we only have one there wont be another

WE ONLY HAVE ONE THERE WONT BE ANOTHER


my historian brother has this saying
take care of your tools

we need a saying about our mother earth
take care of your earth
there wont be another one

on earth day
my wife she and i didnt go to an earth day celebration
we had planned to attend the one here on sunday in
santa barbara
where the earth day event happened that stirred the
earth day celebration in the late 60s

we were invited to a brunch in montecito
but first we did a short hike
up from the house onto a large hill that overlooks
this whole area
looking out over the ocean
then turning 180 degrees to see the mountains and valleys
you can see the beauty of this place
what makes it so special

looking way off into the distance
there they sit
those oil platforms
that were the cause of the event that triggered earth day

as they were drilling there in the late 60s
something went wrong
and
gallons and gallons and gallons of oil spilled out
into the ocean
thanks to winter storms
the oil worked its way to the beaches
they say the oil was so thick you could hardly hear the waves

the wind carried the oil higher onto the beaches further than
usual even for high tide

killing lots of birds fish seals dolphins and other animals
completely devastating the local economy for months
for years

the public outrage sparked the earth day movement

having lived here during the devastating thomas fire
and the following mudslides
seeing the destruction
seeing how devastating it was to the ecomomy

i cant even imagine what it was like after that oil spill here

the beauty we were looking at
the beauty that makes this place paradise
to think it was wiped out that day
for a long long time

i think back to stories my dad use to tell about the ouachita
river in southern arkansas before the oil boom hit in the
early part of the century
story of the fishing and hunting there
that was destroyed once the oil boom kicked in
completely destroying the beauty of the river for generations
lucky now it is recovering almost a century later

i remember a creek near my grandparents house in lawson arkansas
that flowed eventually into that ouachita river
it never ever had fish in it
it was always covered with this oily sheen from the
oil wells up stream
later in life when i went back there years later
the stream was clear
again a generation maybe two later

then i read this morning that the plastic floating in the pacific ocean
is about 620,000 square miles in size
a smart kid came up with an idea on how to harvest the stuff
bringing it back to shore over time for recycling

we cant keep doing this stuff to our earth
it is resilient
but it has its limits im sure

as has been proven for years
we cant wait on industry to take care of our earth for us
we have to make them take care of it

commonly they wait for some disaster like the above before they
are forced to fix things

lets not let them destroy our earth

its interesting that the hunting and fishing groups are some of the
best conservation folks for the earth
they realize like i do that if they dont take care of mother earth
there wont be much to hunt or fish

there may be another earth out there somewhere in that dark
black sky we see at night
but
we aint ever going to get there

lets take care of this one

the organicgreen doctor