Footprints

An eternal forest breathes and beats to the rhythms of life cycling through the constant change of seasons. Straining at the reins of timelessness, day upon day, it moves forever forward. Indistinct as to date a transformation comes afoot. Mankind, the First Peoples, emerge like dawn breaking on the morning dew. The first footprints, and those that followe, live in balance and harmony with the land and the sea at its shore for 10,000 years. Then, an irrevocable change occurs—a Spanish sail appears on the horizon and a new dawn, a new era breaks. Explorers, traders, pioneers, settlers, sovereign governments, and their various minions lay claim to that for which the very concept of ownership was as foreign as those who now strode upon it. Technology, an insatiable appetite for natural resources, and cultural arrogance scar the land. Lost to an unnatural force, but for the labor of the few, ironically pressing their legal rights, not all but some of the forest breathes and beats today into the dawn of its tomorrows.