Heartsick and Scared
A long time ago there was a young girl who found everything about the ocean magical. The more she learned the more she wanted to learn. She played in tidal pools with hermit crabs, searched for starfish on the jetty rocks and swam underwater with her eyes open until they stung from the saltwater.
Eventually, she learned about the wetlands and estuaries from a marine science camp and fell in love all over again. She learned how the wetlands act as nurseries for many of the aquatic creatures she’d come to love and how they protect the mainland from bad weather coming in from the ocean. It thrilled her to see how all of a sudden the grassy salt marsh hay stopped and the longer, beach grass started. Watching fiddler crabs scurry from hole to hole dragging their big claw was comical and always brought a smile to her face.
She went to college for Marine Biology and learned more and more. While there though she realized that this love could not be translated into a job. Many of the professors turned her off to the program and she found other interests. She sill loved the ocean, the wetlands and all it had to teach her but she wanted to learn about it on her terms.
Today, she stares at the pictures from the oil spill and watches it kill everything the wetlands she loves. She feels a murderous rage for the people that allowed this to happen. She is even more angry at the people that try to play it off as some sort of natural occurrence. Watching the oil creep towards the shore and spread out in the currants reminds her of ‘The Nothing’ that was consuming Fantastica in ‘The Neverending Story’. When she thinks of the death that will cover the wetlands for years to come tears spring to her eyes and her heart feels as if it is being squeezed by a horrible meaty fist.
That girl is me. I am heartbroken at the knowledge that not only will so much death blanket the area but that it will continue to do so for years and years. The ecosystems will be changed forever and while amazingly resilient, their recovery will not satisfy the instant gratification this world craves. I worry that after a year, people will look at the area and decide that it is then ok to further poach the wetlands for MORE oil. They will not give the area the time it needs to heal and it will be lost and dead forever. I am very scared for what this means for all the wetlands and oceans. This is what ‘drill baby drill’ has gotten us.