Side stepping down a dune or wandering a forest trail I can’t help but wonder…how?
How the Creator, the one I imagine and the one you imagine, designed this tiny bit of our planet, with what seems like an overzealous cramming of flora and fauna? Seeing the vast diversity at every level from the shore to the rise of our coastal range I have come to imagine this Creator as a Chaos Theory Creator, letting nature run wild and fluid. Just look around at the still remaining areas not yet altered By-Design Creators (humans). Our functionality of straight lines, borders, paved swathes of land are designs not yet dropped into the remaining natural world.
Next I wonder if, as suggested by our current President, our forests were designed by those By-Design guys, with even intervals between tree trunks so forest floors could be swept and maintained without pesky ferns, errant wildflowers and wild grasses. Would our hearts and native sensibilities keep us in such a place? Too often we override the wise Creator and bring to the natural setting foreign aggressors that invade these delicate neighborhoods of the give-and-take of our particular natural Northwest niches.
There is a uniqueness in place for a reason that is too often misunderstood or ignored by the conceit of our precieved “knowledge.” Non-native blackberries, for example, those raucous vines would today receive a resounding NO. When this fast-growing, invasive naughty vine that intertwines where never wanted would be denied and then there would be no reason to walk in late summer with a bag to pick the soft, easy-pulled berries for jams, cobblers, syrups. A middle road may now be taken to allow some but nullify its spread. My chaotic co-Creator would throw in fireweed, skunk cabbage, foxglove to compete for space, never easily achieved from the blackberry, but instead stabilize a middle ground and minimize the harm.
Why do I trouble myself with these imagined scenarios? The “wonder how” is maybe my fear of the continual erosion, not by nature, by my kind, of the natural for the manicured trails, paving for parking, and beach access, configured dunes and continued assault to harness the wild and grid the natural. It would be so functional.
This amazing dot on the globe of the world, sitting adjacent to an enormous ocean must always be supported by the chaotic types of co-Creators who cherish variety and the continuous change exuded every moment through the seasons, demonstrating the joy of nature’s domain. I am but a grain, a bundle of cells whose time it is to walk this bazillion year old part of the earth and never cease to see the abundance of every growing coastal flora. Each one, as if on stage, make entrances, change costumes, always surprising, some disappearing and others seeing if you notice the small adjustments of their parts in this environmental enactment that has been a continuing play performance from the beginning of…..
The sea at this shore also plays its stage part, as friend and foe. It is the planet’s chameleon, never keeping the same color or shape as tides and waves introduce confusion. This ocean body defies, never conforms and adds the crazy placement of monoliths edging the shore like misplaced chess pieces. Each one keeping winged nesting places and a home for a vast array of tide-pool creatures, citizens in some cohesive society that thrives through the violence of storms, thrashing of constant waves and the tranquility of a summer gentle season. This sea is all chaos, playing the unpredictable trickster.
I will always wonder about this place, and know: to stop, to be still and to watch. Watch this piece of the world, given by design but is indulged with wild and amazing changes from an overindulgent chaotic Creator of surprises. Bravo, Creator! I am glad I can imagine you.
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