By Anonymous
An hour online can go by in a blink, the endless stream of information can numb a mind. Youtube is the first site to open in the browser, a homepage full of so called “content” that spans from hours long videos compiling car crashes, to 10 second educational shorts. The first thing to grab my attention is a documentary about sulfur mining in Indonesia, miners work within an active volcano killing their bodies to make a few dollars a day. The video sparks a wide array of emotions, pity for the workers stuck in the situation, guilt from viewing this story as entertainment, and a sense of doom stemming from the unnecessary work being done as there are many other ways to produce sulfur without the exploitation of impoverished workers. After barely enough time to process these emotions, the next video kicks on, a direct recommendation from the website, another documentary doubling down on the failures of human development. This one is focused on the opioid epidemic, a peak of western capitalist exploitation in which millions of people have had their lives ruined in the drug companies pursuit of profit. An hour has already gone by.
My boots crunch on the icy remains of previous snowfalls that remains on the forested trail. There isn’t an abundance of nature within Fairfax county, but the cross county trail serves as a minor escape from the hustle and bustle of suburbia. The trail starts as asphalt, cold and unyielding under my feet, but eventually turns to gravel, a somewhat more forgiving path. A creek follows the trail for awhile, a thin layer of ice on it’s surface. I lean down to look into the water hoping to spot some life, but only trash greets my view. It is far too cold for fish to be out and about anyways. A lone goose flies overhead, honking into the sky with reckless abandon, perhaps it’s lost the flock. Maybe it decided to go it’s own way. Nature struggles in Fairfax, it fights to live in narrow strips of woods behind rows of houses being filled with discarded good and being forced to adapt to them. A firetruck siren begins on a distant road, nature has no room to truly flourish here, the level of development is far too great and it will always make itself known.
It is a high task to stay positive about nature in current times, there is a constant flow of information from those online sources and from active observations of nature that tell you there are issues. Every creek I’ve been to in the last few years has been inundated with garbage, and every article online feeds you more global tragedies. It is almost too much for a person, and I know many who have quit most forms of media, disconnecting from the global brain that is the Internet. Perhaps this is a good thing, helping them be cognizant of the issues surrounding them, issues that they can actually do something about.