Thursday, July 11, 2013

Gone (Revisited)

Scott Bradley
Original post date: May 30, 2011


Yesterday, while digging in the garden, I turned up an arrowhead. If you have ever found such a thing, you know that it is a very special experience. To hold in your hand something fashioned by another hand hundreds of years ago...by a hand of a people now extinct...well, there is wonder and connectedness and sorrow.

I definitely have a nostalgic inclination. When as a kid I would hike into the hills overlooking a bit of the San Francisco Bay delta I would always try and imagine it three hundred years ago. Ducks and geese filled the sky. Salmon teemed in the rivers and creeks. Golden grizzly bears lorded across the hills. Tule elk skirted the marshes. And here and there smoke rose from a tiny native american camp. Gone. All gone.

Three hundred years ago there was no San Francisco, no Los Angeles, no Chicago, no Saint Louis, no Kansas City, no Dallas. The speed of the European invasion and conquest of this American Continent never ceases to amaze me. But it is only symbolic of the human epidemic sweeping the earth. Growth! Housing starts are rising again! The economic indicators seem to promise 5% growth world-wide for the coming year! Like that blue-green mold that covers and destroys the orange, humanity cannot stop.

Had I any confidence in the ability of humanity to truly stop and care, I would not say this, but I have none: Pray For Plague.

Forgive me. I love Earth more than humanity. [If this upsets you, consider it one of the satanic verses, or simply that I have issues. That I add this should demonstrate, I think, that I, too, have my doubts about this attitude. I may follow it up with a re-think.]

But not to worry! If humanity destroys every other living thing on earth...when the sun dies or supernovas and this solar system is no more...all will still be well.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

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