Born Again Bird Watcher

So saith the Preacher:

All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again. (Ecclesiastes, chapter 1, verse 7)

Ten miles from where I was born and raised, and seventy-five miles from where my family and I now live, one can stand on the shore of the Pacific Ocean, gaze as far off into the distance as one can possibly see, and marvel at it its sheer size and power. From the northern Oregon shoreline, it is difficult to imagine that anything so vast and demonstrating such elemental power could ever be in any way harmed by such a puny creature as man. However Chris Jordan’s recent photos of dead young albatrosses on Midway Atoll, their decaying remains clearly depicting just how much plastic garbage and other human refuse they had been eating, have given me an image more clear than any other I have previously seen that all is most certainly not well out in the ocean by the side of which I have lived all my life. (more…)