Heroes Not Zombies

I like images of ripples, especially concentric ones. They remind me of how we send out vibrations, signals, and information all the time. We can’t exist without changing the world in which we live, and we can’t exist without the world in which we live changing us.

But I like this type of photo too. I took this one from the stern of a boat sailing around Lake Annecy, but you can see a phenomenon like this behind any boat moving over any body of water. The line of waves is unusual. It doesn’t look like the waves you see breaking on the shore when you’re at the beach. You can trace the route you’ve taken because, on your boat trip, you’ve “disturbed” the surface of the water. Those “wakes” affect whatever they touch….birds or men fishing, other boats sailing across, or near, the path your boat has taken, and they can even change the shoreline….which is partly why some waterways set a speed limit……the faster you travel, the greater the disturbance.

It’s been said that life can only be lived forwards, and understood backwards. I think of that when I look at an image like this. You don’t know what the wake is going to look like until you’ve created it, and, as you look back, you can review the path you’ve taken and try to make some sense of it.

I also think about how we can’t move across the surface of this planet without changing it. It’s more obvious over water, but it’s just as true when we cross the earth, when we make our way over hills, through forests, across deserts. Some people call this era the Anthropocene because we are at a time in the history of the Earth where the human species is shaping and changing everything from the landscapes, to the oceans, to the ecosystems…..and, sadly, not in a good way. We’re well into a major change in the climate of the planet, and well down the road of massive loss of species (what we refer to as loss of biodiversity).

As we look back at the changes we’ve made on our world, isn’t it clear that if we don’t change course, our grandchildren, and their grandchildren are going to face (are already facing?) huge threats to their quality of life, even their very survival? Can’t we do better than this?