The ragged child rises from the dust-covered, rusty 
metal axle she had been resting on and glances
furtively behind before she makes her way slowly across the flagstone courtyard. The ceremonies of flag raising and bringing in the new year have not been performed here in almost a decade now. With the destruction wrought by the exploitation of more and more of the earth’s resources, raging storms and fires had swept across the land. The air became successively more filled with particulate matter and the rising temperatures and lack of rain had caused widespread illness amongst her people. Very few are left now, in this town.
Walking across the courtyard she recalls the stories her Grandmother had told her of days long ago. Days when the air was filled with birdsong in the morning and the air was so crisp and sweet it intoxicated you just to take a deep breath in the cool morning mist.
They drank from artesian springs and swift little streams that meandered down the forest covered hillside where a highrise now stood. Families spent time together at meals and said grace in thankfulness for the food that nature had provided for them. Days and evenings during holidays or Sundays were spent visiting neighbours and one could always count on the fiddles being brought out and a fife or two.
People knew one another; really knew one another. They communicated and passed on wisdom and knowledge from the elders to the younger ones. They lived in close association with nature and the creatures around themselves. Many stories were told by the light of a woodfire at night and Mothers sang lullabies to babies while rocking them in old fashioned cradles. Each meal was a time to give thanks once more, communicate of the days events and catch up with loved ones.
The ragged child can’t imagine those days. She’s never known them and the thought that a family unit once shared all meals together or took time to be close to one another and pay attention to who the other members really are, is far beyond her grasp. This child has grown up in the last age, the age of information.
Morals and role models were gleaned where-ever she could find them; usually in the form of a hero in a video game or on the screen of the latest technological advance.
She never really knew her family members. She knows what they looked like and how their voices sounded at the end of a long stressful day, however she’s never really ‘known’ them.
The rape of one’s soul is more deadly than that of one’s body.
The child stops, and her eyes stare into a distant horizon. Waving branches of the last surviving trees and billowy grey clouds come to her view as she wonders once more about the world of her Grandmother’s childhood.
A world where there was clean water to drink and it was free for the taking. A world where the air didn’t hurt your lungs or bring on an asthma attack. A world where parents still took the time to read to their children and families sat together in the evenings talking , walking or playing a board game.
None of that matters now she reminds herself as the steadily growing ache 
in her stomach urges her to continue on in a search for food. Her mouth is dry and she wonders where to find something to drink.
In her Grandmother’s day she could have gone to a river or a stream or a fresh spring. Those days are gone, she reminds herself.
The daylight is waning and soon there will be no light. She glances around in desperation as she searches for not only food and drink, but also a place she could go to spend the dark night. There are no sounds.
The last bird died long ago, being unable to adapt to a world that had rapidly destroyed the wintering grounds of thousands upon thousands of the world’s species of birds and insects.
The child is growing weary now and pauses once more to sit on the steps of a large building which now sits vacant and silent. She rests her chin on her upturned hands and, as an air of total resignation comes over her, she lays down on the cool concrete and drifts off into dreams of an earth from long ago….....
Does this seem like a science fiction story that could not possibly ever take place? Why does it seem so unreal ? It’s happening now, as we speak. The world of the ragged child’s Grandmother is long gone.
It’s no longer safe to drink from streams or artesian springs and water everywhere is gotten from stores or heavily chlorinated, chemical-laced, municipal supplies.
The oceans are heavily polluted and creatures like the last remaining white St. Lawrence Beluga whales are considered ‘living’ toxic waste. Species are becoming extinct at a rate of up to or exceeding 10,000 per year entirely due to the actions mankind is inflicting upon the earth.
While we search for the next great oil reserve or exhaust the ones presently known, all life forms around us are suffering and dying and yet we plod greedily onwards.
We build bigger and bigger houses, consume more and more goods including meat and dairy products, two of the largest factors in the destruction of the earth and her resources. While people become more and more unhealthy and strive for the consumption of more and more goods, the land, sea and air around us are paying the price.
Last year, 50,000 free copies of Al Gore’s video ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ were refused by the National Science Teacher’s Association in the USA citing that it would place “unnecessary risk upon the NSTA capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters.” Surprisingly, or not, one of those supporters happens to be the Exxon Mobil Corp.
What is this saying to the world and to the young people of the USA when children the world over are being allowed and required to view this film through their schools and yet not in the USA?
I can only shake my head in sadness that the powers that be, namely the giant oil conglomerates, are the very same ones that are pillaging the world and it’s people, hungry for resources to feed a growing need for bigger and bigger houses, and more and more consumer goods and more and more vehicles and more and more jet travel ad infinitum.
The piper is on his way, looking to be paid, and some say he is here now knocking at the door. He’s not going to be held back for many more years and burying a busy head in the sand never worked for anyone. We, each one of us humans, cannot continue to rape and pillage this earth. We have NO right and the mentality that says we should get whatever we can, while we can, is irresponsible and needs to be changed NOW.
What is your footprint on the earth? Dare you take this test, Ecological Footprint Quiz, and then do you dare to make changes in your lifestyle for not only the present world around you and it’s creatures, but also for the generations coming up behind you?
Or are you too busy to pull your head out of the sand and admit that you don’t own the earth and DO NOT have the right to exploit it nor promote it’s exploitation to those around you? What are you teaching your children?
What example are you setting for your families and peers at home, at work and in your community ?
Change starts with each of us and while we have a voice, heart, mind and soul, it is our paramount responsibility to be an agent for change. Although many of the world’s leading scientists believe our window of opportunity to save the earth as we know it, came and went 15 years ago , it's up to each of us to take steps as intelligent and compassionate beings to halt or slow down as much as possible the ravaging of our only home, before all of our choices are taken away from us and the world becomes that of the 'ragged child's' in my story above.
The rape of one’s soul leaves a deeply embedded mark that bleeds and bleeds into all areas of a being as it barely grasps onto what is left. It tries to normalize a life again; to remember the taste of cauliflower and the smell of lilacs; things it used to love freely. The ragged child drifts off in a deep slumber and wanders in a green world of birdsong and swift brooks, where everything is plentiful and clean. The abundance and diversity of this imaginary land is one which begins to restore the pieces of her soul that were bled away when the wounds were cut deep and sharp long ago in her waking world.
In the above story, the ragged child could very well be the grand-daughter I may one day have. I'm not yet 50 years old, and yet in my years here, I've seen the artesian springs I drank from as a child dry up or become off limits due to pollution.
I've seen the clean streams that meander through the woods disappear along with the woods themselves. I've seen wetland after wetland drained and developed on. Yes, one day I'll tell stories of my girlhood days to my grandchildren; days when birdsong filled the air (the mornings are almost silent now compared to those days of not that many years ago) and mighty rivers hadn't yet been dammed up and diverted.
Days when blueberries and wildflowers were still abundant and the spring evenings sang with frogs calling across the thicket. Those days were not all that long ago, and the world my future grandchildren will be inheriting looks nothing like the days of my youth.
©2007JoSmith
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