Man has power. Nature does too. When the two powers collide nobody wins. Today, I watched millions of tiny tar balls roll onto the sand from the surf. The impact of man's power may be that we bite off our nose to spite our face. The sheer joy of commanding a redfish to the shore has been trumped by the absolute inability we seem to have to stop a gushing hole that we punctured in the floor of the ocean.
I spent the morning prior to the oil's arrival, fishing the surf before retiring the pool for a few hours, then sprinting off to lunch. After a shepherd's pie and two handcrafted wheat beers, my faith in humanity was soaring, literally.
But within a few short hours, I caught word that the Gulf spill had finally hit Destin. I went down to the ocean's edge with my family to witness and lament.
MLK, Jr. once said that man's scientific power had outrun his spiritual power. I believe this is true. We can tear apart entire continents, but for whatever reason, we don't stop enough to consider the consequences.
Like a dagger through the hea
rt, the haze of oil stung my eyes as I walked along the shore. Tiny balls from the size of a dime, all the way up the size of coffee lid had washed ashore. It took all of twenty minutes to transform the white sand of Destin into a shoreline of two black tracks of coal. I fear that by the time I wake and return in the morning, the scene will be much worse than these two pictures reveal.
So much of this future -- from ursurping the power of a 30lb redfish, to tearing back the shell of the earth and drinking her thick, black blood -- this future of ours, and of Nature itself, resides strangely and unambiguiously in our sometimes wretched, and sometimes beautiful hands.
The path we walk is a tightrope. Think too little of ourselves and we'll never take our actions seriously enough to thrive as a species. Think too much of ourselves, and we will become victims to our own hubris.
I will blog more on the oil spill tomorrow. But for now, the sheer joy I felt at reeling in that big fish yesterday has been trumped by the horrifying thought that I may not reel another like it for many years to come.
I spent the morning prior to the oil's arrival, fishing the surf before retiring the pool for a few hours, then sprinting off to lunch. After a shepherd's pie and two handcrafted wheat beers, my faith in humanity was soaring, literally.
But within a few short hours, I caught word that the Gulf spill had finally hit Destin. I went down to the ocean's edge with my family to witness and lament.
MLK, Jr. once said that man's scientific power had outrun his spiritual power. I believe this is true. We can tear apart entire continents, but for whatever reason, we don't stop enough to consider the consequences.
Like a dagger through the hea
rt, the haze of oil stung my eyes as I walked along the shore. Tiny balls from the size of a dime, all the way up the size of coffee lid had washed ashore. It took all of twenty minutes to transform the white sand of Destin into a shoreline of two black tracks of coal. I fear that by the time I wake and return in the morning, the scene will be much worse than these two pictures reveal.So much of this future -- from ursurping the power of a 30lb redfish, to tearing back the shell of the earth and drinking her thick, black blood -- this future of ours, and of Nature itself, resides strangely and unambiguiously in our sometimes wretched, and sometimes beautiful hands.
The path we walk is a tightrope. Think too little of ourselves and we'll never take our actions seriously enough to thrive as a species. Think too much of ourselves, and we will become victims to our own hubris.
I will blog more on the oil spill tomorrow. But for now, the sheer joy I felt at reeling in that big fish yesterday has been trumped by the horrifying thought that I may not reel another like it for many years to come.
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