*shouts* "Timbe-e-e-e-e-er!"

The forestry up above the reservoir near where we live is being harvested.  I guess it must be 25 or 30 years since the trees were planted, by the size of the trunks, so this very slow-growing cash crop has taken a generation to be ready to be felled.  I was walking the dog there the other day when I saw one of the logging machines (not quite what's in the photo above) and just stopped and watched.  The machine has an amazing head on its arm, which cuts the tree where it stands.  The jaws hold the trunk while it's stripped of bark and branches and cut into 10-ish foot long sections.  All in a few seconds, leaving a post-apocalyptic wasteland on the hillside.  The operation and the machine has a menacing, primeval sensation to it.  It was mesmerising and slightly scary  to watch this machine at work, picking 18 inch diameter trees as if they were blades of grass and processing them into cut logs in a few well-designed hydraulic strokes. It would have taken individual men, even with chainsaws, days to do what this machine can do in a just a few hours, driven by a man using his fingertips to drive the hydraulic devices.  

Reflecting on this, as I tore myself away to finish Molly's walk, humanity is unique in the way that we, with technology, control our environment.  This first hit me many years ago when I was becoming a ship designer, and I learned that the design of a vessel is dominated by the waves that hit it.  The waves, millions of them, will destroy the ship, eventually, as the steel cracks like an enormous paperclip.  The trick is to correctly design the life of the steel and scrap the ship before this happens - humanity wins by designing the technology correctly.  The same feels true of the logging machine: the trees grow and are harvested impressively by the somewhat menacing machine - humanity wins!  Trees and other plants will grow up in the harvested wasteland, but humans, by controlling the environment, have taken over this environment.

I guess there's a post about ABUSE of the environment here, but today I'm more interested in human creativity and determination.  No other species controls the environment to the extent that humanity does.  As a person of faith, looking at the divinity in this, humanity has been given this creativity and ability to adapt and control and go beyond natural limitations. We live in hostile parts of the world, and even in space. Is this the human echo of the divine creativity that Genesis attempts to describe?  Created in God's own image: is God the ultimate environmental engineer, devising schemes and systems that allow life to flourish and grow? Devising the life itself (and the Higgs-Boson particle that lets it all exist...)?  A post on intelligent design doesn't really interest me: proof of God is not something I seek.

But a sense of awe at a God who has equipped humanity with creativity, drive and the ability to harness, control and exist in the universe.  That sounds like something worth exploring...

Technology meets wilderness...

I'm not sure a narrowboat moored in the centre of Kirkintilloch qualifies as a 'wilderness' location but there are certain parallels.  Today is my post Easter Sunday off - a month or so after Easter Day - and I'm sorting stuff out.  The deck scrubbing and red-oxiding of rust spots on NB Dalriada is waiting while I sort out my technology.

As an Episcopal priest with a massive 'canonical area' (denominational parish) I spend a lot of time out and about, often in breathtakingly beautiful locations, often miles from anywhere.  I also spend increasing times on the island where my house is not.  Mary also runs her holiday business from these places.  And a narrowboat moored in Kirkintilloch and many other points on the canals.  Selling holiday lets, keeping in touch with colleagues in Scotland and elsewhere, and also an increasing amount of pastoral work, demands connectivity and, for me, the use of Skype and now also Google+ hangout videoconferencing.  But all that needs connection and a place.

Remaining connected is important.  I am not a cutting edge technology person - I use it when it's useful and ignore it when it's not.  But this week my rather ancient Nokia's screen finally reached the point of unreadability due to scratches - it was a keypad phone, 3G but only just.  This phone has been the nerve centre for webmail, map browsing, Google etc. for the two years ministry/Spinnaker View running in Scotland.

So this morning, I am sorting some of this out.  A little bit of shouting at our 3G provider produced some improved contracts for the kids' phones, and a conciliatory Android smartphone, which I have (reluctantly) switched to.  The pain of learning a titchy touch-screen's keypad will pass, and I am far too tight to buy a tablet.

And now I have the warm glow of things coming together.  A modest 'add-on' on my 3G contract allows the new smartphone to be a wireless hotspot (and my Aberdonian roots like a mere one month rolling contract!).  The resurrected netbook (new motherboard from ebay), D2's iPod touch, all the data hungry devices, all of this is suddenly connected to broadband while we are tied up in the marina! Skype and videoconferencing (within data reason) suddenly beckon wherever 3G signal is to be found.

Which still raises issues with wilderness.  The old definition of wilderness (used in Duke of Edin award hiking planning etc.) was to do with distance from habitation.  The new definition feels like distance from suitable electromagnetic comms bandwidth.  And we still have some battles to be fought there in the hinterlands of Argyll and Bute.

But let me bask a little in the glow of satisfaction as I blog via my new portable wifi hotspot.  The frontier of my personal EM wilderness has been pushed back a little, here in wild Kirkintilloch!