Margie’s Meanderings: 2/17/2023
While camping in the Smoky Mountains, we got to see a gang of elk! We caught them on a foggy morning as they munched grass in a field. They inched back towards the woods as the sun came up, moving through a homestead the park had set up to show how people farmed and lived.
The farm is home to chickens and roosters, but each morning and evening, the elk take over. It cracked me up to see chickens scurrying between elk legs. Neither the elk nor the chickens were the least bit concerned with the other’s presence.
There’s a line in the movie, “The English Patient.” I can’t remember the exact words, but the idea is, “Cartographers create maps. Politicians create borders.”
Many events since then have reminded me of this idea—people fleeing violence in Sudan and Honduras, Africans walking vast distances in search of water, and now this devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria. Life-altering conditions, whether man-made or natural, cause humans to migrate. A map of our world defines bodies of water and land masses. Moving from a desert to a mountain, from a beach to a forest… or from a grassy field through a homestead into the woods, is an easy thing. Only man-made laws claim these things to be impossible.
Our world’s population has increased so much, there are no longer empty spaces to which humankind can migrate to escape drought, famine, and rising tides. Throughout time, necessity and innovation have caused man to change entrenched ways and thinking.This might be one of those times where we need to change, to rethink our politically drawn boundaries and the laws that dictate them.
If we are to survive as a planet, we need to have the same care for the whole of the planet as we do for ourselves. We need each other, each unique skill and access to resources.
We humans are an innovative, resourceful lot! As we let unconditional love, instead of fear and willfulness, lead our thoughts and actions, we will find solutions to aid our fellow man without bringing harm to ourselves. Afterall, I’ve seen chickens scurry safely through elk hooves!