We send our energies here and there, often in wasteful ways. Can this be reversed? No – to move backward we must still make progress forward in some way.

Though we can not undue our wasteful actions in all cases, we must recognize that our behaviors are never a total loss. Our positive and negative activities progress through our environment. We may never directly see their consequences, but there is no doubt that all things are ultimately connected. In attempting to do better after making errors, we may find that we have exhausted our supplies and cannot try again. This is where we must recognize that our efforts do not end and disappear – there are ways to recapture the essential materials that have been spent in some useful ways. Sometimes this is a stretch: we must look to the lessons we can learn to recapture materials in the form of thoughts; sometimes we must look at a chain of events that comes from our activities and patterns in order to see where the energy has ended up, and what energy and materials may be salvageable in this reservoir.
There is a flow to all things, as there is also a static state. Thus the principles of a watershed apply as lessons for more than conventional ecosystem management.