The Beauty of our Planet
“The miracle is not to fly in the air or to walk on water, but to walk on the earth.” – (Chinese proverb)
The world we live in is a miracle. I think our problem is that we have forgotten that. We don’t love it enough.
Nor do we remember to be grateful for it. We are too wrapped up in our everyday cares. To quote William Wordsworth “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers. Little we see in nature that is ours.”
When we look at the stars at night we are reminded how blessed we are. There are estimated to be between two hundred billion and two trillion galaxies in the observable universe. In each there may be roughly a hundred million stars. Is there life like ours anywhere out there? We don’t know. Scientists believe there may be, but right now nobody knows. Which for me means we live on a wonderous and unique planet where not only are there human beings but incredible animals and plants that bring us life and beauty. Every day of our lives is miraculous.
Have we cared for our world?
I can’t get my head around the fact that many of us don’t care how we treat our world. We have cut down our forests, polluted our air and waters, littered the world with discarded plastic and blown up mountain tops for building materials. Humans have killed our wild animals, overfished our seas, decimated our insect populations, and poisoned not just our plants and flowers but even the food we eat.
I wanted to ask you What do you love about this world of ours? Is it worth fighting for? Because fight we must, to save it. The planet, of course will survive but unless we stop what we are doing to it, the beauty will be gone, as may we.
I love:
I love walking in the forest in autumn. I love the cool damp smell of the earth, the golden ferns glowing in the subdued light and the acorns that crunch underfoot. I love the tall trees that reach for the sky and the small deer that scamper across the clearings to safety. I love to lie on my back and see the sun, low in the sky, dappling the leaves that have turned red and yellow and are slowing falling to the forest floor. The healing silence is a benediction only broken by the gentle pop as acorns hit the ground, and birds sing from time to time.
But it is not so easy now to love the forests. Worldwide they are being damaged by Climate Change. Logging in precious tropical forests like the Amazon and Congo Rainforests is destroying national treasures of amazing biodiversity. They are disappearing so that we can graze cows and somebody can make a profit.
Even in France where I live the forests are under pressure. The newspaper Le Monde writes about how the forests in France are struggling, saying that their mortality is up 80% in 10 years amid massive dieback. They are being decimated by Climate Change, the predations of the bark beetle, logging and forest fires.
A Leopard Hiding in the Long Grass
What do you love?
Perhaps you love going on safari to look at wild animals in their natural habitat, possibly you love the big cats or maybe the hippos submerged in slow-moving, muddy rivers. Or perhaps you just like the excitement of not knowing what you will see.
WWF think that animal spotting will be increasingly difficult as there has been “a catastrophic 73% decline in the average size of wildlife populations in just 50 years.” Our wildlife is now “a system in peril.”
Perhaps you love the oceans
Watching a storm hurling the ocean waves against rocks is exhilarating. It lifts the spirits and brings us joy. Or sitting on the beach as the tide comes in slowly and the small seabirds scrabble for the last of the hidden worms, and maybe further out the gannets dive from a great height for fish to feed their young. Or maybe you love sitting in a small boat on a quiet day just fishing.
But we have not been looking after our oceans. In fact we have been treating them very badly. The Natural History Museum report on our oceans talks about the trouble they are in and how unhealthy they have become. They talk about three huge threats to our seas, overfishing, pollution and Climate Change. The report looks at the future of our oceans: do read it, it is very informative but it does not make for comfortable reading.
Desert Mountains
Or perhaps you love walking in the mountains, or maybe just looking
Perhaps you love the mountains? The wind whipping through your hair as you arrive at the summit after a long hard climb. I certainly love the feeling of satisfaction as I open the beer I have been carrying for just that moment! Possibly you are an expert and walk in the winter through snow and ice, or perhaps you like to climb on glaciers, taking in the frozen silvery view. Even just looking at snow-capped mountains can bring a quiet joy.
Yet the pleasure we take in our mountains is fading. It is snowing less and less because of Climate Change and is much less predictable. This is making skiing and running ski resorts very difficult. In fact a recent article in the Times shows that the Alps may lose more than a third of their snow to global warming. In fact they say that ski resorts will be left with bare slopes if we do not tackle this warming.
Why do we sing a love song to our planet?
For some of us the Earth is a magic, spiritual place that freely offers us what we need. For others that is not the case. So we must fight for what we love and for the futures of our children. Our grandparents fought through a world war so that we could be free. If we want to save what we love we must do the same for our young people.
There are many ways to fight and be active to create a more loveable world in the future. We just need to do something.
For me, Lao Tzu has the answer –
“Love the world as your own self; then you can truly care for all things.”
Until we do, we will continue to desecrate the wonder that we have been given.
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All photos copyright Doreen Hosking