Woven webs

What do Aldo Leopold, E.O. Wilson, David Suzuki, Stephen Jay Gould, and Herman Melville have in common? Over the years, the message is the same: People still don't get their connection to the planet. since recorded history (and likely before) we humans keep striving to distance ourselves from nature and our connection, involvement, dependence upon it. We rage against it like an implacable enemy, as Ahab did against the white whale:

"He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it." -- Herman Melville, Moby Dick

"Nature was something out there -- nameless and limitless, a force to beat against, cajole, and exploit." --Edward O. Wilson, Biophilia

"In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it." -- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

I'm in the process of continuing to write my photo essay "Visiting the Whale", about my encounter with a beached humpack whale on the coast of Washington this fall and how it started out as a photo opportunity and chance to see the large mammal up close, to an uncomfortable observation of human behavior. I don't know exactly how it will end up, yet, but it's becoming an interesting project.

I'm also shopping for a laptop. What a dichotomy.