Thursday, October 15, 2009

Will we have any beaches left?



Today is Pilipinas Blog Action Day , organized to make the readers and users of the Internet and the various blogs aware of the need to promote Environmental consciousness and the spectre of climate change. I am not a "Green Peace" sort of a guy nor do I want to hug whales or sharks or the like, but I guess as a future beach bum, it would be weird not to have any beaches left.

I grew up in Cagayan de Oro and spent most of my summers in a sleepy little town called Medina , Misamis Oriental. We were fortunate that as part of my mom's heritage was a strip of white sandy beach where we had a summer house.

All summer long we would laze away the days at the beach,playing, swimming and generally loving the feel of sand between our toes and the hot sun bearing down on us and turning us into black slippery kids.

 

During the 80s I was fortunate to have visited Boracay when there was only one place to stay in the island and the sand was smooth and unblemished and the natives friendly and caring. Boracay nowadays is a joke, like an old punch drunk woman whose face and body show the ravages of too many parties, too many people and too much commercialization and construction.

We try to pursue so many ecological initiatives, so many "Save the Earth" project  while behind our back others are pissing in the rivers and undoing what little repairs we have done.

Is it a lost cause? I really don't have the answer nor can I peep into a crystal ball and divine the future. All I can say is that if we don't do it for our own children, then we condemn them to a life less meaningful.

Meanwhile, all I can do is continue to go around the beaches and seashores, savor their pristine condition and capture them for all eternity. Hopefully years into the future,some kid will peer at the picture and dream of better days gone by.


 



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