How do we tell when a building is old? I
have spent the last few days in old Spanish towns built during Midieval
times; towns surrounded by thick walls within which lie huge castles
where once sat the Kings of old upon their thrones. Towns that were
constructed centuries upon centuries ago to ward away the barbarians.
And they are certainly showing their age.
The once polished wooden walls with their brilliant silver handles
and studs have now rusted, and their sheen has vanished; TĄthe colors of
the intricately embroidered tapestries adorning the throne rooms have
dulled; the moats have all run dry and small tendrils of foliage creep
their way into the cracks of what was once an imprenetrable fortress
wall.
Some structures lay simply in ruins, naught but piles of rocks with
only a mere semblance of their previous form. But that is all a matter
of time. Upon this planet of ours, nothing is still, regardless of how
much so it may appear to be. Structures built today will crumble and
fade in a comparative blink of an eye. From the moment is pulled up
from its place of rest and relocated somewhere else, the Earth begins
its work to bring it back into its clutches, along with anything that it
may well be newly attatched to. Call it entropy, call it decay, call
it what you will, it is the force of nature that works every moment to
return what has been taken from it.
And it is a powerful force indeed. We have professions dedicated to
keeping this force at bay. It is why we have caretakers and maintenance
crews and even simple gardeners to keep out the weeds. To leave
something unattended is to leave it at the mercy of the Earth. Our
strongest buildings can be slowly taken apart by the seemingly gentle
force of a tree looking to take root in the ground, and once we are not
there to look after what we have made, it shall be reclaimed by the
Earth.
When we look bac, at the relics left by civilizations past we see
this process at work. We see our thousand-year-old structures still
standing and think ourselves invincible. But that time is nothing on a
geological scale. Or a cosmic scale. And that which is left pales in
comparison to that which was; I imagine the original inhabitants of
these places would be ashamed of how much their immortal societies have
withered.
It makes you wonder. What will our world look like in a hundred
years after we're gone? And we will go. We like to think of ourselves
as everlasting, prepared for anything the Earth can throw at us. But as
recent years have shown, we still have a long ways to go; where the
Earth's natural processes take hundreds or thousands of years to erode
out architecture, a strong hurricane, earthquake, volcano or tsunami can
dismantle our cities in mere seconds and wash our history all away. We
will not live forevermore. So what will be left of us a hundred years
after we're gone? How about a thousand years? And how long until our
societies have decayed to the point that we ourselves wouldn't even
recognize them?
Because despite all of the campaigns that we run, and all of the
green policies we pass, one thing remains true. And it remains as true
now as it was true centuries and millenia ago. As it is true every day
of the week.
We are no match for the environment.
