Progress

It's beautiful, isn't it? I didn't even mean to go there. I happened to get turned around while going through an unfamiliar neighbourhood and came out near the beach, so I drove a few more miles and parked my car.

I just so happened to have my camera that day-- yesterday, actually. So I walked down toward the water and took a picture. The first three photos saw me trying to get the camera set up right, and then I was all set to go.

I snapped off a shot. The birds decided to join in the fun, so I took their pictures. I crouched down, pointed toward the waves, and captured the beauty God has given to us.

Sadly, places like this are rare. I used to swim here all the time when I was younger. In fact, the place from where I shot these photos is the place I would always pick. I've not swum there in a few years. I go to a cleaner beach that is as of yet not as polluted. Sadly, pollution from this beach-- bottle caps, cigarette butts, hair ties, wrappers, etc.-- float down to where I enjoy most a few miles South.

The same day as this, only an hour and a half earlier, I took a photo I titled "Progress." The name was more of a play on the actual image, for the image was of a bulldozer in front of a beautiful 3-story brick business from 1890.

I thought of that scene when I stood here. "Progress-- that's what we call our destruction."

It's really sickening. We weren't given this place to abuse. We were given this place to care for. That's what every Christian, Jew, and Muslim knows from the creation story. Many other religions teach the same. Many non-religious people believe we should care for our land. But we still work together to destroy it-- we pay to destroy it.

We alter it. We pave it or turn it into farmland. We remove minerals and leave it barren. We remove the water or dump waste in it. We take the sand and gravel for glass, cement, and casting metal. None of that lasts-- it breaks, cracks, rusts. We then destroy it and try again, all the while ignoring what had lasted thousands of years before those till we took its life away: The nature surrounding us.

People see dollar signs, not home to hundreds of creatures per mile. They see housing for humans who will abandon those same houses and let them collapse after only 25 years, not delicate ecosystems that cannot defend themselves against our onslaught.

Do you not see the life over every inch of this land? Even this land of sand holds life, yet the feet of thousands of people a week during the summer crush this place. Even now in the low temperatures people crush it down. And then they whine as the sand blows away to fill the yards of people across the street-- sand that was held down by dune grasses now removed for people whining about its sharpness.

Even here it is ruined. The ecosystem is practically destroyed. The water is not drinkable.

We keep changing the ecosystem. Then, as it changes, we don't like the effects and thus change it some more?

Why do you do this? Can't you see what you have done? Even the air is changed. Heck, we used to get a snow that stayed before Halloween. Last three years, it hasn't snowed much till December. Last year, it was snowless still the day after Christmas. It's snowed twice this season.
It's partially your doing. It's your fault too.