Home

Flying over this wide brown land [cliches become so because they are the most apt description for the event] made me realise how beautiful it is.

South Australia though, from the air, is a monstrous patchwork of geometric shapes cut into the landscape. Sure, we must survive, but I wonder how often we really stop to think about the fact that we are dependent on our environment for our lives and it is at our own peril that we remain impervious to that concept. I was disturbed at how destructive our activities are on the environment. The straightness of the lines, the way it was carved into such artificial shapes, it was disturbing - so unnatural.


It made me think about the way we are - we have lost our understanding of nature and that we are part of it. So much of our lives is artificial these days. It's no wonder we're disconnected from our environment, especially in so-called 'developed' countries. It seems that the more developed we become, the more ways we are able to put distance between ourselves and the natural world.

Clothes, shoes, cars, garden paths, pavement, processed foods, houses, and so on. We are able to disrespect our environment because we are not forced to experience it every day. People who do not have the same "quality of life" (a questionable idea), who must, for want of our modern comforts (e.g., brick walls) deal with the elements and other random components of nature daily, have so much more respect for it. I'm not suggesting a utopian existence is to be found in stripping naked and living in the bush but that there needs to be some more happy medium.

It is outrageous that we are outraged by the havoc of a tsunami or a hurricane - this is what nature is. It does not answer to man, it should not be controllable or controlled by man. We are not more than the ecosystem that sustains us - Georgie take note!

Anyway, I reached the sun today. It is beautiful.