Shapeshifting

I'm studying for Geography and jut cannot get over the magnitude of the change the earth goes through. Yearly. Monthly. Daily.
Rivers change shape. What we see now is not what our ancestors saw. Th Nile once flowed east to west. Floodplains used to be V-shaped valleys. The Grand Canyon is fairly recent.
We learn about this small blip of time on the radar. Things are changing as I write. In California, there is crust subducting and melting back into magma. Sometime, probably sometime soon, the outer core will change the direction in which it flows...and then...magnetic north will no longer be magnetic north. It will be magnetic south.
I want to sit out west and watch the sand dunes of the desert shift. I want to lay all day on a beach and watch the tide come in and out while the waves crash in time with the beating of my heart. I want to see a sheet of rock peel from Stone Mountain.
We've been members of this planet for so long, but we know so little about it. We are a part of its living atmosphere, yet we disregard the need to take care of it. We mine what has taken millions of years to create and destroy it in a matter of minutes. Honestly, people wonder why the climate is changing. Pay attention to what you're doing, people.
We're supposed to be in an ice age. Th earth is heating, gaining energy, and the seasonal extremes are increasing.
The sad thing is, we can do very little to stop it.
Maybe this class is depressing me. But it makes me feel like an intricate part of something huge. Something that I interact in every day and never even notice.
For my entire childhood, I wanted to be a part of something meaningful and collective. A conspiracy. A pirate gang. A magical society.
Well...I'm part of planet Earth. And I'm starting to appreciate its beauty.