What is the Butterfly Effect? The Butterfly Effect is associated mostly with meteorology. It’s an idea in Chaos Theory. ” How small changes to a complex system’s initial conditions can produce dramatically different outcomes.” “The flap of butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas.” The. saying or something similar has been around for ages. Bottom line we are not separate from the world, we ARE a global community and ARE connected.

I had no idea I was going to be prompted to write a story about what I saw on our trip to Monument Valley. But, here we ARE!

I love road traveling and taking pictures along the way. Little did I know that this journey was about what I saw through the lens of my camera.

As we are driving I comment to my husband, gee there must be a big fire somewhere, there is so much haze in the air. It was like taking pictures in shadow. I asked at a couple of places where we stopped if they knew if there was some fires that was creating the haze. Nobody knew of any fires. I am talking we are out in wide open spaces so pollution is not on my radar. I will show in picture form what I saw. I didn’t realize it was pollution until we got to the Grand Canyon, where they have been studying this haze since the 1970’s. It is pollution from coal fired power plants of nearby states, mining, oil, and gas sources. It comes from Mexico, and California as well.

First photo is on our way to Page Arizona, third photo was in Monument Vally, you can see the haze in the background. The second photo is of the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.

I am still not sure WHY? But I guess in getting back to civilization and listening to the desire of government to promote coal as a source for power again and to loosen the laws on the environmental restrictions as a smart path. I go hold on, maybe that isn’t a wise path. If these pristine areas have become innocent bystanders to all the crap we are producing that is in our air I think we own it to the world to reconsider. Yup, I even heard that sandstorms in Saudi Arabia are now gracing the shores of Florida. We do have to look at weather and such as a global community. We are not isolated from each other. It’s up to us what road we want to take.

Resources: Brittanica and Grand Canyon website.