Total Pageviews

Monday, January 28, 2013

Monday On Litter And My Amplification

In no way do I appreciate those who litter and pollute.  In fact I hate to see the degradation of our environment. I don't contribute to the problem but feel powerless to stop those who do.  We are leaving a terrible legacy for those who will follow us. I see litter everywhere, along streams, lakes, reservoirs, roads and in the gutters of cities. Since I have had two days to consider my rant against those who litter I realized that I did see one stream that had no litter along it two years ago when I was prospecting in the area.  It reminded me of Racquet Lake in the Adirondacks in New York. While Carol was in a wood carving class I was paddling a canoe around the lake. It was a beautiful area and I was enjoying the quiet and beauty.  As I paddled around the lake I noticed how clear the water was and how I didn't see any fish rising on the lake.  As I looked closer I noted that there were no signs of aquatic life either.  I asked the caretakers of this lodge and was told that acid rain and pollution killed all the life in the lake.  I turned over a few rocks and there was no sign of life and my heart sank. The lake was devoid of all life but it looked  otherwise normal. 
We are destroying our planet. I prospected around a beautiful stream about a two hours drive from us.  It was below an EPA super fund clean up from improper mining practices.  The stream looked pretty normal but the rocks had a white coating on them and there was not a single form of life in the stream. No aquatic life, no vegetation, nothing...   Even the birds and insects avoided the water. A pretty little stream but not a single sign of life. The water was crystal clear.  The EPA has been working on this stream for years and say it is safe but they still have a large filtering plant to finish to begin the full  restoration.  We are destroying our planet!. The good part if there is a good part is that there was no litter along the stream. Clearly people had been to the area frequently but no litter.  I now realize that the acid and toxins in the stream had dissolved the litter.  I don't believe this is a viable solution to litter however.  
I did a little prospecting along another creek by the ghost town of Bonanza.  It looked just like the other one I had visited at the super fund clean up.  No life in it, rocks had an orange color on them and it too was dead. Not a sign of life anywhere. 
My point is that in my lifetime I should not find one stream that is totally dead - let alone three.  I don't like this trend.  If I as a casual prospector and fisherman have found three the obvious question is did I happen to  find the only bad area's?  I suspect that there are many more out there we don't know about. Many more...  If we don't stop this trend we can kiss our planet goodbye and the life that depends on a healthy planet. What will it take to wake people up to the problem?  Surely others must care too.  

3 comments:

Kathryn said...

I care. It hurts. I live on the NC piedmont where there are many, many streams... and many, if not most, dead as stones. It looks more or less normal, but there's always that odd scummy appearance to the soil and the rocks have no sparkle...just dead. Nothing swimming, nothing creeping, not more than perhaps a few spiders and gnats about.

I remember as a kid in Jacksonville, Florida, scrambling in a stream for crawdads. I revisited the area a few years later to find it had been transformed into a dug-out drainage ditch...no life left anywhere.

It's sad. A couple of years ago, between Fukushima, what I was learning about chemtrails and GMO foods and I don't even want to think about what all, I really nearly went bonkers. That's when I learned that I could trust God or I could self destruct. He's bigger than anything I could worry about.

I will continue to do what I can...at the very least to try hard not to contribute to the problems. I'll pray and give to God quickly the things over which I have no hope of control.

A couple of us were discussing politicians...those of our country's birth versus today's lot. The first had everything to lose - and, in most cases, lost it... liberty, life, wealth, family and other elements of the peace they were attempting to guarantee for this nation. Their greed was only for more of what they believed God had given all men...freedom to choose how to live.

I have one greed, myself. I hunger to know Jesus more. I thirst for realization of the identity the Bible says I have in Him.

I'm sitting by my window, in my rented room on this relatively remote North Carolina farm (if you can call a haphazard collection of sheep, geese, and chickens a farm..."hobby farm" they call it). Nobody can understand why I choose to stay in this out of the way and none too tidy place. It's the peace. The very remoteness. There are not many places left here where there is not a street light in your bedroom window and the constant roar and rumble of traffic past the house.

In my imagination, as I listen to your words and gaze at your photos, I try to soak in a little of the peace of your uber remote location.

Sigh. Not envy, exactly, but certainly there's a wistful and confused longing there. However did I just allow my life to progress without encompassing more of nature in it? Over the last twenty-something years I've moved from urban high-rise apartment to progressively more rural locations. If it weren't cost prohibitive to live in the Blue Ridge I'd be there.

Happy for the lovely environment you and yours enjoy.

Peace and blessings,
Kathryn

Carol said...

We send you many blessings and the peace of Christ.

Bruce said...

Thanks Kathryn: I used to live in Jacksonville too. Little Potsburg creek was a good fishing creek and probably now is like you said, a ditch. I used to toss a net for shrimp off the beach at Jones College. Probably no longer there. Our legacy to our children is dismal I'm afraid....Thank you for your comment.