It was just one of those incredibly blue Florida mornings that scream at you to grab your camera and hit a trail.
The air was fresh, it had a bit of a chill to it and so, armed with my cameras, a sweater (from the back of my closet … this is Florida, you know), and a coke zero for hydration, I set off for the trails at Circle B.
I said goodbye to all the kitties and drove the 20 minutes to the shores of Lake Hancock. There are several different trails there and I chose the one that leads me down alligator alley so as to not be walking directly into the sun. My original thought was to take a trail that bordered the lake itself, but because of where the sun was, most of my pics would then have been silhouetted.
Aaaah the joys of planning ..
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That was Coco by the way … he wanted to give his input to this morning’s blog.
Anyway, Lake Hancock doesn’t have any recreational fishing on it, so it has developed a wonderful range of associated wildlife. Birds in particular seem to thrive here from the largest Great Blues to the tiniest Warblers.
There are some resultant non-feathered creatures here also, from the alligators (the biggest one I have seen here is about 15 feet) to furry creatures like raccoons, rabbits, etc.
Fish and insects make up the bottom of the food chain (unfortunately for them) and the whole world here just seems beautifully balanced.
There were so many times on the trail yesterday where I was the only human in sight and it created a wonderful feeling of being at one with nature. There were moments where I just stood there and closed my eyes listening to the sounds around me and breathing it all in.
Of course, you don’t want to keep your eyes closed too long for fear of missing something or perhaps something finding you!
Anyway. while my eyes were open, I did manage to get some decent shots showing the diversity of my fellow trail-occupants.
Blue skies behind and sun in their faces, make for good shooting conditions. I hope you enjoy.
As I climbed into the car and drove home. my battery was recharged and I felt very much alive and in tune with my surroundings. I thought of the diversity of life that I was made privy to yesterday and in general on this planet.
And I mused over the preciousness of life and how we as humans often fail to grasp that we aren’t the only important creatures on this planet.
From the tiniest bug to the largest creature, the diversity of life around us provides us with a very real challenge on where to set the bar for preciousness.
I mean, we assign importance to lives that allows us to treat the “unimportant” in a casual or dismissive manner. And in many ways, our views of these creatures amounts to a death sentence handed out on such a casual basis.
For example, bugs are unimportant, so we freely step on them. Except for the ones with pretty colored wings … those get a pin stuck through them and mounted on a board.
Fish are unimportant so we drive metal hooks into their mouths for entertainment purposes, allowing us to tell tall stories of the ones that got away.
Deer are unimportant, so we license killers with high-powered telescopic rifles to shoot them at distance for the thrill of it.
Bulls are unimportant so we dress up in glitzy sequins and drive multiple blades into them in front of cheering crowds that throw flowers into the arena when the poor creature has bled to death in front of their eyes.
Factory ships from Japan harpoon families of unimportant whales (arguably one of the most intelligent and social creatures on the planet) or slice off the fins of wonderful creatures that have survived since the dawn of time only to now become the soup appetizer in a fancy restaurant.
Yet we raise blue murder at the thought that in parts of asia, they raise and kill dogs for food. Dogs who are neither as intelligent as whales, or as old as sharks.
Why?
It’s because we assigned important to the dog the moment we decided they make cool pets. There is a multi-billion dollar industry that would derail if those little barkers were no longer assigned that level of importance on our creature-scale.
Interestingly enough, humans also use this scale among ourselves. We assign unimportance to different people, different religions, different colors and it allows us to step on them, hunt them, and kills them, in a not-dissimilar manner.
We put people in a box “he’s black”, “he’s a muslim”, “she’s a slut”, “she’s just a woman” …. careful boxes that we have fashioned that allow us to enslave, disregard, discard, and discriminate.
There are those among us and the only important people in the world are themselves. Their wives are their property, and their children merely a reflection on their own greatness.
These people occupy an end of the spectrum that is in many ways the very worst of humanity. They pop tic-tacs and grab pussy at will. They shoot unarmed blacks because they looked like they were up to something. They foster hate and intolerance of poor immigrants, even though in all likelihood they were descended from the same.
What they have lost sight of is simply that ALL life is precious. That of an impoverished child in the far reaches of a village in Afghanistan. Or a deer quietly grazing on some grasses on a forest floor.
Each living breathing creature has a right to life. The same right as any other regardless of wealth, intelligence, or circumstance.
Superiority is a cancerous trait. It spreads virulently and feeds off our own insecurities. We infect others with it as we build cliques of fellow-important-people.
Yet after we draw our final breath, our importance fades and we return to the same dust as the bug that we stepped on during our oh-so-important life.
… just a thought!
