“Grandpa, grandpa, tell us a story,” the children squealed.

“What you young ‘uns want to hear about?” Grandpa asked.

“Tell us about the old days, grandpa,” they asked.

And that was enough to set the old man off with his stories about the time before.

Since the beginning, earth’s inhabitants had lived off the land. If there was enough to eat, they flourished, if not they died off. Everything ate something, in life or in death. Things were born, whether from eggs or seeds, things lived, things reproduced, things died. That’s all there was to it. The cycle repeated endlessly.

Now, here comes a creature who learns to manipulate the surroundings, the stuff of the land and water, even to achieve domination over the animals of the earth.

Man has learned how to ‘control’ nature, the uncontrollable.

Man learned to dam the streams, to farm, the dig out the hard metals from the rock so he could build things.

Gradually the land began to change – forests were cleared for farmland, for building materials. Mines were dug. Buildings were built and the land was paved over.

What man had not learned to do was manage his waste. He peed in the water, soiled his nest, soiled the land, fouled the air.

A class of rich and powerful people tried to take all the best for themselves and let the rest do what they could with the spoils.

Disagreements sprang up between classes of people, disputes over community borders were unresolved, and the waste piled up.

The madness took over and one side pushed the other side, and the other side pushed back. One side threw rocks, the other side threw bigger rocks. Evils of every kind were let loose, and in the end the people tried to destroy everything.

But it didn’t work, and after the final conflagration, there was enough life left to start the cycle again.

There was nothing so wrong with the earth that a couple of hundred thousand years couldn’t set it right again.

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