An unusual little post

I´ll make another entry more descriptive of Utila, but it will have to wait another day or two. This is a pretty unusual and personal post, but I just feel a need to get it out of me. Yesterday I saw someone whip a pig with a rubber hose. The pig screamed, really screamed, it was awful. I did nothing, just filing the experience away for the time being. I toyed with the idea of returning at night to free the pig from her little stall, but that seemed like a bad idea for several reasons - such as where would she escape to, and what would happen upon her re-capture? Early this morning, I rented a kayak to try to find a mangrove canal. I found a small one, not the right one, but an interesting paddle nonetheless. I paddled down a narrow aqueous path with thick bush on both sides, through almost total silence at 6am. Further down the canal, signs of intensive human development appeared - cleared and levelled ground, boards stabilizing the banks of the canal, idle heavy machinery, a film of oil coating the water, thick slime beneath the water surface. In this polluted silence, I must have begun subconciously contemplating the human impact on the earth. Then I suddenly remembered the screaming of that pig and tried to imagine that pain multiplied by all the pigs in the world, and by all the 50 billion food animals and realized it was impossible to conceive. The transition of that canal from mangrove to bulldozers became for me a parable for all the suffering and harm to the earth caused by humans. The unusual stillness suddenly and unexpectedly became sadness. I stayed for a while with these thoughts, then turned around and paddled hard back to the ocean, where I could occupy myself with keeping the waves out of the open ports of my kayak. Time to go tutor some more kids or something. Definitely time to move on from Utila.