Ecosystem Notes #2: Traces
Social Leadership Daily - Day #826
Everything leaves a trace: footprints, scars, litter, silence, splinters, tracks, gaps, erosion, splits, order, linearity, stacks, separation, death, scent, hair, silhouette, and dust.
In this way, to walk through the forest is to walk through snapshots, shadows, or what came before. To follow in footsteps, or disturb patterns, to degrade or denude, to witness decay.
This disturbance, by hand, hoof, storm, and fire, is part of the dynamic nature of the ecosystem. Sometimes deliberate - as with the controlled burning of the heather - sometimes simply through movement, as with the plants trodden underfoot as the ponies roam.
Some disturbance is to create pathways, signs, comfort, convenience, and cultural norms of beauty, through the control of surface, vista, and texture. At other times, the disturbance is about control: to fence, deny, or separate and own.
The disturbance of the weather happens within a meta-structure of seasons, and a longer term pattern of climate change.
The disturbance of my afternoon walk happens within a micro structure of my footprints, and the crumbs from my gingerbread biscuit.
But in every moment, this system is in microscopic motion. Earthly, frozen, surly, alive.
#WorkingOutLoud on Ecosystem Reflections: exploring our interdependency, and the nature of dynamic systems.