Consequences

Lonely, destitute, he looked around him from the vantage point of the hilltop. The view had changed in the last twenty years; briefly he remembered vast open spaces, above which had been unsullied blue skies and multitudes of birds that sang down at him. He sighed and turned his back on the ravaged landscape. Walking stiffly down the slope, he remembered when his mother first took him up there. His father, busy with the never-ending task of breadwinner, had become embittered over the years and turned inward from his family, preferring to dwell instead on the impossibilities of escaping the job of coalminer in the mines over the hills. His mother, never one to deny him a treat, had decided to show him world around them, before he had a chance to see life as his father did.

He remembered himself as a fresh faced seven-year-old boy, happy to be in his mother’s company. Her laughing, smiling face bore no sign of the hard work she did, only the faded laughter lines betrayed her age. Her hands, smoother now that they were out of dishwater, beckoned him as she showed him primroses and daffodils and taught him to distinguish between the cries of sparrows and bluebirds. Growing up on a farm, she knew scores of information that would take the interest of an inquisitive young boy.

Looking with his minds eye, he turned back, and instead of the torn landscape, he saw with his heart the wispy clouds, the waves of different shades of green as the fresh breeze blew through the grass. He closed his eyes and felt the breeze on his skin, heard the trickling of a stream, the bleat of a newborn lamb. As he opened his eyes, he felt his heart wrench at the devastation in front of him.

Everywhere he looked, there was the inescapable grey of modern life. Grey buildings, grey roads, grey clouds. Pollution billowed from the factories and houses alike, the only green in sight enclosed in designated areas and carefully manicured so they did not grow forth to spoil the carefully designed surroundings. Grey people trundling through their lives enclosed in little boxes, speeding from one building to the next, panicked that a minute missed could never be recovered, never salvaged. No one had time to just sit and be, to appreciate what nature had provided for us. Instead, they preferred to cover it, to pretend they were the masters of their own universe. To pretend that nature was content for them to rape and spoil and ravage the earth without any consequences.

With a shake of his head, he stood taller and straightened his shoulders. Armed with memories from the past and dim hope for the future, he felt that if the alert was sounded early enough, they could deter nature from the annihilation of those that were destroying Her. He turned, and with both hope and despair clouding his thoughts, made his way down the path.