaves on the
trees overhead and....there were at least three fishing lines and hooks caught
up in the branches. It seems that, when the leaves started to come, the canopy prevented
the fishermen from casting their lines!
At first I chuckled at Mother Nature's brilliance. Then it
hit me. There I was worrying about saving the planet when we should all be
worried about saving ourselves! Mother Nature was here billions of years before
us. She survived methane air, the dinosaurs, geomagnetic reversal and all sorts of scary
crap. And she came out of it looking pretty darned awesome and bountiful.
It's time to start calling a spade a spade. The earth isn't in any danger. We are. Instead of talking about climate change, we should be talking about species change. Because soon it will behoove her to choke us out, rather than suffer
the case of the sniffles we're inflicting on her with our holes in the ozone
and non-biodegradable toxin-infused trash. In 100 years, she'll have covered all evidence of us being
here. And in 10,000 years, they'll have to use sonar and soil samples and carefully
calibrated instruments to even know we ever existed. And Mother Nature? She'll
have aged the equivalent of maybe two human weeks.
This is an unfortunate reality of most urban shorelines. |
Of course, we don't choose to see it this way, but what's
going on here is a war. It's humans vs. Gaia. And we somehow have the arrogance
to think we could possibly win when 99.9% of everything that's ever lived on
this planet has lost. Who's the only one that's won? The gentle, unassuming ferns, that's who! To the earth, we're just another self-important species going extinct.
Like the Cave Lion, T Rex and Quagga. What's a Quagga? Critters will be asking
the same thing about humans a couple hundred years from now.
So this week, consider what's really at stake with the
choices you make each day—and beyond your relationship to the earth. Consider
other things you may have a skewed perspective on. A pet owner may think nothing
of letting their dog run off leash—until it gets hit by a car. A person may
think nothing of smoking cigarettes—until they get lung cancer. A husband may
think nothing of having a passing affair—until he loses his wife and children.
There is something ingrained in the human psyche that a)
makes us think we're the most important and powerful thing on earth b) makes us
seem beyond extinction as a species and c) allows us to justify and/or blind
ourselves to things we KNOW are wrong or against our best interests.
As far as the things we justify are concerned, we know what
those things are because they're the things we don't openly discuss
with others. So start there. What wouldn't you tell your cubicle mate about
your life? And how can you turn your thoughts around on that so that you
clearly see what's at stake?
There are spiritual folk who believe earth is just one of
many places a soul goes to learn lessons. And they say earth is the most
beautiful and difficult of all those places. It would suck to cut your time
short here only to end up in some brown, chalky, dimly lit desert in the next lifetime. We
could all do well by sparing a moment to take inventory of what it means to be worthy of this place,
this body, this opportunity and this gift we call life.