It was an absolutely gorgeous Sunday and we couldn’t resist taking a trip to one of the trails at Circle B. I had delayed the day watching Wolves playing their game, so unfortunately it was around noon when we went there.
That translated into a million other trail-goers there already and there wasn’t a parking spot to be had in the main areas. People were parked on grass and by the side of the road and it was chaotic even looking for a space.
When we finally did park in an auxiliary lot and took the trail that brought us down by the lake, there were crowds everywhere and I really questioned the sanity of going there at such a time.
Not just was it a perfect day, but it was a Sunday, and all the snowbirds are still in town so it was the perfect storm in terms of crowd abundance. Part of me wanted to just leave but the other part of me decided to try to shut them out and just take in what I could.
As we walked the trail it became obvious that the creatures that live there had largely moved deeper into the land and water away from the trail itself. Clearly the number of people was overwhelming for them too.
It wasn’t just the number of people but the incessant talking and occasional screaming child that seemed to have an adverse effect on the normal tranquility of the place.
I found myself getting more and more hostile towards these Sunday-trippers and their blatant disconnect from the natural world they were trampling over.
I finally lost it when I came across this big guy who had a drone and was flying it near the trees. I screamed at him in front of everyone and told him that he was not allowed to use a drone here. I raged about the stress it was causing the animals and though nobody supported my assertions, he took it down and apologized.
I was galled at his lack of consideration of the creatures that would be affected by what he was doing and that he hadn’t thought of that at all became the subject for today’s blog.
By the way, I have put a number of images from the trail at the end of the blog and I hope you enjoy.
Anyway, I said that “he hadn’t thought of” and that was giving him the benefit of the doubt. But I no longer am giving him that benefit. I think he knew full-well. He just didn’t care. What he wanted superseded the stress on the creatures around him.
As extreme an example as this was, it reminded me of the incident a few months back where people were throwing sticks at a mommy alligator in order to get her to move away from her babies. So, extreme apathy does exist among these people.
But not only the extreme, the general noisiness and presence of large numbers of people in their home must have been upsetting to the animals. The fact that there was a noticeable distance taken by many of them from the trail is a clear indication that this was so.
Humans may not be the only selfish creatures on the planet but because of our numbers and our dominance, our selfishness has a dramatic effect on the world that the rest of the animal kingdom live in. We devastate their natural environment with little thought and only when they become extinct do we even think about it.
And even then our concern is minimal and even a source of amusement. For example look at the Dodo bird which went extinct back in the late 17th century, we comfortably transitioned it into a cause for comedy and degradation of the species. “Dumb as a Dodo” became a catch phrase and we characterized the species as a “dumb bird” because (wait for it) they were too comfortable around humans to survive. So we hunted them into extinction.
Aren’t we so fucking smart?
Most of us that are critical of humanity look on it as a scourge on the planet and though I have repeatedly hoped that one day our apparent intelligence would help us navigate a turn around to where we save the planet, I see no hope that we will do so.
Our own selfishness supersedes all.
That is the unfortunate reality and once we become extinct and the planet recovers, somewhere in the future someone will look at our fossilized remains and talk about how dumb we were.
… just a thought.
