Alaska’s wildlife is awesome. And so is its railroad.
I mean, once upon a time, about 125 years ago, a few people stood near Seward, looked north at impenetrable forests, immense mountains, deep river gorges, and vast tundras and said:
Yeah, sure, good idea. Let’s build a railroad from here to Fairbanks.
And they did. Not easily. But somehow.
Equipment failed. Financing collapsed. Workers died.
Still, they persevered and finally completed the mind-boggling project—470 miles of iron rails supported by millions of nailed ties, running over hand-built gravel beds.
Awesome.
And I haven’t even gotten to the train itself. That, too, is awesome. Just consider how many steps and missteps it took to build a reliable locomotive.
Birds build nests, bees build hives, beavers build dams, but with all due respect to our awesome fellow creatures, we are the only ones who build trains, planes, and automobiles.
And a whole lot of other cool stuff.
(Yo-yos come to mind.)
We are the human animal. Imaginative. Inventive. Artistic.
And annoying.
We strut upon the earth like gods. And, oh, by the way, we also build bombs.
But let’s set those inconvenient truths aside for the moment and celebrate human creativity.
For example, consider the devices, infrastructure, and personnel it takes to get you to and around Alaska. Because unless you’re Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, or John Muir, you’re not walking into Alaska on foot.
Of course, there are a lot of human accomplishments to celebrate besides plane, trains, automobiles, and yo-yos. I could list a hundred more, but I won’t. I’m sure you have your favorites.
(If you’d like, list a few in the comment window below.)
Yes, there is a time to applaud human ingenuity, but there is also a time to ponder this: Humans are one of (give or take) 1.5 million “known” species on earth. Of those, 1.05 million are insects.
If ants disappeared overnight, the earth would collapse—an ecological catastrophe. There’d be no getting over it.
But if humans disappeared overnight, the earth wouldn’t miss a beat. The earth simply doesn’t need us. We are guests. Yes, we bring a lot of awesome things to the table, but still, we are guests.
We have a welcomed place in the family of things.
It’s a privilege.
It’s okay to be proud.
It’s not okay to be vain.
(Or annoying.)
Consider the ant.
And be humble.
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See Paula’s photo (Aialik Glacier) on home page. Scroll down to “visual explorations.”
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