The beach sometimes feels like an untouched utopia. Sometimes when I walk far enough to where there are no people, I find myself in this fantasy world where I feel like a stranded person alone on a mysterious island. Running after a plover (I think this little friend is a white-fronted plover (Charadrius marginatus)) trying to photograph him or her on their lunch scouting, I was reminded of my link to this world.
Standing almost proudly (disembodied), someone's shoes looked at me with almost distasteful scorn.
These shoes got me thinking though. How would it be to walk in this plover's shoes? And, where are our footsteps leading us?
It is easy to get bogged down by our global predicament (read: climate change, and so on) but in some sense, we need to get our heads out of the metaphorical sand (or litter of our own creation). Walking behind this little friend I was again reminded of the utter beauty of nature. Such a small little bird, running away quickly before the violent waves crash on him/her, I can only marvel at the small victories.
Naively, I trust that people will wake up before it is too late. Our shoes are yet to walk down the path of self-destruction. Our footsteps are yet to be printed in the sand. Naively, I hope that we can preserve the utter beauty that surrounds us.
(Some of the photographs "screamed" to be in black and white.)
(Here with the rest of the images. Below, I will conclude my philosophical reflection, if you want to read them!)
(Playing hide-and-seek!)
Doing some research on this little friend, I closed my books and tabs on Google, as I got the sudden urge to not look deeper. They are not threatened (yet) but we as humans are slowly destroying (directly and indirectly) their habitat. Where will it stop? Thinking about it for too long makes one rather depressed. As the problem is bigger than us, we can feel useless and question our own ability to change things. But I keep on seeing the beauty; we cannot give up. Things have to change.
Alas, here we are with no stopping the "system's" insatiable need to consume and consume more. Always more. Never enough. Why can the beauty of raw nature and the beauty of not-knowing (unknown, ignorance, and so on) not be enough? Alas, some must hoard everything until nothing is left. Is it not Freud and then Lacan that wrote about humans being fueled by our desire to consume that what we lack? And what we lack is essentially always more desire, the desire always shifts; in the end, nothing can fill the lack in us. We are lack, but should we be happy with this? Because this just merely confirms our worst nightmare: we will consume everything so that there will be nothing left. No! Let us not go here.
Sorry for the depressing turn of events! Walking in their shoes, we might wonder what they see. Can we see ourselves in their shoes? Can they see us? Privileged, we can see them indifferently carry on to the next meal, avoiding the next wave. I look at the shoes and I think to myself: We can always choose a different path to walk on.
All of the photographs were taken by me with my old Nikon D300 and a Tamron 300mm zoom lens. The musings are also my own, albeit inspired by a pair of neglected and forgotten shoes. Stay safe, and be the change in the world you want to see. Happy birding!