Waimanalo, V-Land, and Beyond

This weekend I camped at V-Land on the North Shore. The only thing that really made it camping was the fact that we slept on the beach. Other than that it was really just cruising and enjoying the unbelievable beauty and power of the land, surf, and sea. The full moon was brighter than I've ever seen it and the entire scene just had a surreal peace to it. I woke up before 6 with the sun rising in front of me and perfect surf; what could be better?

"If only there was more of this left" I thought to myself. And then I realized; there is.

With this I thought back to Waimanalo and the serenity and coexistence I felt there. Everything on the farm working together in harmony with everything else in a sustainable, reusable, wasteless system; again I ask, what could be better?

You see, it has become extremely easy to lose sight of these natural beauties and natural processes. Honestly there is nothing "spectacular" about a sunrise with waves, it happens every morning on this island. Likewise there is nothing "spectacular" about a self-sustaining efficient system, that is the way nature created all systems. Look at the carbon or nitrogen cycle, even the life cycle of plants and animals; all of these things work on a continual loop and everything is recycled, in some way or another, back into the system. Still, this seems revolutionary and unbelievable to us. No waste? Believe it.

What I'm really trying to say here isn't that sunrises and sustainable gardens aren't amazing; they most definitely are and I will be the first to say it. I'm just trying to point out the fact that these are processes originally created and controlled by our Mother Earth. If we had never interferred with these things they would not be spectacular, they would be normal. We would see every sun rise and every nutrient recycled so, I believe, we wouldn't stop in awe at these things. No one here stops in awe today when someone flips on the light switch or throws away a piece of paper or scrap of food; it seems quite ordinary to us, though many still today would find this extraordinary.

Continuing on with the idea of reconnection to nature - maybe that reconnection is key. It seems to me that Mother Earth's natural processes work better than anything we have engineered so why not let her do the designing. Maybe it is in the few untouched places left where the answers can be found to the world's current problems; the only thing is you have to be looking for them, and through the right lense.