Posted on 22/01/05
Buried truths
The news and photographs of bodies being pulled from the mud in Aceh can be almost incomprehensible. Often it is an individual's account -- the girl who saved herself from drowning in Sri Lanka by holding on to a swimming dog's leg -- that makes a vast tragedy seem, at least fleetingly, real. A wall of mud coming down off a mountain in California or here in British Columbia brings the catastrophic power of nature closer to home. But it's worth remembering, if one is looking for a redeeming factor in the forces of nature, that our environment is not always destructive -- sometimes it preserves; and through that preservation we have learned much about the past, and the societies we lived in.
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