Better to Have Loved and Lost?

by Rick Bass December 12, 2007
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immersion wrote on March 12, 2008, 10:56PM : Flag this comment as inappropriate

Change. How much of the landscape altering is change? Natural change? If I were to go back to the places I played in when I was a child and if they were left untouched by development, how much would have changed naturally? Altered by the earth itself changing?

I used to play near a pond with all kinds of creatures. At night we would watch the bats skimming for insects. We would see the reclusive muskrat cutting his way through the algae. Once my brothers caught crawdads. Black and spider like I couldn't imagine eating them. Sometimes there were fish in the pond. We had frog egg fights throwing the gelatinous masses at each other. I once tried to catch a bullfrog the size of a dinner plate. In later years this pond was reduced to a small stream. I would take my son down to experience what I knew to be a vibrant place. He would catch snails and little fish in the stream to put in a glass jar Grandma provided. We later found out these fish were planted there by a concerned lover of this place. He asked my son to return the fish. I explained to my son the change that had taken place there. That this little stream used to be so full and full of life. It fed a pond so large we could ice skate on it in the winter. The stream was diverted but I am not sure where or why. My dad said it had something to do with development. This indeed, was not a example of natural change. Is it better to have loved and lost? No. Perhaps it's better to have known loss and not let it be forgotton.
Ian Wilker wrote on March 13, 2008, 10:02AM : Flag this comment as inappropriate

Immersion -- you make that pond sound a special place indeed; beautifully observed details. As a small boy, my parents took me on regular camping trips to a spot in New Jersey of all places -- there were crawdads, frog sing-a-longs at dusk, iridescent dragonflies... that place had a lot to do with grounding me in the nature-as-cathedral ethic I've had as adult. Thanks for sharing that and jogging my own memories.

-- Ian @ OnEarth