Oh, to have the eloquent descriptive skills of John Muir. Perhaps then I could describe the nature - unci maka - around us in words that would draw people to its care and defense. While the end of our 281 mile journey today led us through beautiful high prairie scared by the arrogance and ruthless greed of the ubiquitous homo sapiens with every mesa, plateau and box canyon sporting a rather new looking oil wells, prefab communities of trailers for the scavenous army of destructive bipeds who spend their day doing their best to destroy what remains of nature in this northwest corner of North Dakota.
I found it awesome that Theodore Roosevelt National Park (North Unit) remains as an outpost of nature. Obviously it isn't totally unscathed. As part of our "protection" we have built at least one road, a visitor center and campground. I'm sure there are also other maintenance and supply buildings out of the visitor's sight. The campground is as close as you can get to a balanced habitation of homo sapiens in nature. It does have water and paved roads but it appears that these were introduced with a minimum of damage. I'm sure the park service probably mows the grass, but that is relatively minor misbehavior which should do no long-term harm.
The best part of the drive was the two-hundred miles of our journey through eastern Montana during which we could crest a hill and see for miles in every direction with the only evidence that humans had ever been here being the ribbon of highway in front of us. On that ribbon of asphalt we encountered amazingly few vehicles. Around us were great expanses of rolling grassland dotted with magnificent mesa and buttes along with breathtaking geological structures and deep gashes in the earth erroded over millenia.
In the remaining Montana high plateau we saw what appeared to be people working with nature. There were large numbers of cattle but the land was not overgrazed. In fact, if you couldn't see the cows there would be nothing to indicate that the land was being used as pasture. There was a lot of hay-making, but we also saw land being allowed to go fallow. It appeared that these farmer and ranchers were working with nature. I could be wrong, but it seemed so.
It is such a pleasure to travel through country that is either treated with respect by human inhabitants or still relatively untouched by the most vicious of invasive species. For our arrogance, greed and wanton destruction of nature; our pollution of water for simple profit and pleasure; our killing of other species for sport; our abuse and rape of the land all make us totally unworthy of the blessings bestowed upon us daily by unci maka - nature.
My heart aches, my whole being cries out in anguish as I watch lecherous, greedy monsters masquerading as human leaders in Washington and State capitals daily selling or giving away what doesn't belong to them to equally greedy, monstrous people in the name of "human progress". If that is truly progress, may progress be damned.
No comments:
Post a Comment