P52 Week 18 - Landscapes and Nature

This week’s P52 prompt states that landscape/nature photography shows “little to no human activity or presence of any sort.” On the Chief Sealth trail, which runs right behind my townhouse, the signs of man are all around. The trail itself runs along a power line: clones of skeletal Eiffel tower-like structures linked with electric wire necklaces. The trail’s swath is a couple of hundred feet wide with a one-lane-car-width black top path running alongside the metal towers. Modest houses abut the trail. I also pass by a church, a grade school and a pea patch on my early morning walk.

But nature abounds alongside the human edifices. Some of the grass on either side of the pavement is waist high; other patches have already had their spring shearing. I smile, remembering how my granddaughter squealed as I swooped her through the softly waving blades, tickling her face. “Again Gaga. Again!” she cried with glee.

I see dozens of earthworms in all stages of hara-kiri, ranging from dried, curved toothpicks to juicy, writhing squiggles, dotting the pavement. I want to urge them to scurry back to the protection of the lush, moist, cool grasses, but they plod on, as if part of some collective destructive ritual, like lemmings tumbling en masse over a cliff and into the sea.

A crow flies by me, completely disinterested in the exposed worms, as if the pavement has somehow tainted them, or perhaps the prey is too easy a catch for her – or is it that she doesn’t want to scratch her beak on the hard tar surface? Instead, she’s much more interested in a discarded sac of garbage and pecks and pokes at it.

I look up and see the early morning sun gleaming on the glorious peak of Mt Rainier. It forms a stunning backdrop to one of the power towers. Sometimes the marring of the mountain-view irritates me, but not today. I ponder humanity and nature and how we must co-exist in harmony.

And as I stroll, I am reminded of another new trail that has recently been reclaimed from an old railroad line in the suburbs east of Seattle. The line ran from Renton north to the Chateau San Michelle Winery in Woodinville and a delightful dinner train used to run its length. I once enjoyed a lovely gourmet steak dinner as the train rolled north. We stopped off to taste some delicious wines at the Chateau and re-boarded the dining car to complete our meal with a scrumptious dessert on the ride back. The train clacking along and whistling at road crossings leant an Orient Express-like atmosphere to the elegant dining experience.

The dinner train was discontinued when construction on a freeway expansion in Renton encroached on the railroad line. The remaining track lines lay abandoned for years.

For a while, there was talk of converting the old railroad to a light rail route to help ease the gridlocks that snarl the Eastside highways with aggravating regularity. The Seattle area has the dubious distinction of ranking in the country’s top five for the worst traffic congestion. The proposed transit plan seemed to make sense as the railroad line was already established and would thus provide some cost savings for the project. But moguls such as Kemper Freeman, who owns much of the downtown in the eastside city of Bellevue, adamantly opposed the mass transit project, claiming it to be a waste of taxpayers money and more evidence of big government’s spending follies. His almighty dollars and power mongering won out and the project was tabled.

Later, the decision was made to convert the old railroad line to a trail, named the Cross Kirkland Corridor. Environmentally sound you say? A wonderful way to increase green belts? Perhaps.

I walked the trail with a friend a few weeks ago. I didn’t like that a large portion of the trail ran by warehouses and commercial areas. But then, how is that different from walking next to power lines on my neighborhood’s Chief Sealth trail? Man and nature must learn to co-exist, I thought to myself, but my emotions were mixed and I voiced them to my friend. I thought that a light rail system along that route would have served the community well.

 The traffic snarls in the Seattle area continue to grow and grow.

And I wonder: how would it be for communities to take planning decisions into discernment, letting go of biases and special interests, and for them to consider what is best for the long term, for the earth, for future generations? Would the result of that discernment be that the old railroad trail might best be served as a light rail line rather that a walking trail?

Hard to say.

And then I think to myself: I, too, have biases; perhaps I’m just as opinionated as Kemper Freeman. How do I get beyond myself and look for the greater good? That is my work – and the work of humanity.