In Praise of Paths: Walking Through Time and Nature by Torbjorn Ekelund

Author:Torbjorn Ekelund [Ekelund, Torbjorn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: nature, essays, BODY; MIND & SPIRIT, Nature Therapy, Sports & Recreation, walking
ISBN: 9781771649957
Google: fAKUzgEACAAJ
Publisher: Greystone Books Limited
Published: 2022-05-20T23:41:48.736538+00:00

It was long thought that running water purified itself every twenty or so feet, a thought which may have eased the conscience of many a lone prospector pissing into a stream. Extrapolating, wrongly, from that principle had us, until all too recently, flushing entire cities’ domestic and industrial wastes into river systems, expecting rivers and lakes magically to purify enormous quantities of biological and chemical waste. The sad consequence was that in the sixties we were treated to the spectacle of petrochemically contaminated rivers catching fire and nutrient-laden lakes suffocating from the boom and bust of algae growth. Control of point sources of water pollution and removal of certain chemicals from the household waste water stream (that is, phosphates in detergent) along with more thorough central treatment of human sewage (which, although an improvement, is at best an energy-intensive and chemically dependent approach to the sewage problem) have remedied some of the most obvious forms of water pollution.

Industrial processes have a fierce thirst, and often a need for water as coolant. (Industry accounts for 11 percent of all water use in the United States.) Locating large manufacturing complexes near watercourses and water bodies has led to recent nightmarish disasters like the 1986 Sandoz chemical plant’s accidental poisoning of the Rhine River in Germany. Ultimately only a complete revamping of manufacturing processes that generate toxic by-products and dispose of those by-products in the water or air can provide adequate protection for these essential elements. Accidents will always happen, and polluted rivers and aquifers are impossible to clean up completely. Rather than hoping to contain pollutants, we must not generate them to begin with.

Industry’s abuse of water is easy to decry and must be dealt with, but it is really just a writ-large manifestation of our culture’s taking this element for granted. Most of us in the developed world do.

One afternoon I was doing a little bit of manual labor around my place. It started with my noticing how hot and dry the wind was for late September, and thinking it might be well to sprinkle the garden. I walked over to the house and turned on the faucet. The pump kicked in and started pushing water up from the 220-foot depth of the well. Instantly a glittering spray of droplets arced out over the round plot of vegetables and flowers.

Then I turned my attention to something else: cleaning up a pile of waste lumber near my work space. I wheeled my garden cart over to the jumbled scraps of siding and two-by-fours and loaded it up to add these new pieces to the main pile of construction refuse, all of it eventually bound for the landfill. As I did that I thought about women in villages throughout the Third World having to walk for miles in search of even tiny remnants of brush, wood, or a few branches of desolated trees, for anything to fuel a cooking fire. I thought of how the relentless outward and upward quest for wood, whether

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