TODAY

So what am I doing at the base of the sculpture ‘Birth’?

I’m carving the letters TODAY.

Six hundred million years earlier, visitors to Windgrove begin their 1.2 kilometre journey along the Gaia Evolution Walk where each big step (one metre) equals 500,000 years.

The years roll by with each step. From the Precambrian Eon through to the Cenozoic Era — via the Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods — The Walk is completed when people touch the sculpture ‘Birth’ with its inscribed word: TODAY

Interestingly enough, after almost five years in the making, this lettering marks the formal completion of the Gaia Evolution Walk. The Walk is finally finished.

“To the future”, I say.

On the gate is the sign: The Future. Once inside, students within the expansive classroom of the Wombat Circle talk, not only of what they learned along the Gaia Evolution Walk, but how they view the future of the planet, the environmental and social changes that will surely occur, and, most importantly, what role they might play in helping to create a peaceful word for themselves and others.

Another topic of discussion that I like to bring up is whether or not human constructed art has a place in the natural environment. Is the sculpture ‘Birth’ an eye sore? Or, a lovely addition to the surrounding trees? Is it just one man’s ego intruding on the landscape?

Or, does it move beyond a pleasing aesthetic and become transformative to a person’s life? And the earth’s.