I had two 'nature' encounters this week; one a strangely ironic farce (so fun though) and the other a combination supplication and stewardship...
Last Sunday, husband and I ran a 5k at a large nearby zoo. In a light drizzle we ran through the zoo, stopping in the midst of our unnecessary display of freedom to gawk at huge, beautiful, animals in pens and behind glass. People stopped to pose in cardboard cutouts that placed their face on the body of a nearby captive animal, and roared as they had their pictures taken. I do like zoos, I really do. They always make me a little sad, though. Our entry fee came with entrance to the zoo, and we wandered around for a couple hours to see animals from around the world. I took photos and videos of birds I'd never heard of, and joked that we were melting in the sun while the equatorial beasts probably found the temperature a bit mild. (Note, we ignore acclimatization and likely micro-adaption caused by the breeding of equatorial animals captive in North American climes.) So many signs stated that this or that species was rare in the wild now. One species of horn and hoof animal only still "thrives" in captivity... in Texas. Is this still nature? Pens with plaster cliffs and Floridian plants, housing animals from far away biomes. Is it still educational or responsible to breed these animals as a sort of living museum piece?
Yesterday I participated in the Ocean Conservancy's International
Coastal Cleanup. I signed up at a local 'beach' (heh) and picked up
garbage. My beach turned out to be a mangrove swamp, so I sit here
trying not to scratch the no-see-em bites I earned from wearing shorts
and a T-shirt. We picked up 610 pounds of garbage, filled 34 big black
trash bags, and found a variety of weird and dangerous stuff. Here we
are, part of the population not caring what they do to their environment
because their interaction with anything other than a glowing screen or
an adult beverage is minimal and superficial, and part of the population
believing that they are thinking beyond their generation by cleaning up
after the first set of people. And yet, as I picked plastic bottle caps
out of the flotsam I watched other volunteers drinking from their own
single-use plastic water bottles. I picked plastic ribbons out of the
weeds and noted the plastic ribbon built-in to my black-plastic trashbag
to tie it closed. I had no idea that plastic straws were such a
problem. I found piles of them together, as if their particular shape
and density meant that they would end up travelling together and thereby
getting deposited together. Plasticware. Cigarette butts (a personal
pet peeve of mine). Cigar tips (which I didn't really know existed until
yesterday). Tons of photodegraded plastic, which I imagined in the
belly of a dead albatross somewhere. We found HUGE blocks of styrofoam;
as in regularly-shaped rectangular blocks of styrofoam for some purpose
known only to whoever threw them away. I feel like some garbage back was
accidentally opened somewhere and it was caught in a swell that brought
it all to this beach. We found a complete set of tennis shoes, each mate
far away from each other. I found several pieces of a deodorant stick
shell, also far away from each other. We found a child's beach chair, an
adult's beach chair, so many hypodermic needles and tiny plastic
baggies, just... depressing. Top of the food chain, eh? More civilized,
eh? For every bit of garbage I picked out, there was four more pieces of
photodegraded plastic I couldn't reach or grasp. I'm very happy I went,
it was still much fun for me, but very sad too. We walked the
observation pier when we were done, to see "the difference", but I
couldn't see one. Garbage floated in the areas we couldn't reach.
Cigarette butts were half buried in the gravel we walked on. A young
mangrove tree sprouted through the mouth of a milk jug I couldn't reach.
We talk about saving the environment. I'll keep trying, but I don't
think we can. Especially not when the people trying to save it are just
as guilty as the people who aren't.
No comments:
Post a Comment