Photo: A Stillness in the Bush

My grandparents' house in New Brunswick is in the countryside, in the midst of land that seems like it hasn't changed all that much in centuries, and walking a couple of minutes back into the bush will isolate you from all the evidence of civilization. Here, amid this stand of partially submerged treees, a family of beavers built a dam - you can see it in the center of the photo, though somewhat obscured by the trees - and it's because of their dikes that the area is flooded to the extent that it is. Not only the calmness and clarity of the water, but the fact that there's no refuse there - no abandoned tires, no chocolate bar wrappers, no discarded Tim Horton's cups - make it almost feel like not part of the world.

Which really goes to show what the situation is, when something doesn't feel normal because there isn't litter around.


I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

This means that you are free to Share (to copy, distribute and transmit the work) and to Remix (to adapt the work) under the following conditions: Attribution (you must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor, but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work), Noncommercial (you may not use this work for commercial purposes), and Share Alike (if you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one).