We live in a particular scale and frame of reference. Millions of things live around us,with us, within us. One almost comes to understand the Jain idea that our goals in life must cause us to avoid damaging the life around us. But I think our impact is inevitable, on everything we see and touch.
I like magnifying glasses and microscopes and telescopes because the alteration of visual perspective just seems to cool to me. There's so much to see, all around one.
I think lately how the solution to sustainable energy will inevitably involve less travel and smarter travel. Then I think about the little town where I grew up. Few people got the chance to travel outside the country. A few people, in fact, had barely left the county. Yet we had visual postcards from other places--Viewmaster reels, National Geographic, and public television nature specials. I think, sometimes, that so many folks are all in such a hurry to do and see in one particular way that folks no longer see and do what is all around them.
I think that I admire garden folks and local birders because they try to see what is around them. I certainly love to travel, and don't have any negative things to say about travel. But so many journeys lie all around, waiting to be taken.