Progress is not always....

The last post was a little short and a little quick.  But I wanted to get it out while I thought of it and saw it.  So yesterday and today I had the opportunity to think about the First Nations, their positions on "progress" and the use of their natural resources, as well as the resources around me. 

I walked both days around a park near my house.  This was an old park.  It was about a three mile loop around a pond and swamp.  As I walked the first time, I was with my son.  We looked at the ducks and the geese and he asked me about the park.  The park had been an amusement park at one time for the nearby city.  People would take the trolley out and spend the day on amusements.  In the winter, they would ice skate.  It was just far enough out of town to be an adventure, and close enough to be convenient.  The Pennsylvania Canal also ran through the park, so commerce took place at a slow pace in the same area. 

Through the years, the amusement park gave way.  It seems people found other amusements.  The park became a swamp and, at one time, a dump.  The pond filled in more and more and is now quite shallow in terms of water, although there is probably a good 5 or 6 feet of mud. 

The second day as I walked, I remarked on how the herons were fishing in the canal and right behind the canal was a busy industrial road dotted with truck terminals, a gasoline tank farm and a railroad yard.  I also noted how there was now two interstate highways ringing the park.  All the noise and pollution.  I recalled that the reason the pond is filling in is that housing subdivisions and commercial development has caused a lot of runoff to come down the creek in high rains. 

That was the first time I started to think that progress is not always progress. 

Then I walked by the Nature Center and realized how I was walking on paved trails, the swamp was covered by boardwalks and there were plans to finish the chipped path with some sort of more permanent surface.  We humans were changing even the nature that we decided to protect and keep.  There was no part of what formerly existed that was left untouched by human interaction. 

To be sure, the park is one of the biggest reasons I moved where I now live.  I love the park and walk, run, bike, canoe or otherwise use the park every week.  The people who work there are good people who care about the environment.  The point is that progress....as we know it....is not always progress.