Last of the Wilds

 We've only been here for a short while, the lives we lead are borrowed, the places we conquer but fleeting. We too shall fade into oblivion one day, you understand. There shall one day rise a new species who reign victorious over the lands we left behind.

165 million years ago, those conquerors were the dinosaurs, roaming the earth, the lush jungles, the harsh terrain, devouring what they needed to and nothing more. Now it is we. But we are not as kind as those reptiles. By the time our reign ends, there will be nothing left of the wilderness; all that shall be remembered are the skeletons of trees, and the shells of mountains, for they will be taken over with metal and glass and plastic. Glass boxes stacked upon one another to provide shelter for those who once knew how live beneath nothing but the stars. It is a sad fate.

I feel like one of the Elders who look at the world and lament because it is not the way it used to be. The spirit within me feels ancient, connected to the leaves of oldest trees, and the roots of the mountains which stood strong during history's worst catastrophes, and it is as though my spirit cries out with those leaves and those mountains; as they feel themselves dying, I too feel that I am dying. In a sense I am; so are we all. We cannot see our own destruction until it is upon us.

An invocation of wise spirits, brought to being by song and fire, cannot help us now. Prayers to the lights which fall from the sky are inane, nothing can bring us the relief we need. So I'll take to treading the lonely shores of the Earth, where no footprints but mine have ever marred the sand, I, transformed into a being of wisdom and innocence by the Elder spirits, for they recognise me as one of their own, and then I shall walk along the banks of a frozen river also, weeping for the generations for whom snow will be but a legend.

In the end, I shall climb one of those high mountains, where the summit is graced by the sky's curtains of light, and from there I shall embark on a journey into a learning, into the astral plane of the ancient spirits who are wise, who look down upon their descendants and grieve for them. Together the spirits and I shall turn our backs on them all, for they have brought about their own perdition.We cannot sit and watch the inevitable destruction of the last of the wilds, for we are the last of the wilds.