As I fly across the country, it is hard to find a piece of land that humans haven't touched and changed for their own use. How small any individual voices seem in the face of a whole nation. It's a machine that we don't know who is controlling, ever going forward, destroying people, creatures, and land in its path. A few voices try to speak up, set back the clock, save a few people and animals from being trampled in the wake of progress.

All we can do is make little differences where we can, hoping it will slow the chug of the machine of progress.

The plane rise higher, our streets and cities obscured in white, endless white cloud. For a moment I forget our human problems. The plane, bounces, sways, and drops at the whims of the wind and cloud. I wonder at the enormity of life, of its beauty and wonder how any of it is existing. It's a wonder if you think about all these things working together, moving, living. Life.

The clouds are dense and blinding, reflecting the light of our star. One star of many billions reflected on these constantly changing, moving, fleeting clouds. And I am just one of the billions, trillions, innumerable beings flying through.

Farms, endless farms stretch across the landscape. Lines and patches of trees border them and millions of houses, dot the landscape. Then the clouds mask them again.

How long will our influence on the planet last? Have we forever changed it, or will we too pass like the clouds? At some point, all living things move on and change. What did the earth look like before us, and what will it be after? Was it lonely, or was it free and untainted?

A massive river cuts through the farms and development. You would hope that this river is still untouched, but even this, humans have tamed, controlling the banks where they can control their flow and shape. It seems humans fear what they cannot control and everything they touch they must control. There is no give only take in a society of control.

Life was not meant to be controlled but flow freely waxing and waning as it wills. But life's unpredictability and seeming wildness frighten us, humans. We are the one creature on this planet who are unwilling to trust life. We are so out of place from everything that has learned to adapt and flow with life, but we have tried to adapt life to us.

Our roads slice the landscape our farms checker it, we humans like our straight lines and squares, we can fathom them and manage them. We are simple creatures who do not understand why the river flows, how it weaves and winds shrinking and growing, coming together and splitting apart. Our highways move us from one point to the next on one long straight line that pays no attention to the shape of the land around it.

We've forgotten what it means to wander. Wandering may not seem efficient, but it is the most beneficial, the organic movement of life; you never know where it leads, but it will always take you to the best places, ones our puny brains couldn't imagine. Wandering is beautiful.

The clouds wander too, changing, growing, some to massive storms, some shrinking into mere whisps and dissipating. Some are long and flat, nearly standing still, others are fluffy and pushed by the breeze wherever it decides to take them, and the clouds just go with it, wandering above the land.