Tuesday 30 October 2012

WE BOW TO THEE


There is truly nothing that makes me feel smaller than nature. Walking through a redwood forest in Northern California as a child (if you haven’t done this I highly suggest it), seeing something as monumentally prodigious as the Grand Canyon; Even sailing in the middle of the ocean without land in sight truly makes you realize how small and powerless (and dare I say, insignificant) we as humans are. At the moment, I think anyone sitting on the East Coast would concur.

Watching the coverage of Hurricane (or Super storm as it is now deemed in America) Sandy is simply mind altering. The amount of devastation, the sheer force and power of nature that in one fell swoop can render our human inventions and luxuries utterly useless and obsolete. Just looking at all the beachside homes on Long Island and New Jersey getting flooded and in some cases swept away, shows you that in the face of human ego and intention (oh wouldn’t it be so lovely to have a beachside view to accompany our 2.2 kids and BMW) nature doesn’t give a damn. In fact in some cases, it's a case of Sisyphus personified, like in Hurricane Alley let's say. People build. Nature destroys. Build. Destroy. You get the idea. Ah humans, we are so predictably adorable.

In fact, there is nothing more financially crippling and sobering than a natural disaster – as most of us have witnessed either firsthand or via the news media. Transport shuts down, cities ground to a halt, lives are at risk. Even the mighty Wall Street surrenders and shuts it’s doors in the face of it (but as sure as I’m standing here, many are figuring out a way to make money from all of this).

The other thing I can’t help but think is, is this kind of storm finally a wakeup call to all those individuals who refuse to believe our climate is changing and accelerating in its power and unpredictability. Will we soon find ourselves living in a time when super-storms are no longer ‘super’ but flat out mundane? I fear there is only one answer to that, like it or not. I was talking about this to a man this morning as the King was neck deep in a pile of wet leaves (Surrender. A running theme in our lives) and he was saying he’d hate to see London deal with something like a hurricane when the city can’t even handle more than an inch of snow (despite the fact that it snows every single year). You see, human ego…or shall I say stupidity. The human motto: If we ignore it for long enough, it just doesn’t exist.

Sadly Hurricane Sandy does exist. And nature will always do her best to remind us that it is not humans that are in charge. In fact, it’s absolutely to the contrary. 


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