Heroes Not Zombies

There are two obvious traces in this photo. One on the river, and the other in the field.

It looks like someone sailed a boat from the left to the right of this scene, turned around and went back the way they came. It also looks like someone’s driven a tractor or other vehicle in the field, making a pattern which highly resembles the one in the water.

What I can’t see, and didn’t see at the time, is a boat or a tractor. These are traces left behind. Traces of human activity.

We live with traces of human activity all around us, and we make new ones every day just by living. Some disappear very quickly, like breath in the air on a frosty morning, or jet trails in the sky. Some take a little longer, like the wake of a boat on the surface of the water. Others take longer still, like those on the surface of the soil.

In fact, we are said to be living in a new era, the “Anthropocene”, so called because we have reached a time when the accumulation of traces created by human activity is changing the shape and form of the entire planet. From destruction of rainforests to disappearing glaciers and coral reefs, the harms caused by our collective actions over many years.

Some traces, of course, are internal. They are drawn in the form of memories, feelings and knowledge. We draw those with stories, with art and with music.

Some traces in memories disappear quite quickly. But those which are engraved on our hearts can last for generations.