Progress strips beauty from cliff

Just a small rock face in town, not more than four stories high, slate or limestone. I don’t really know my rocks, but it is grey and adorned with flowers clinging to its face, flowers of many colors, Hesperus, California poppy, bachelor button, penstemon, oxeye daisy, moss and licorice fern, resilient plants making the best of it in clefts in the cliff, in pockets of soil blown up from the Skagit flats. Above is a ragged crown of juniper, twisted and gnarly.

A gift, a thing of beauty that simple expanse of rock left unmolested for so many years – and then the eye travels to rock stripped bare of its native grace, scraped and denuded in the name of progress.

Yes, homes are needed, but at what price? Must natural beauty, our connection with the natural world always be sacrificed?

Too late for that place but perhaps we can learn from what is lost.

Jai Boreen

La Conner