Describe your relationships as ecosystems.
Pick three people you have loved or hurt.
Are they forests, deserts, oceans, storms?
What did your presence do to the balance? What species thrived or went extinct?
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I fell in love with the mountain as a young man. I call myself “a man”, but I was in truth noting more than a wild child. I lived my life from one day to the next, from one party to the other, from one paycheck to the next and took what affection I could get along the way.
Though I lived like I lived in “ the now”, I was never present. I didn’t have any focus or plans. Never looking behind, never seeing what was upfront, never looking down to the ground I was standing on.
Maybe that was why the mountain seemed so good to me? It grounded me. Gave me a sense of belonging, a sense of the now. I grew on the mountain and I found myself at home there.
We thrived together and the seasons came and went. New animals got introduced, and while some of them disappeared again and were replaced by others it was a place of general growth and happiness. At least for a good while. The mountain can be a hard and difficult place to live. The weather can change in a heartbeat and entire areas can become – not exactly unfriendly or inhospitable, but definitely a more difficult place to stay. As if a permanent autumn settled, the days grew shorter and colder, and I found myself eventually starting to withdraw into myself. I started to lose my grounding. My connection to the mountain grew less, and I became, myself, a lesser person as a result. I started to mistrust the mountain, to hide myself from it and both the mountain and I stopped thriving as we had. The animals went away, the land grew more and more barren and I started to trust in the mountain less and less.
I would like to say that I saw better what happened and that I took action in preventing what would happen in the end, but alas. In my mistrust to the mountain, I lied to myself and it, and I brought both hurt and decay to it.
The relationship I had with the mountain ended and with it went my last ways of grounding and feeling of safety away.
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As a lonely and strange kid, I didn’t have very many friends. I was friendly with plenty of people, but had only a very few people I was close to. So, when I discovered the woods as a teenager I realised I had found a good friend. I was never alone in the woods. The Forrest was a big place and both other people and animals lived there or ventured in it frequently and I was allowed to be a part of the community. The Forrest and the woods can give you so much. It can give food, shelter, warmth, experiences, comfort and adventure. It can be a place of plenty, and if tended and nurtured, it can grow larger and taller and provide security and safety both to its inhabitants and those who visits.
I took to it and I loved it. But I got too greedy. I took too many trees to build my house bigger and stronger, I uprooted too much land to drain marshes and swamps, I hunted too many animals for their resources. And I didn’t make sure to plant enough trees or tent to the area I took for myself.
First the birds went away. The Forrest became a silent place in the spring. The mosquitos and midges thrived and drove people out of it. The population of some of the other animals got too big because others had been removed from the food chain, and thus overpopulation turned the woods at last into a place with sick and starving animals. They didn’t have enough food or enough water. The smell of decay lay over the Forrest and rodents and other scavengers came and took over. They brought with them more deceases and drove the rest of the people and the other animals away.
I was alone. I had a splendid house, plenty of food and warmth and comfort, but I was alone in the Forrest full of biting insects, rodents, broken and rotting trees and barren land.
Like a copper nail to a tree, I had infected the whole Forrest. It had not died, but it was dying. I had to leave it and hope it would manage to draw attention to people that were able to rescue it. Clean it up, remove debris, plant new trees and clean up the rivers.
I should have been among those that did so, but at that point I was more afraid of doing more harm than good.
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The ocean is a wonder! It is vast, deep, a home to a seemingly endless number of species of animals and plants. It can give you almost everything you need.
I was struck by it. It drew me in more than anything I had encountered before. The depth, the changing of the weather. Just the sheer magnitude of it all!
Though, the ocean looks strong, unchanging and impossible to harm, it is quite fragile. Pollution, overfishing, climate change and lack of care can, and will, destroy it in an eye blink. I couldn’t see how that could be. Endless cubics of water, billions of organisms, powerful streams, endless waves big and small. It all looks indestructible.
So in my stupidity and carelessness, I took from the ocean without thinking. I dumped my trash and my filth in it. I fished and harvested endlessly from it, and I never gave anything back to it. I didn’t respect it or treat it with care. The howling of its pleas in the wind I took shelter from. Closed myself deep in my basement. I could hear it, but I didn’t listen to it. I didn’t heed what those winds said. “Help”, “please”, “why”, “stop”, “don’t”…
I sat in my house and enjoyed the food and other treasures the sea had given me. Living my life as the winds were blowing stronger and stronger.
It was delicious and I wanted more and more.
Soon fishes started to disappear. Species that had been swimming around and existing for eons got snuffed out. I just found other animals to eat and I kept on dumping more trash and toxins into it. East areas became desolate. Empty of everything. It was empty and hollow. In my anger and frustration I yelled at the sea. I didn’t see how I was to blame for its destruction and its loss of the ability to keep giving.
Keep taking from something and give only trash in return will do that to anything. No matter how vast, fierce, strong or unchanging it appears.
