reclamation

Somewhere beneath the languid water thin strands of transparent nylon strands hooked to rocks and fallen trees still slowly wave to the sky with the steady undertow.  Fish shuttle past these artificial flanges that to a naked eye blend in to the surroundings, but in actuality remains firmly not part of the natural world around it.  It is other.  It is bound by the forces that surround it, bound to its environment, but not one with it.

The lakes surface denies the universe beneath it, dark waters ripple with light; the sky and the shoreline reflected in its glassy mirror and shattered with every movement of the liquid.  The trees that surround it loom, each individual blurring into the one next to it and the one next to that one until they cease to be trees and become forest.  They are a whole made up of individuals, dense and protective.  Like the mirror of the lake's surface, they are a shield to the world of the forest.  Dark and mysterious, after passing only meters inside their maze there is nothing else but maze:  more forest, more mystery, more shield.

With no movement, no sound, sounds begin to multiply.  Twigs snap.  Leaves rustle.  A bird hops along a branch, another flies through the air.  A chipmunk scampers along the ground, pausing, looking up and around, scampers some more, stops and sniffs the air, its eyes dart around some more.  It picks up an acorn that has fallen from a tree.  Off it runs, under one fallen branch and up another.  It darts down the side of a tree and into a bunch of leafy brush and then it's gone.  The sound and the movement disappear, but all is not silent.  Things fall and things are picked up again.

Further still into the forest, through the trees, there is a gentle slope of a hill.  The terrain is similar but declining into a valley, hidden in the shield.  The birds flying above can see it, they can map its terrain.  The birds know the curve it takes after 300 meters, they know where it widens and narrows, and they know where it is grassy and bare and where it becomes so thick with trees that they cannot see the ground.  Following the the bend 300 meters along a crick begins.  The water doesn't actual begin flowing from there, but that is the first place in the valley where it flows above ground.  It will widen and flow into the lake on one side and emerge from aquifers underground on the other.  The lake and the aquifers are connected by some porous rock underground, so the cycle of the water continues endlessly, constantly flowing into itself.

Climbing up the hill and venturing deeper into the forest, the trees again break wide open into a field.  The field is covered in tall grass that waves gently in the breeze, drifting to and fro, rippling like the water in the lake.  The lake of grass is equally deceptive, masking wildlife under its soft surface.  Mice dart along the dirt floor, collecting food and bits of this and that for shelters.  Snakes slither along the same dirt floor seeking out the mice.  Deer leap through the tall strands of green and gold fingers, traveling from one side of the field to the other.

Following the deer path back into the forest and zigzagging through the trees.  It is narrow and periodically along its winding, well worn track are tiny dark pellets and followed further are grasses and leaves beat flat to the ground where the deer has bedded down.  In another time of the year there would be scratches and worn patches on the sides of trees where the bucks have rutted, rubbing antlers against wood.  Sometimes antlers against antlers as well.  A wolf, with other wolves, sniff along this path.  The track the deer, the deer flees and fights and eventually becomes food for the low grey beasts patrolling the forest floor.  The wolves tear the flesh away from the carcass, eating fast and then moving away from the group to vomit up the quickly obtained meat to enjoy the dinner slower this second time.

Past this dinner site, through another thicket of trees is another hill.  On the side of the hill is a cave, torn out of the dirt and rock by animals, water, and time.  In this cave is a bear and her cubs.  Past the cave is more trees, more forest shield.  Meters pass, kilometers, and then a break in the trees, a split in the shield.  Pavement runs, slicing the forest with it's blacktop surface streaked with white and yellow lines, faded by time.  The blacktop is pitted and cracked, rain slowly working at it, cutting it like it cut the forest.

All along the blacktop are metal posts.  The posts are evenly spaced with signs on them.  Following the posts, the signs eventually terminate in a destination; buildings, towns, cities.  Like the nylon strands, these are rooted in the ground.  Like the artificial flanges these are not part of nature.  Water works at them from above and below.  The ground sprouts grass and trees, working from below.  Eventually they will crumble.  Perhaps they won't disappear, but the forest will shield them too.  The grasses will cover them.  The water will hide them.

The Universe and Everything

Okay, so this is how I view the concept of Anthropic Principle:

Imagine that the universe is a pond.  That pond developed over the entire course of history, however long history actually is.  Every atom, every molecule, every little bit of matter that makes up that pond is the result of the combination and destruction of every atom and every molecule that preceded it in the entire course of history, however long history actually is.  Furthermore, that pond is determined by the results of every atom and every molecule that bounced off, dented, and chipped another molecule or atom over the course of history.  Humanity is a speck of sand that is dropped into that pond.  Humanity developed, like that pond, over the course of interactions throughout history.  However long history is.  When that speck of sand interacts with the rest of the pond, both are changed by the interaction.  Therefore, there is no way to view the universe, as a person, without taking into account that the universe is exactly the way that it is because we are here and would be different if we were not.  We are not responsible for this form, it just is because it is and we cannot view it without taking into account us.

Scientists deal with this on a less speculative form in any sort of field study, be it with other human cultures or various species of animals.  It is impossible to observe without someway altering the habitat that you are observing, because you're very presence has already altered that habitat.  The only thing scientists can do is minimize the amount that they are altering the environment as much as they can, whether by camouflage or distance, to preserve the data collected in the inquiry.

To go more esoteric and philosophical, it's like Ethan Hawke's character in Before Sunrise observes (paraphrased):  There's nowhere I can go that I won't be, nothing I can say that I haven't said, nothing that I can look at that I can't see ... the only constant in every situation that I've ever been in is me.

The universe, the planet, the restaurant at the end of the universe ... none of this stuff needs humans to exist.  But it is impossible for them to exist exactly as they exist without our involvement, whether we like it or not.

All this being said, I agree that the anthropic principle does sound a little bit like self-aggrandizing.  To accept that all of those tiny tiny building blocks bounce around for all of those eons until humans were created and then all of our chromosomes bounced around for all of that time until they matched up exactly they way they matched up to form each of us on a planet that also has so many other examples of chromosomes matching up differently to form every type of animal, etc is pretty far fetched ... it's extremely unlikely, but it happened.  To decide that must mean that we can reverse engineer our creation to figure out how everything was created, just because we know that some things had to occur because we're here ... well, that's just silly.  It would be hard enough in a small environment to backtrack through all the possible combinations of data and make assumptions on the sliver of information that we might glean.  It's pretty stupid to believe that we can do it based on what knowledge that we are able to perceive and collect from the larger universe.  It's all speculation.  Speculation based on some information, but still speculation.  

Can I explain what happens in War and Peace because I know that it contains the word "the"?  No, and further more, if I try I am operating under the assumption that the word "the" exists and that it exists in that book and ignoring the fact that the word "the" might itself be a translated form of a word that carries the same basic meaning in another language.  I don't know Russian, but I know that they use a different alphabet than ours and that the word "the" contains other connotations (such as gender terms) in some foreign languages that we don't attribute to it in English, some or all might apply to a Russian form of the word "the".  If we don't speak Russian and never seen Russian, then this is a lot to expect and is impossible to prove.

So, in it's most basic sense:  anthropic principle means that the universe and everything else can only exist in the way that it exists right now because everything is as it is right now (including our presence).  We cannot see a universe that we have not impacted because we are impacting it just by existing and taking up space in it.  However, claiming that because we know that we exist, we can use the information of our existence to explain even a small part of everything, well, that's just silly talk.