aozora.umikaze
yuugure
Sometimes the earth reminds us that we’re on a planet. It reminds us that we are only one being on a massive celestial body holding more than six billion other beings, a body that’s out in the cold blankness of space orbiting a nearby star. It’s rarely a gentle reminder; it’s always a bit of a shock…but probably never as big a shock as it ought to be.
We’ve made ourselves bigger than we really are. It used to be once we were beyond shouting distance of another person, we were out of touch. Now we’ve learned hundreds of ways to communicate across vast distances. It used to be once the sun set we were limited to the campfire. Now we’ve learned hundreds of ways of bringing light into the darkest parts of the world. We easily forget how small our world can be…how small we can be…when we’re back to the campfire and shouting distance.
But as large as we’ve made ourselves, even though we can see and talk around the globe, we’re still limited. Only a few other planets are within shouting distance, only a few are close to the campfire. Being able to shout all the way around this globe is a small trick. And sometimes the earth reminds us of that.
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, greg fallis and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
