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There’s a disregard for nature that is frightening to me.” My father was a mining engineer for Bethlehem Steel. They had mines and facilities all over the world, so it was not uncommon for him to travel for long stretches to Africa, Europe and South America or Mexico. I think we just got used to the idea of absence, and that to be gone from your family for an extended period of time was not unusual. Nature has always been important to me. It’s where I feel the most settled. As a young buck, being career-oriented and familyoriented I denied it. But even when I had a photography studio I would find myself most comfortable photographing nature. I’m a sensitive being, so there’s a bit of me that’s always looking over my shoulder: are people watching me, are they judging me? In nature it’s just me and God’s beauty, and it’s perfect. There’s a disregard for nature that is frightening to me. We’re not enjoying the gift that we were
put on earth to enjoy. For most of us, rivers now are just something to cross over; they’re seen as an obstruction rather than a life force, but without the rivers and the waters we couldn’t exist. I think that’s my clarion call: that we’ve been given this beautiful Eden and we choose to look away. Animals are thought of as objects, but if one’s able to take the time to observe them, it becomes so obvious that they have a lot of the same emotional feelings and responses that humans do. I watched a bear cub on the riverbanks on Georgian Bay in Ontario, and it was so playful in its responses to its environment. It looked under the bushes and tipped up the rocks, and was so joyous in its freedom and in its learning experience that it had human-like characteristics. A few days later I was rowing past a park and I saw a teenage girl exploring the bank the same way the bear was. It was dumbfounding. I have always thought of my-
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self as a loner. It wasn’t until I was on the water for five days not seeing anybody that I realized how social I was, that I actually did need human interaction to be happy. As my journey continued and I’d run into hardships of extreme heat and weather and the physicality of it, I was amazed to see how many people would come to my rescue. It made me realize that there is empathy in the world and if given an opportunity, people will do the right thing. It has given me hope for the world and the people who occupy it. I’ve lost a lot of my cynicism along the way, and that’s one of the great things I’ve been able to give up. n