What do we see when we look at nature? A more acute question is what we don’t see, or to put it more bluntly, fail to notice. Everything is changing and yet traces remain of what the planet once was.
Switzerland’s Aletsch Glacier--One moment here, the next, not. A winding river of prehistoric ice, that is strangely beautiful in the agony of its disappearance. Previously a magnet for hikers and gawkers dismayed by its natural wonder, now reduced to a memory of a different era, imperceptibly vanishing, and with it the rivers and streams, its dense substance previously fed along with the gift of life it once offered. The Earth will continue on, along with the husks of other desiccated planets. The life it once supported, that is to say, ourselves, probably not.
A lone cactus juts from the jagged ridge of a mountain pass through the Andes, not far from today’s Bolivia, formerly Upper Peru. This route was once used by Inca warriors, then by Spanish conquistadores carrying off stolen gold, and finally by an army of Gauchos, who threw off the yoke of Spanish colonialism. All are gone now. All that remains is a lone cactus sentinel, its thorns ready to pierce the flesh of anyone or anything careless enough to disturb it.
Tectonic plates collide, tearing the earth’s crust upwards. Each layer’s color represents a different period in the life of the Earth exposed in the irresistible collision of immovable objects. The foothill structures belong to a contemporary graveyard.
At times it looks as though Nature might emerge at least momentarily victorious in its battle with a human race that seems obsessed with reshaping everything that lives into a tool for its own convenience. The jungle growing from this abandoned car--an ancient French Citroen ’Traction Avant’ on a side street in Uruguay might appear to be an exception, but not really. It is actually an artistic whim on the part of its former owner, in fact, a humorous observation on the absurdity of modern technology. Amusing, maybe, but a reaffirmation that human beings remain in control--until they aren’t.
