Realignment
A view of 2045
in an imagined
Utopia

Told by Frank the Heron
your
Realignment for Harmony
Tour Guide
with a little help from
Holly Tea 

Frank, friends and family shared their story with Holly in 2023, as part of an ARU assignment task. Thank you to you all for your help.

All photographic images in this story presentation are originals, taken by Holly Tea. 
What if imagination could save the world
A vision of 2045 – ‘Realignment’

‘Hello, I’m Frank, a heron, and your ‘Realignment for harmony’ tour guide today.
Realignment is a human word, but it’s a natural process. As a heron, a predatory bird, I realign my body position when I shift from prey surveillance to action. As observer, I stand on a brimming dyke rim or reeded riverbank, wings furled, muscles relaxed, watching. In flight I become a wind-swimming hunter, rowing through the air above flooded Fen or retrospective human commune, crowded island settlements, or stilt-raised flood plain dwellings.
My crooked neck and long, angular wings hark back to pterodactyl ancestors, who saw climate change scorch our planet. Their descendants realigned to a frozen world and the partial thaw that followed. We’re coming full circle, faster because of humans’ developments, to scorching heat and torrential rains.
We non-humans have realigned ourselves to seasons’ disruptions gradually. For example, birds nest earlier, catching the premature insect hatchings to feed our young. Globally, humans are adapting too. Biodomes began appearing decades ago, providing food to replace traditional soil crops. Humans farm insects as well as plants, for themselves and their livestock, but many humans have turned vegetarian. Unsustainable oil-based fertilizers and aggressive weather crippled soil in many areas, but pockets of my Fens’ reclaimed marshland home still yield hardy grain and root crops in small, hedge-fringed fields.
Forward-thinking naturalists began reintroducing fenland landscapes when this millennium began. Now, European and southern hemisphere birds who’ve moved north with the heat live here too. I feed on eels and other aquatic creatures who have found refuge here. Otters compete with me for meals, which is progress for them because their kind was dying out before the conservationists advocated for them. Human collaboration, nationally and internationally, helps to slow and salvage some of the damage done.
A commune of humans living in harmony with our environment has grown up here, working with nature rather than against it. They fish within their needs and share their small-holding crops with local villagers. The glacial melt has raised sea levels, so the flood plain is wet most of the year now. Stilted houses accommodate locals and some of the influx of immigrants fleeing the new desert areas closer to the Equator.
An Indian egret cousin told me about his country’s improvements in humans’ rural infrastructure. Irrigation, drainage, medical and education provision help draw human populations back from city slums. They use indigenous elders’ wisdom to create buildings from local materials which suit the climate and landscape, fending off heat and rain. More realignment – working in harmony with their environment, harnessing humans’ modern technology where is suits.
From the air, my kin see solar panels covering towns and cities, mounted on rooftops, and spilling into fields that look like sunlit lakes. Wind turbines have spread into manmade forests – a little risky for my feathered friends but we’ve learned to avoid them, helped by high-visibility markers in our regular flight paths. Like the humans, we birds mistrusted these slim monsters when they first appeared, but they do more good than harm, and we’ve become accustomed to their long necks and twirling arms. Hydro power has returned and extended, with the natural power of water harnessed in mountainous and seacoast regions.
Globally, tree planting is trying to undo the damage of deforestation. It’s helped, but the destruction of natural habitats and non-human populations has been too great in many areas.
Thankfully, many humans’ vehicles and buildings are powered from sustainable sources instead of fossil fuels, so the air is cleaner and quieter. Humans’ ‘green’ targets haven’t all been met, but collaboration and legal regulations have achieved positive changes of attitudes and actions. They’ve started listening to indigenous humans, realigning to harmonious harvesting and conservation of what remains of nature’s resources and beauty. Forest burning’s become illegal – instead, families are supported to conserve local flora and fauna.
Of course, I don’t see all of this myself as I scan or fly in my Fenland realm but, in the role of omniscient narrator of this tour, I get a bit of artistic license to bend plausibility.
The wealth divide between classes and world regions is shrinking. Global legislation of industry owners helps that, with penalties for exploitation and inducements for supportive source-community practices. Subsidised A.I. computer technology helps industry, policing, surgery and diagnostic procedures, and health monitoring, when practicable.
Humans have found a sense of community again. Computer technology enables working from home, and home-based virtual holidays too, making commercial flights unnecessary. Royalties finance systems recompense and support tourist region communities for lost trade. I see humans socialise locally, sharing communal food growth and leisure activities including sports and creative arts. Despite A.I.’s advances, human originality is still valued for artistic creation. Family synergy is being rediscovered, as neighbours support each other with child and elders care, and the generations learn to value each other.
I watched a hopeful scene the other day, as I sat scanning the Old Bedford River for a teatime Tench. I was near a village and saw a girl and her mother sitting together, reading a well-thumbed story book called Food for the future, so I listened as the mother read …

“Bright orange berries
Are the blackbird’s aim.
He leaps and flaps,
Then leaps again.”

“The poor bird,’ sighed the girl, ‘I hope he gets some berries.”

“So do I, Abbie,” said her mother, and continued with the story …

“Ball-like, he bounces
And catches a sprig
Then, quick as a flash,
Nips berry from twig.

Squeezed from beak to throat,
The orange orb jets,
But the hungry blackbird
Is not sated yet.

Leaping to harvest
Orange blaze, full-round,
That blackbird labours
From bush branch to ground.”

“That bird’s like us, picking berries from bushes around our village.”

“He is,” mother answered, turning the page …

“That blackbird labours,
Surrounded by kin,
Feathered and hungry,
Seeking succour, like him.

They must feed and hide,
Safe from harm by men,
Whose thoughtless ways
Cause few birds to remain.”

“Mummy, why do men hurt the birds?”

“Most humans don’t mean to hurt birds and animals, or their homes, but we’ve damaged the land and sea by using harmful machinery, and taking more than we need.”

“But we don’t take more than we need, do we?”

“No, we only take a little, so there’s plenty for tomorrow, for animals and birds to share too.”

Abbie looked up from the book and noticed me sitting among the reeds.

“Do we share with that heron too?”

I was a little alarmed at having been noticed, but sat still, and waited.

“He fishes for himself, Abbie but, yes, we share the fish and eels with him. Shall we finish the story?”

“Yes, please.”

“Those thoughtless ways
Humans must amend,
For all nature to thrive,
Living friend beside friend.”

“We live beside that heron, so does that mean we’re friends?”

“Yes, I think it does,” smiled her mother.

I gave them a nod of my slender, grey head as “Hello”, to be polite, and then stretched upwards, swelled my chest with air, pushed against the mudded bank and pulled myself into the sky. As I flew, my reflection skimming over the calm green of the river water, I heard the mother say, “Isn’t he graceful. We’re so lucky to have him here.”

That’s a good way to end our ‘realignment for harmony’ tour, I think, with a positive sign for hope. Thank you for listening – any questions?’

Realignment is a human word,
but non-humans have been doing it for years.

Join Frank the Heron to find out whether
humans can learn to live in harmony
with themselves, non-humans
and our environment.

Those thoughtless ways
Humans must amend,
For all nature to thrive,
Living friend beside friend