Coal in the making: this small area of the forest is permanently wet, acting as a pool for several tiny streams and springs, before they overflow to join the larger brook that drains the valley. Fallen trees will eventually be preserved in oxygen-deprived mud and lie to await the geological millennia it will take for them to be buried and formed into coal or oil. I wonder if, in those far distant days, humanity, or whatever lifeform follows our probable demise due to our appalling treatment of the environment, will have learned the lessons we have ignored for decades. Or will they decide such fuel is a rich source of wealth for those who discover it, and thus begin another cycle of self-destruction?
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A few of my pictures appear in the Gallery.
And you’ll find many more here for use in book covers, calendars, greetings cards, jigsaws, advertising, or anything else you fancy in print or online, or as art quality prints to decorate your home or office.
Stuart Aken 
I really enjoy your writing and so on point with us and the way we treat our world. Very nice Stuart. ❤️
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That’s good to know, Joni, thank you. My major concern is with the environment and the future for the children in a world earlier generations have made into a place of danger and doubt. I’ve been a member of Greenpeace since it started up here in UK in the early 1980s, so I’ve always had an awareness of the dangers and felt the need to spread awareness.
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Nice to consider something wet and muddy and generally ugly in the context of the future. A positive spin. It looks like here today, where we have unremitting rain.
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Our rain used to be relatively regular here, Noelle. Nowadays, we seem to get long periods without any and then days on end of unremitting rain. Of course, neither of these is good for the natural world, and they turn the paths into quagmires. But I guess this is the price we pay for ignoring all the signs about climate change that have been around at least since the 1980s, when I first joined Greenpeace!
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Since we are notorious for ignoring things we should have learned, and since those life forms will likely be derived from us, I don’t have a lot of hope …
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Ah, I’m an optimist, Lynette. I dream the next civilisation may be built from the plant world instead!
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Sounds good! 🙂
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