I took this picture one evening while watering the flowers around the walkway to our front porch. My eye was drawn to the small, colorful flower growing out of a small gap between the stones of the walkway.
There were many quotes (and scenes) from Jurassic Park that stuck in my mind, but that one frequently crops up because I’m so fascinated by nature’s reclamation of human spaces.
Some times ago, the History Channel aired a program called Life After People. Through CGI, it showed what would happen to bastions of civilization over the course of centuries if we vanished or abandoned those places, and modeled the outcomes based on real-world examples. As much as man has been able to shape the Earth to our will, the reality is that we are just leasing our space from the indomitable encroachment of nature. We only need to think about how quickly our yards and gardens would become overgrown if we did not mow or tend them to realize that truth.
In some ways, the title of this entry should end with “to heal itself.” We interrupt the natural order of things through our machinations, but I do understand that much of what we’ve done has been borne out of survival. Shelters were built to protect us from the environment, brush cleared (mowing) to keep predators away or provide a clearer view of their approach, irrigation was used to help grow more food, etc. We intervene because our needs do not operate as a part of a natural cycle, but if we stopped nature would shed itself of our effect and re-balance herself once again. She’s trying to do it every day as it is.