amazonas

10 February
On the Amazon River. It's beautiful, broad, cafe con leche brown, solitary. Its tree-lined banks are scattered with occasional huts on stilts.
On the far side is Perú!
Drifiting tree trunks, branches, an anachronistic styrofoam box from someone{s lunch, fishermen let us pass them by.

There is consistent cloud-cover over this, the lungs of the planet.
I am polluting her arteries.

I long for 'simpler' times, days of true adventure, when the carbon footprint wasn't as great, or as noticeable.
Yet, I know that I enjoy the convenience of my era. That, in former centuries, I would never be here, most likely never would've left North Carolina or my region, let alone my continent.

And the environmental impact is unavoidable. Every time I eat fish, I'm contributing to gasoline, exhaust, trash in our rivers, in the oceans, in the clouds. Anytime I go anywhere and I don't walk or ride a bike or an animal, anytime I turn on a light or a faucet, use my computer, grocery shop...

Neither do I want to live out my days farming in the middle of nowhere only using what I produce. (Although there is something appealing to me in the agricultural lifestyle)
But the fact of the matter is, our world is moving away from that. We're all migrating to megacities and then paying large sums to take eco-vacations out to virgin wilderness or to see the few brave souls who are still livingcloser to the earth than we can, but who, nevertheless, have gasoline generators to power their DirecTV, and dream of city vacations.