And the consequences were…

Last week, HOT’s Zelly Restorick wrote an article about Little Roar Ghyll, a waterfall flowing in the depths of Alexandra Park. This week, she ponders the consequences.

My friends and family would no doubt confirm that I am a bit of a worrier. I’ve read that the tendency to worry could be genetic and there’s not a lot you can do about it, and therefore, you shouldn’t worry about it. Except you can’t help it, as you’re genetically pre-disposed to fret.

One thing I worried about last week were the possible consequences of my article about Little Roar Ghyll, the re-discovered waterfall in the depths of Alexandra Park. How might my words affect the life and times of Little Roar? How many people might read the article and decide to visit? Would word spread from HOT reader to HOT reader and beyond, resulting in so many visitors in the future that the described peace and tranquillity would be lost? Letting my imagination run wild and free, I asked myself if – at some point in the future – there’d be a fast food restaurant conveniently stationed next door to the waterfall’s viewing platform? Similar to the pizza chain that set up shop next to the main tourist resort pyramids in Egypt?

These fretful musings take minutes to put into words, but only ato-seconds to think.

I remember reading travel books of the rough and ready variety, whose writers eulogised about their time spent in some remote village, where peace, quiet and amazing low cost hospitality were offered by smiling and welcoming locals. I used to wonder how their words might subsequently affect the tranquil village, now that 1000s of budget travellers knew of its existence.

Or the tip about the free food and board offered to the weary back-packing travel writer, found in an exhausted heap outside a remote mountain monastery. How long would it be before the monastery either closed and locked its doors to all people wielding a copy of said travel guide – or the monks identified a Unique Selling Point and business opportunity, reinventing the monastery as a hostel with restaurant facilities?

A few years ago, I visited Pembrokeshire in Wales. As I wandered with pen and paper around the village where I was staying, crossing paths with local residents, more than one person said to me ‘don’t go telling anyone about this place, we want it to stay exactly like it is… we don’t want it to become a tourist destination.’ These last words were said with gritted teeth and a frowning brow. I understood exactly what they meant and I dutifully erased the name of the village from my mind.

I imagine that Peter Bradford Benchley didn’t anticipate the consequences of his 1974 novel ‘Jaws’ and the subsequent film, even though they earned him huge acclaim and heady financial rewards. In the final decade of his life, aware of the tragic repercussions of his works on the shark population, he spent his time writing non-fiction books about shark conservation. He is quoted as saying that if ‘Jaws’  was ever to be re-written, ‘the shark could not be the villain; it would have to be written as the victim; for worldwide, sharks are much more the oppressed than the oppressor’. Apparently, more people die from coconuts falling on their heads than from shark attacks.

I wonder what the consequences will be of the recent arrival of the Mars rover, ‘Curiosity’, recently delivered to its destination planet by the team of the ‘Entry, Descent and Landing WAR Room’. I hope this an affectionate term, although I wonder if it gives us some insight into the human intentions and agenda?

Looking at NASA’s website, I read that ‘even if Mars is devoid of past or present life… we ourselves might become the life on Mars, should humans choose to travel there one day’.

Will ‘Curiosity’ be programmed to say to any locals, ‘Hail Martians, I come in peace’ or might it have to admit ‘Hail Martians, I come in search of your resources and the people who made me, might want to come and live here at some point.’? Will we humans check in if this is okay with the current residents – or will we just assume we’re welcome? Su casa, mi casa?

Let’s think of some of the consequences of our relatively recent human history of journeying to places. Our expeditions to what is now known as the United States of America and the subsequent repercussions on the native population. Ditto Australia… Ditto countless places around the planet, where one set of humans turned up and told the residents ‘this is all ours now’. Or declared ‘your way of life is wrong, don’t live like that, live like this. Oh and by the way, if you don’t, we’ll just kill you.’ [And if we don’t, possibly our diseases will.]

Maybe, along with worrying, I should add ‘cynical ‘and ‘suspicious’ to my list of personality traits. I know other people who are hugely excited about the Mars landings. ‘Look at our magnificent achievement,’ they cry. Sometimes, just to offer some gentle amusement to my heavily weighted down brain, I suggest that maybe the whole thing is a set-up and nothing has landed anywhere, except in some secret film studio.

Maybe I need to imagine ‘Curiosity’ trundling innocently along taking photos and picking up souvenirs, the same as any other tourist? And the possibility that Mars residents are already pouring over plans for Martian fast food joints and souvenir shops?

How entertaining it would be if the people watching the beamed-back-to-earth footage saw the machine – from its own unique perspective – clearly being picked up, carried away and cooked in a delicious Martian sauce.  Or dismantled.  Or taken away to some secret Martian Military underground desert complex for analysis and dissection. Or maybe the Martians might declare Curiosity a deity? Or see it as an alien life form? Who knows?

We seem to assume there’s nothing much going on on Mars, as we can’t [as yet] detect anything with our current senses and technological equipment. Maybe there’s lots going on, but it’s all happening at a different vibration/speed/energetic level than we can sense? Again, who knows? Maybe I think I’m sitting here alone tapping at the computer, yet the room is teaming with life at some level beyond the ability of my current senses?

Gentle reader, we have travelled together from a waterfall in Hastings’ Alexandra Park to Wales and tranquil villages; to the oceans and beyond out into the solar system – and into the realms of my imagination. Let us now return to the peace of Little Roar Ghyll’s soporific fallings of water and rest our minds and bodies.

Thinking about the potential consequences of my own actions, choices and decisions, it can at times result in a desire to lie down and rest my aching head. But then of course, lack of action also has its knock on effect. Saying something, not saying it, doing something, not doing it…. they all have their consequences. I find that sleep can be useful at this point. Or sedation.

I leave you with a quote from Winston Churchill on the subject of worrying. “When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened.”

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