Monday, July 17, 2006

Take me to the river

river walk

In this place, more than 30 years ago, the water ran blue - I'm talking the blue of a Rocket Pop or Tidy-Bowl toilet cleaner. Presumably the opaque jewel color stemmed from runoff from a nearby chemical plant, and as some tell it, the pretty hue stained your skin if you happened to be lounging in the water at the time of discharge.

A seachange has happened since then. The factories have stopped knowingly dumping things into the streams and rivers that ought not be there. And the world looks a little cleaner. The roadways aren't filled with trash, and few of us will see remnants of Happy Meals and road food released into the air from the car ahead.

But every once and a while, as we sift through stones in the current, we happen upon a rock wrapped in a color nature never intended. If you haven't ever thought of it before, the sight makes you wonder: Just what are we doing to the planet?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It looks pretty good right now, but I agree that many Americans (and others) see the planet as ours to ruin.

Andrea said...

This has been on my mind over the last couple days after watching parts of a show on Global Warming on the Discovery Channel. Our recklessness with the environment (and the President's backsliding on environmental laws in favor of big business) is going to ruin it for our great grand children. I worry.