Water is the very foundation of life on Earth; the life source for all that exists and thrives on Planet Earth and yet we treat Her with such disdain: our oceans and waterways are polluted to almost toxic levels. Whether intentionally or accidentally, these life-sustaining veins of our natural environment are becoming progressively contaminated and clogged by pollutants. We are killing our home, and we continue to do so knowingly.
I am on my hands and knees inching closer. My hands are chilled in the early hours of a Japanese winter morning. Dew drops glisten in the first rays of light. Numbed by the cold, insects wait for the onset of evaporation. A robber fly. A blade of grass. A flower. If I can just get close enough… and with adequate magnification I can look through their adorned droplets as lenses onto another world, our refracted world. Refraction offers a unique view of a world so very few people ever witness, or even know exists.
Imbibed in liquidity, we are free. We can challenge the power it yields but never do battle with it; so futile are we in it’s midst to even consider the challenge would be comical. In vain, with machines and explosives, we try to stamp our authority on it, to channel and control the forces. We change the course of its rivers, create islands, alter coastlines… is anything we do to it ever really of any consequence?
At the end of the day, Nature will be around long after we are gone. In what state we will leave it in is anyone’s guess. One consolation is that our oceans once again will then become clean.
