River Summit, via Walt Whitman

THE ST. JOHNS RIVER SUMMIT is hard to fully characterize. Some great folks there, some folks who weren’t so great, and a bunch of folks there to promote agendas that were selfish–whether they were agendas driven by an affluent polluter, or by an agency that allows pollution.

Lots of folks said some neat things. But the only “presenter” who was a “Hero”–in the truest sense of the word—was the St. Johns Riverkeeper. I don’t have the courage it takes to do what he does. Thanks, Neil, from the bottom of my heart.

Am figuring this wonderful lyric from a century and a half ago might characterize a bit of the way I felt. And it doesn’t even begin to get into the Faustian trade-offs. Walt Whitman knew this stuff long before we did:

“When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding outI wander’d off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.