Earth Day – April 22, 2013

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Earth Day, Flooding, Global Warming, Habitat Destruction, Rising Oceans, Sand Mining

“The Face Of Climate Change”

The more educated our species becomes, the more we seem to distance ourselves from Mother Nature. We poke and prod her as we extract oil and gases from her bowels, and we grind away mountains in search of precious metals or coal or even rocks and boulders. We harvest her majestic timbers and desecrate vast acreages for crops and pastures.   Pesticides taint the air that we breathe, the food that we eat and trickle into the ecosystem. Plastics pollute our waters and are belched back onto the no-longer pristine shoreline.   Sand Mining destroys marine life and accelerates beach erosion.

Sculptor Rycardo Alcivar salvages the scraps from the carcass of a saman tree.

Most of us are aware of the problems, but how many of us are speaking up or trying to find a way to make a positive difference?   Living near the Pacific Ocean, I witness the destructive forces of the high tides, which seem to be gobbling more and more shoreline.  I’ve witnessed illegal shrimp trawling and correctly predicted that dead sea turtles would soon wash ashore.   I don’t blame Madre Tierra for trying to buck us off her back!

Take time out to stop and really look at our beautiful Earth.  Savor the delicate beauty of a short-lived flower; admire the silhouette of a towering tree against the sky;  inspect the precision of a brigade of ants or marvel at the aerial ballet of bird in flight.

Catch me if you can!

The following images and quotes represent my love for this planet and my concern for its future as we approach Earth Day 2013.      Z

Panama City – Republic of Panama

Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught, will we realise that we cannot eat money. 19th Century Cree Indian

Mango Tree – Panama

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. Henry David Thoreau

Rancho Santana – Nicaragua

“The best remedy for those who are frightened, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere they can be alone, alone with the sky, nature and God. For then and only then can you feel that everything is as it should be and that God wants people to be happy amid nature’s beauty and simplicity.”
― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

The Magnificent Ceibo Trees of Manabi Ecuador

“Trees are the Earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.” — Rabindranath Tagore

Near Coyote — Nandayure/Guanacaste-Costa Rica

“Today I have grown taller from walking with the trees.” — Karle Wilson Baker

“A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.”
― Walt Whitman

Playa San Miguel, Costa Rica

“Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons: It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.” — Walt Whitman

Costa Rica

Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted.  Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world.  ~Hans Margolius

6 a.m. Playa San Miguel, Costa Rica

“There’s a sunrise and a sunset every single day, and they’re absolutely free. Don’t miss so many of them.”
― Jo Walton

“We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us even in our soundest sleep… To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.” ― Henry David Thoreau

Rio Jama – Manabi Ecuador

That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest. Henry David Thoreau

“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.” — Albert Einstein

The sun shines not on us, but in us. The rivers flow not past but through us. Nature was made not just for us, but for itself and its own happiness, and is the very smile of the Divine. John Muir

“Nature is not our enemy, to be raped and conquered. Nature is ourselves, to be cherished and explored.”
― Terence McKenna

Some day the earth will weep, she will beg for her life, she will cry with tears of blood. You will make a choice, if you will help her or let her die, and when she dies, you will die too. John Hollow Horn Oglala Lakota 1932

Save our Mangroves, Please!

When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world. John Muir

“Human beings are so destructive. I sometimes think we’re a kind of plague, that will scrub the earth clean. We destroy things so well that I sometimes think, maybe that’s our function. Maybe every few eons, some animal comes along that kills off the rest of the world, clears the decks, and lets evolution proceed to its next phase.”
― Michael Crichton, The Lost World

In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences.   Robert Green Ingersoll 

Nicaragua

“Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.”
― John Lubbock

Lake Atitlan, Guatemala

“A lake is a landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“Global warming is by its very nature a threat, but it is a deadly threat only because it fails to trigger the brain’s alarm. It leaves us sleeping in a burning bed.”
― Dan Gilbert

There is, indeed, a fire burning over the earth, taking with it plants and animals, cultures, languages, ancient skills and visionary wisdom. Quelling this flame, and re-inventing the poetry of diversity is perhaps the most important challenge of our times.”
― Wade Davis, The Wayfinders

“The planet is about to break out with fever, indeed it may already have, and we [human beings] are the disease. We should be at war with ourselves and our lifestyles.”  Thomas Lovejoy, scientist, Smithsonian Institution

Our generation has inherited an incredibly beautiful world from our parents and they from their parents. It is in our hands whether our children and their children inherit the same world.
Richard Branson

“What’s the use of a fine house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?”
― Henry David Thoreau, Familiar Letters

“…and not, when it came my time to die, find I had not lived…” Thoreau (Photo by Barb Seibel)

“I have a room all to myself; it is nature.”
― Henry David Thoreau

Do you have a photo that illustrates The Face of Climate Change?  Visit Earth Day 2013 and add an image to their collection!  Then go outside and spend some time with nature!  Z

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