In 1985, I was assigned to a remote island in Alaska. This island, Shemya, is near the very end of the Aleutian chain. It is a narrow windswept tongue of land, constantly bombarded by the elements.
Most of my free time on Shemya was spent in solitude; hiking the beaches; exploring the remnants of World War II encampments; and watching the wildlife. I jumped and climbed over gorgeous tide pools; each packed with life and presenting brilliant, seemingly pulsating colors: pinks, cobalt blues, violent reds. I watched puffins nesting and witnessed ravens somersaulting in the updrafts from the cliffs.
Of all the rocky crags and beaches, my favorite place to linger was the Northern beach, which faced the Bering Sea. I would spend hours just sitting there, watching the ravens and listening to the giant waves as they pounded ashore. The beach was not made of sand. Instead it consisted of rocks, large rocks—all bigger than a softball, many as large as a football. And each and every one of them was worn as round as a pebble you might find in a mountain stream. They served as a testament to the power of the Bering’s surf. When the huge waves would roll in and out, they would carry these hefty stones with them as easily you or I might brush the snow off our windshield. You could hear a deep rumble as the rocks pounded against each other. It was at once a beautiful and frightening expression of nature’s force.
I believe the majesty of nature adds scale to our lives. Something by which we can measure the sheer fragility of our existence, and thus gain an appreciation for the gift this life really is. I also believe most of us spend too little time doing exactly that.
Instead, the brute force of nature has been taken as a challenge to mankind’s ego. We’ve spent centuries trying to bend it to our will. Unfortunately, with much success.
We’ve straightened and damned our rivers, and then used the water to build artificial and unsustainable desert cities. We rip the tops off of our mountains to get at a dwindling resource. And then we pump the deconstructed remnants of that resource into our air; thus destroying our atmosphere—the fragile blanket that makes us safe and makes life on earth possible.
All so that we can win the race—be the next one on the block to own the bigger car, the flatter television, the best fake boobs.
We measure our worth in the eyes of others instead of seeking out that which fills our hearts with wonder—be it a waterfall, the smile of a child, or the smell of a summer storm.
Kurt Vonnegut once said:
“We’re terrible animals. I think that the Earth’s immune system is trying to get rid of us, as well it should.”
Source: interview with Jon Stewart, The Daily Show (14 September 2005)
In this sense, I find the force of nature very reassuring—it points to the gaian like ability of our planet to remedy itself from the hurt we inflict upon it. I’m not just speaking brute force: the power of hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes or other natural phenomena. This force of nature also exist in the micro. I’m referring our atmosphere’s ability to decompose and re-order the leavings of our society. You can see it in our streets, our buildings, any manmade object we cast aside. Give nature enough time without interference, and it will be gone.
So this is the up side of global warming: thanks to our own stubbornness and short term thinking, we may all die. But the earth will go on. It will recover.
Pity not the planet, pity the fools who think they control it.
© 2007 by Rodney Gleghorn, all rights reserved.
