Living we celebrate Frank Herbert on our daily walk along the area reclaimed by the EPA & named for the Dune series for which it is named. I've appreciated the numerous bronze quotations from this author embedded along our water walk...vying for attention with the more atmospheric parts of our ecology. This one often catches my attention... it being so currently apropos.
Besides the major ecologic history atop which our Dune Peninsula has been so recently built, our entire waterfront, stretching several miles along the harbor, is nicked & notched by slowly recovering toward something of a healthier ecology. This view, having been sites of the major wood mills of the last century for which Tacoma's economy was known, is more easily reclaimed by water, still messy but certainly less toxic than the slag from the former copper smelter also once nearby.
This shoreline has become a daily visual satisfaction for me from our deck. Still, it presents concrete remnants of the mills' foundations very slowly mellowing into rather romantically archetypal "plinths" in my imagination.
A low tide reveals more of the rotting pilings of the extensive wharves which used to collar the shoreline further beyond our stretch. We are lately seeing active removal of several acres of such ecologic reparation... even as I could easily romanticize these poles as well. What difference is there to those oft photographed painted poles along the canals of Venice? Ah yes, but, yes...the creosote, poisonous to the aquatic wildlife, which they still retain...
No comments:
Post a Comment