Tracks

Once upon a time, pollution became a concern. "Give a hoot, don't pollute... never be a dirty bird..."

Then it was 'environmental awareness'. And 'Earth day'. Then came 'global warming'. Then 'climate change' .

All buzz words and catch phrases morphing along with the media's spin for public consumption. Meanwhile, humankind's impact on the planet has been hurtling forward with every decade, oblivious to our perceptions. 

Yes- climate and Earth changes are also natural. There have been cycles throughout the life of the planet, some favorable to human life and some not. 

It reminds me of something interesting I learned a long time ago from a professional tracker. I took a 2 week class with a school  that is mostly known for wilderness survival, but goes way beyond that. The founder of the school was taught by a Native American elder, and so the philosophies and other skills were also passed on there. This particular class was in two parts. One was specifically tracking  and the following week was advanced standard which included survival and awareness in nature skills. During the first tracking venture, the teacher took us out to the woods and we were told to look at specific animal tracks he had found. They got harder as we went along, and when we got back he told us to find some animal tracks of our own ( we were in softer soil so it was much easier). To my amazement, I found tracks EVERYWHERE. Tracks I never would have noticed if my eye hadn't been focusing for the last hour or so. Then someone asked, "but how do we know if it's a track?" You see, many of the harder tracks were found simply by finding broken dry grass, or broken sticks. He replied, "Mother earth does not simply reach up and dimple herself. Natural change happens slowly. If you see something broken, or an imprint in the soil or sand, something or someone else has affected it. It is a track of some kind, someone has been there."

He went on to describe how it's our job to find out who was there by other signs, such as hairs, scat, etc. But that lesson really stuck with me, especially since I see signs in nature everywhere now. It also got me thinking about the current changes taking place on our planet. 

There are LOTS of freshly broken signs. Glaciers, rogue icebergs, dried up river beds, flooding, drought, crazy storms. These are not natural. Acidified ocean water is not natural! We

are leaving destructive human tracks in our wake in the form of fracking, tar sands, leaking pipelines, overfishing, over hunting species into extinction, clear cutting and burning forests, plastic infiltrating every micro corner of the planet, destruction of wildlife habitats, the acidification of ocean water and bleaching of coral reefs and the burning of fossil fuels. I won't even get into Fukushima. 

We are leaving large, destructive, careless tracks on this earth, all for short term energy and profit. 

WE are causing these disasters, NOT the planet. The planet naturally cycles through ice ages and El Niño's, tornado and hurricane seasons, monsoons and even forest fires. Mother Earth can be destructive, but not without recovering though rebirth... the way after a forest fire comes new growth. Humans on the other hand, destroy with permanence. We don't seem to care if we kill the last animal on earth. We are allowing numerous toxins into the water that cannot t be filtered out. WE are creating massive plastic islands in the ocean. WE are now consuming plastic micro contaminants as they have gotten into our fish. WE are disrupting the natural cycle, yet our current 'leaders' claim it's not man made. 

Whatever buzz word or catch phrase one prefers, it doesn't matter. It won't matter to the victims of the next superstorm, the next community that is forced to move inland due to permanent flooding, the next family to find so many chemicals in their water they are able to set it on fire. 

If we wake up too late it won't matter at all, we will only wish that we had done something about it. 

I grant you that wish now. YOU can do something about it, and then you can teach others that they can too. 

No more plastic. No more fossil fuels. No more palm oil. No more bottled water. No more GMOs. No more fast food ( cheap beef is one of the number one contributors to carbon emissions ) Boycott ALL companies contributing/investing in these issues. Nestle one of the worst, but almost all major corporations are guilty. There is an app call Buycott- get it . It's free. Educate yourself on everything you buy from toothpaste to chocolate to furniture to your mortgage. You won't be able to tackle everything, but you WILL make a difference. 

Thanks for listening. ✊️