Sepia Me' - Memoir of a Trip Through the Desert - Entry no# 6

There’s an old saying – ‘a smooth sea never made a skilled sailor’. On the other hand, I think a skilled sailor would have avoided any rough water, but then what sort of an explorer would you be. All the greatest explorers have had to endure their voyage through hysterical odds, those great men who broadened the horizon of civilization. The aggrandized manifestations of their efforts in this world are still here today. With much respect, I continue along my own journey and bear with me all the hopes and dreams of a great explorer. I am Captain James Cook, Sir Francis Drake, Sir John Franklin; I am the stars by which we sail and find our way back home. Those very same stars which brought us here, now call the explorers once again – there is more to see.

The radio towers are out of range, so I don’t yet know the extent of the flood. Scanning through the channels on my transceiver I pick up conversations every now and then between pilots. The outlook seems grim for travellers and pilots alike.

My traveller friend, seemingly excited about the whole ordeal strikes up a conversation. He talks about paleoclimatology, the study of climate change based on ancient weather patterns, the remnants of which embed themselves in layers of ice and sediment. Corals, shells, rocks; they all present a part of Earth history, yet to be uncovered.  The rings of ancient trees are read to investigate the climate of that epoch from whence it first became a seedling, each ring tells a story about water and light. If only humans were that easy to read, we may have found a way to co-exist. The world around us seems to have done it quite easily for some time. Even though the reality of equilibrium is a constant state of dispassionate growth, every one birth inevitable by destruction, it seems that equilibrium its self is filled with all the pain and agony of day to day life. Perhaps we are in equilibrium after all, perhaps we are habitually focusing on the destruction in this world and not enough of creation. We humans are morbid creatures, what lust for battle poisons the hearts of men and breaks the lives of women. For all the great accomplishments of men and women alike…still, there are those who destroy. Now the Earth is also poisoned and when we humans have done the last of each other, equilibrium will sweep away the trenches of our misdeeds and be covered by vast ocean. Perhaps our brief moment in time will embed upon a layer of ice sheet, or as dirty black marks around the rings of ancient trees - a fossilized reminder of the time which choked the Earth. In an incalculable period of time form now, when the oceans clear and form a great new land, the waste and war that is the human condition will have washed away.


….’back to the drawing board’.