I was reading about environmental issues in my part of the world: PCB's (a likely carcinogen spewed into the upper Hudson River by General Electric, pre-1960's, an oil that has migrated out of the river, through the rock and soil--sometimes for miles, and into lakes, yards, even beneath people's homes. The ENTIRE town of Fort Edward, NY, on the Hudson River in the southern Adriondack mountain region, is polluted with PCB's and other hazardous waste...after 20 years of haggling by GE lawyers with the US Enviornmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), clean up of the river, from Fort Edward, around 50 miles to the dam at Troy,--just north of the capital city of Albany--is even now as I write this, underway. The dredging of contaminated riverbed will make the river usasble again, for fishing on a limited basis, in about 50 or 60 years..give or take a decade or so.
Yet, nothing whatsoever is being done, to clean the town. People cannot sell their homes, because of it--in fact, one of my supervisors whom lives there, hasn't paid her mortgage in years, and the bank has made no attempt to foreclose--THAT's how bad things are there. The rate for cancer--most especially leukemia, is said to be much higher than anywhere else in the region. This disease has hit not only adults, but local children as well--even babies. Yet, the state of New York does nothing.
Is a river more important than a human life? Which is more important, clean water, or a child getting to live a normal, healthy life?
I suppose the easy answer, is to say "both." But, what if we had to choose? What if we had to decide between a clean, safe water source for thousands--perhaps millions, even...and the life of a single child? How do you do that? I wish I had the answer, but...I'm an idiot, what do I know?
It used to be, two hundred or so years ago, man lived in concert with his surroundings--far more than we now could ever do so. Man depended on nature to feed him, clothe him, provide shelter and tools. He used wool from sheep, and grew cotton. He brought animals into the world, and slughtered them when their time had come. He cleared fields with stone boats, lifting each stone by hand--and often re-using them as fences..building the boundries of his farm, one stone at a time. There was no rush, those men back then, didn't keep banker's hours, no way. They were up before the sun, and worked sometimes by moonlight. They lived by their heads and their hands and their hearts--putting passion into everything they did...because it made them what they were. A man would look at a fence, a barn, a plowed field, and think, "this is me, this is who I am." The farmer, would see his own progress, and know that it was that way, solely because of his own desire to grow and make his mark on the world.
He built mills from wood and stone, using wooden pegs, beams and stone wheels, which he himself had fashioned with froe and saw, mallet and chisel...items he may well have made himself, from stuff he got from his own woods. He used those stones and pegs and beams, opened the sluce boxes that fed the water wheel that turned the stones, and made bread, feed and even the ink to write about his accomplishments--heck, even his quill pen came from nature!
These men set their lives in pace with the seasons--they had to. Yet, there were times, when they fell out of sync with nature. Most people come to these mountains where I live, and they positively marvel, at the countless millions of trees that stretch on for miles and miles. Yet, little do they know, that back in the 19th century, at the height of the industrial age, these mountains--whole mountains, mind you, were completely laid bare. Not a tree left on them. There's actually very few "old growth" trees left in the Adirondacks. They were taken away for use in paper mills, tanneries, making charcoal for iron furnaces...floated down the Hudson river by the tens of millions.
The men of the mountains, even into the 1930's, would start fires, as well. They would do it for the money, that the rangers paid them for putting out the fires.
And, in that way, I sometimes think, that things really haven't changed that much. Today, more people than ever are becoming more and more aware of the natural world around them--a world that shrinks more and more every day. We talk about carbon footprints, clean water, clean air, global warming...but, when was the last time, you lay down under a tree, with your head against the trunk, and looked up through the branches, listened to the wind, watched it playing with the leaves and branches?
When was the last time, you sat quietly, and simply listened to the circling of the life that is all around us: the wind and water and wood, the birds and animals--when was the last time, you were silent, and just let nature come inside you for a while?
