Rain | Technology Anoraks

After about 6 weeks of solid sunshine, it’s finally started raining this week. We needed it. Ironically, the downpours seemed to have caught the water supplies off-guard, and we had 3 water mains burst around our street, closing schools and leaving us without any.

The allotment certainly needed the water. I was down there the other day just doing some weeding and tidying up, and I got caught in a cloud burst. No coat. No umbrella. I had the option to run for the shed, but in the end I decided not to bother.

Then I thought: when was the last time I had really experienced the environment like this? When was the last time you did? We wrap ourselves in Gore-Tex and fleeces, we pop up umbrellas, shelter in shops, step only on hard pavements or retreat to hermetically sealed, climate controlled cars. We never have to feel the raw heat of the sun, or the bite of real cold; our feet don’t have to get muddy, we don’t ever get soaked.

People talk about techie anoraks, but really, for all of us, technology has become an anorak, protecting us from the environment. Technology has lifted us slightly off the earth. To a plane unaffected by the seasons. It is this disconnect that has left us unmoved by the extinction of around an entire species every 30 minutes, and unwilling to step off the tarmac into the mud to save the planet.

Our separation has moved us from integrated participants in a balanced eco-system to surface irritants. Mother Earth is catching a fever. She’ll heat up to rid herself of this infection we’ve become unless we act soon.

One small thing you could do to begin to be part of the environment again is take the anorak off and step out in the rain.

Technorati: Allotment | Environment | Gore Tex