Earth. Our one and only home. Forget about going boldly where no one has gone before, this is it. Even if we were to find another suitable planet for our existence, history suggests we would strip it of its resources and fight over who gets to claim ownership.
Many civilizations have proven it’s possible to live within the means of the local environment, but our modern society has created demands which leave tremendous scars on our planet. Forest clearcutting and strip mining would be major examples of this. Copper, a material we have made essential to our way of living, does not exist in large, solid masses, so can only be extracted through the process of strip mining.
For this week’s challenge, I could have chosen one of many images which I feel portray the special qualities and beauty of this planet. I kept coming back to this one, however. Earth has this magical quality of rejuvenation, and after we have vanished, will reclaim itself.
This is my hands-down favorite image ever taken from an airplane. On an early morning flight into Salt Lake City, we passed the Kennecott open pit mine. After copper is exposed, the oxidation process turns it into a complexity of colors. This should have been a blight on the land, but all I can see is beauty in this shot.
Need a frame of reference? Along the line extending to the upper right corner, you will see four dots. Each of those is a truck capable of moving hundreds of tons of dirt, and having tires that are taller than a semi-trailer.
May 12, 2016 at 6:08 pm
This is an amazing shot, Steve. At first, I thought it was a Van Gogh painting!
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May 12, 2016 at 9:48 pm
I’ll take that as an extremely high compliment. Thank you, Eliza!
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May 13, 2016 at 5:08 pm
You certainly may!
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May 13, 2016 at 1:26 am
What a paradox. The shot is beautiful, more like a painting than a photo. But what we do to the earth is just awful.
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May 13, 2016 at 7:13 am
Exactly – even when have treated the Earth in the worst way, she works her magic to cover it up. 🙂
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May 13, 2016 at 12:12 pm
That’s such a great point. I’ll have to take this more positive view. It’s like the island of floating trash in the Pacific. It’s actually starting to have its own ecosystem of creatures colonizing it.
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May 15, 2016 at 7:08 pm
I hadn’t heard of that until now, but that further demonstrates the point about this planet’s wonderful abilities. Thank you Nadia, for bringing that to my attention!
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May 16, 2016 at 3:23 pm
I never thought of scars as beautiful and artistic…What an amazing and unimaginable shot indeed…It was taken through the colorful artist’s lens…Thank goodness for forgiveness and healing….
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May 17, 2016 at 6:57 pm
The powers of healing can be tremendous!
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May 24, 2016 at 4:01 pm
What a special and surprising view you had from the airplane here. It looks so beautiful, I first thought it was a painting! (But maybe the work down there is not so good for Mother Earth?!?)
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May 25, 2016 at 10:12 pm
I always felt this one looked more like a painting than a photograph, which makes me think more about Earth’s beauty than man’s destruction under these circumstances. Thank you!
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