Eelgrass clings to lines in Balboa's Grand Canal
My childhood friend from kindergarten days sent me this article from the Los Angeles Times Balboa's troubled channel. We are both way into our seventies and nudging eighty maybe a little to hard but our memories are still good and we both have very fond ones of this area of Southern California. This is where we spent endless summer hours and days as little kids and even today Mollie pays homage to the delicious frozen bananas of Balboa Island, they like hot dogs at a major league ballpark, taste better there than any place else.
Seventy plus years ago the area was much different then it is today. In those days there was more sand and open space, cleaner water and fewer people and boats. Less need to worry about competing for time and space - the environment and man co-exhisted much more amicably.
But in our childhood days we unknowingly became the problem that exists today. You see we grew up in an Eden, had children and those children had more children. Most wanted to stay, build homes - lots of homes, have boats - lots of them as well. The environment didn't grow and expand it was just forced to accept what man brought to it and it tried to adapt as best it could.
At some point push does become shove and the fragile environment always seems to get the short end of the stick. We just haven't learned, or don't want to accept, that survival in the long term will be achieved only with respect for the place we inhabit.
As I read about the eelgrass and its plight I couldn't help but be reminded of the chaos in the world today - the grasses "a life-giving environment for fish, crabs, snails and seabirds...have become an unyielding enemy" to others.
Change is the only real constant in life. Living things alter what is around them. It's just that humans do it in such a relentless, unsustainable way. Technology has turned us into planet killers. There's a way out, but people don't seem interested in complicated solutions. They just wanna go on doing what they're doing. And oddly, that brings about change. You'd think we'd figure it out. Who knows? Maybe we will, but after you and I (and Mollie) are gone.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment, K.
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