By: Cameron DeVries

Sit for a second on a ridge in Agora, and unlock your mind to the great colossus before you. The barriers we erect create division on the surface, but if you dig deeper, your roots will be found within the soil. Two sides, yet one in the same, humans and nature alike are pieces in a larger game.

Sit and let your eyes roam free, taking your mind on a flight through the smooth winds of the valley. Every sweeping survey of the land before you helps to absorb the aura, one of lush, engrossing, verdant flora. Ridges rise and fall like a staccato in the song of the Earth, the landscape so surreal, almost like a whole new world. Even so, we find ourselves within it.

We are the ground. We are the boulders that stand strong against a crashing current, refusing to budge for all the force in the world. We are the stones that sit serenely under the ripples of the stream, feeling, shifting, welcoming the flow of life. We are the pebbles that erode and fall, cascading in a rumbling downward spiral, only to find a new place to settle when the dust does the same.

We are the plants. We are the grass that spreads and encompasses, generating foundations for more to grow upon. We are the flowers that wither and die, waiting until the next spring for our radiant petals and thorns to sprout anew. We are the trees that emerge as saplings, growing immense and towering to spread our shade and intertwine our roots with everything around us.

We are the mountain. That great colossus that rests before us, dwarfing the people who are but ants at its base. Yet not scorning us, but adorning us with its glowing green hues and and all its bounties in offering for us to use. At the same time warning us, its rivers which provide that sacred beauty simultaneously divulging into tears for that which cannot be ignored, crying for the change that is inevitable. The change we spark ignites the change in her bark, the shifting tides and the fog that settles like an artificial dark.

The colossus slumbers, her rocky shoulders exposed to the wind which sways her flowing emerald pelt back and forth in the patterns of life and time. In that gargantuan physique we make out silhouettes of ourselves, finding human form in what is more natural than we could ever aspire to be. In all her shape, her perfect imperfections, her consistent changes, we are more related to nature than we choose to believe. Temper the change, respect the balance, level your barriers, unfurl your roots, and hope the colossus does not awake.