Of such is the kingdom of Heaven

Sinking Roots in Shifting Sand

On Santa Rosa Island the sunrise provided much needed centering for my soul. I've been in Pensacola just seven weeks but I want to feel more rooted. The sands of the barrier island shift with the tides and that is how I feel these times are for my family and I as we face more frequent storms and for this nation as an awful rent in our political and cultural ground opened with the Republican Convention.

There is an elephant in our living rooms, and it is not wearing red, white, and blue. Like any dyfunctional family, we are not talking about the bigger issue facing us as a species: a warming planet.

To look at these photos is to question that anything could ever destroy such beauty and wildlife.

The waving golden sea oats and barrier dunes are all but gone except on the Gulf Shores National Sea Shore parkland. These dunes, gone for development on these fragile islands where water carves their contour with every incoming tide, once held the fierce hurricane winds in check along with wetlands. In these grassy fingers loggerhead babes hatch and waddle to the sea, terns, skimmers, and pipers all lay their eggs in the white sand and tangled roots. When the dunes go, a whole chorus of animals will go with them.

When visitors or children come to these islands they do not know what should be here, what may be greatly reduced in number or diversisty. Each generation is losing a priceless memory of what was created over eons of evolution and experiment, the earnest strivings of untold numbers of plants and animals striving and thriving through the good times and bad, living and reproducing Wonderkind to populate and join a pageant of life on our planet. Will the knowledge of how to live properly on the earth, with respect for all living things, with appreciation for the very soil, rock, lake and ocean upon which we have found our fortune ... will it become like the ghost crab, a faint outline on the shifting sands of time?