THE SHAPE OF THINGS
Rex Burress
It seems to me...the shape of things could be compared to the state of things, as in the State of the Union annual message, or the physical state of a human body when trying to get in a healthier shape. The shape of things defines our visible world!
The state-of-shape-ads on the media are commonly seen in weight-reducing programs--with the 'before and after' picture enticements. The state of the world is more serious and depends on political climate and waring factions that culminates in tangible shapes, quite evident in the towns of Syria that have been bombed to ruble, or after a flood, like the 2017 hit of River Bend Park, Oroville.
Of course, earthquake and erosion forces are constantly rearranging landscapes everywhere, and as John Muir said, “Nature is ever at work building up and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest, but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful shape into another.” I don't know if the Oroville Dam Spillway will ever get into its previous shape again, but the new temporary channel that the water carved through picturesque rock formations has created a rather dramatic scene!
The shape of a river, in one sense, is the result of water taking the easiest way out, meandering toward the sea under the pull of gravity and the push of rain. Erosion by wind, water, and weather creates fantastic shapes all over the world--the Grand Canyon, the Sahara, the Dead Sea, and sculptured mountains in nearly every country, terminating in the Himalayan heights. “Little drops of water; little grains of sand,/Make the mighty ocean; make the mighty land...” Erosion and time reshapes the world!
We hold fond memories in our minds of pleasant places we have been, but invariably, when we go back to the river of our youth or the hometown, it is not like it was. Sometimes its better, sometimes worse. The old Dye Bridge crossing Grand River in Missouri, where I spent many memorable moments stalking the wild catfish in the deep shady hole under the bridge, is gone in a replacement project. I see photographs sent by Trenton folk, and even the curve of the river bend has changed as the flow charges through the sandbars, shifting from season to season.
The old No Creek channel on our Grundy County farm, where I frolicked in nature as a boy, was bulldozed some years after I moved west. On a visit, I was going to check out my old stomping grounds, but from the highway, I could see all those trees that I grew up with had been pushed into the deep cut-off creek as the new owner wanted more fields to plant, little concerned with the history or the animal refuges in the buckbrush bottoms. I never went back to see what shape the land took because my dreamland had taken a new turn. A cornfield is not a free flowing wilderness.
Similar land usage systems have changed the shape of many landscapes. It's the unstoppable agricultural necessities that can change an oak-studded valley and wetlands into vast fields to supply the food needs of expanding populations. Even mountains can disappear in the name of mining, a very real possibility as I discovered near the Death Valley, Rhyolite ghost-town, where fine gold in Bullfrog Mountain caused the entire mountain to be pulverized. Wonderstone mountain in Nevada disappeared due to commercial excavations to recover the gemstone. What can be assured when even a Yosemite valley in our National Park can become a Hetch-Hetchy reservoir?
Change is less radical in woodsy niches near your home, and seeking out those pause places will provide comfort, but near or far, be vigilant against over-exploitation and exploiters!
“The battle we have fought, and are still fighting for the forests and waterways is a part of the eternal conflict between right and wrong, and we cannot expect to see the end of it. So we must count on watching and striving for the trees and the denizens of the wild, and should always be glad to find anything so surely good and noble to strive for.” --John Muir