While we were discussing the effects of
climate change on the Adirondacks in class an idea was tossed around about
future generations. Specifically that they won’t cry for the trees or animals
which no longer inhabit the park, because they won’t know they were ever there.
I have one main problem with this idea, mainly that they will know what has
been lost. The same way that we can look back at the journals from the time
when the Adirondacks were settled, future generations will be able to look on
websites to see what we have done to the environment.
When Lewis and Clarke made their great
journey west they recorded details of the landscape and the creatures living
there. Generations of Americans have read the journals and marveled at the
great diversity, much of which has now been wiped out or displaced. Writers
like Bill McKibben and Peter J Marchand are chronicling the current state which
may be looked at in the future much like the Lewis and Clarke Journals are
today. With the addition of the internet it seems absurd to suggest that the current
and historic Adirondacks will ever truly be forgotten.
It’s hard for me to write about how future
generations will remember the Adirondacks when my experience within the park is
limited to a one day geology field trip, but this idea can be related to almost
anywhere on the planet. I don’t need to read books or surf the internet to know
what Ontario was like once. My dad has told me enough stories about the quaint
farm town he grew up in, and my old neighbour has regaled me in tales of the
days when brook trout inhabited every stream in the province. The whole idea of
this post is to point out that we as humans like to reflect on the past. As long
as we continue to share the history of the park verbally and through written
word, the Adirondacks we love will be preserved forever.
I felt the same frustration in class. Maybe I was just frustrated at being reminded of my own mortality-as talk of change is good at doing. Maybe I found the casual approach and early adjustment to climate change to be misplaced. Had previous generations been so willing to let slip their ideals simply because the next generation wouldn't know what they were missing, we would be living in a very different world. Good or bad, memories become histories and cultures. It is our responsibility, as those who love the park or see in its present state a great value, to not only remember and record the park as it is now but to do all we can to ensure that what it is will not be forgotten. To let future children believe The Adirondacks were always like what Virginia is now, is to let them forget that conscious human action was the cause. Yes, they might not “miss” skiing a certain mountain or snowshoeing a favorite trail, but the beautiful scope of human emotion is not limited to personal memory. An old proverb reads that "A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in."
ReplyDeleteIf you ask me, a society grows weak when old men chop trees whose shade they think no one will ever miss.