Tempest caprice

[vaneramos]

Photo: Eramosa River path, Sept. 20.

~~~~~~~~~~

Can you feel the glaciers melting? That bit of breeze off the North Atlantic, the rage of an entire ocean boiling.

This summer, excavating exposed rocks in the path from the driveway to the cottage, I found one with its flat surface scored by a glacier. It was a strange reminder that only a few thousand years ago, ice crept down and covered these highlands, gutted the lakes. Not only there, but all over the Northern Hemisphere. You can see the evidence across Ontario. Guelph is sited on a field of drumlins. The big Catholic Church on the hill looks down from one of these rocky hills, smeared by the passage of monstrous ice.

The Garden of Eden was full of them. Back in those long ago days when we lurched into caves with our skins and spears, spread paintings over walls declaring our hunting prowess, huddled around fires in the dark, fending off fear; then we must have seen the monstrosity of nature's cold heart and wondered how anything so powerful could be so bleak and callous. That's probably where we got the notion of a god of death, one who prevailed over us in judgment, sent millions to lie under scouring ice. Hell was the fire in our eyes and the cold on our backs. Eden was a place where green things flourished, a race of imagination. Life never mattered so much as when we fought for it.

We turn our magic eyes toward comets, the ringing resonating rhythms that carry between planets. Energy transfers from one system to the next, light sheening off silver.

The house at Elmbrae stood on a ridge of glacial stone. I found it when I tried to dig a garden. Digging was nearly impossible, had to build on top of that hard, barren brow. Piled autumn leaves, garden waste and grass clippings on last year's newspapers, dug holes through the litter and planted tomato seedlings into the tired, insipid lawn. The first two seasons were fruitless, until nourishment crept down among the stones.

Life was easier for the hunter-gatherers. Not as much work involved. Why did our ancestors start to plant fields? They had to work longer and more intensively. It must have been the growth of human population on land that couldn't support so many. They had to reinvent Eden, plant a specialized garden. Later we learned to spray chemicals that would purify our notion of life even further.

But we couldn't escape the line of hills, mounting like ancient battalions of giants, frowning on our endless toil. We couldn't escape the stories in stone, the etch of power greater than all our armies.

We can't escape the poetry of climate, the way everything comes around to us. Castaway bread crumbs turn to white litter along the shore. Every action has its reaction. We're acting endlessly to change the way things are, and the earth will come back to us with its answer.

How do we know it's not pointless? That the answer isn't 42? What if our efforts are a mindless scraping at the foot of a cliff where all creation is bound to pile over like the ancient buffalo, mighty mindless creatures falling down on us. In our heads, in their heads, in the voices of every creature that ever scummed the ocean floor, the heavens resonate before the crash: "Oh no, not again."

We keep living in a media bubble, voices consoling, telling us not to worry. The glaciers are melting and making our oceans warmer, nicer for swimming. Especially nice when the wind tears down our houses, drowns us like rats in the basement, flooding a plethora of students out of hope and future. If someone told them four hurricanes was too much, more children were dying in Haiti than any human war, would anyone listen?

Comments

[jwg.livejournal.com]

Have you read some of William Calvin's work especially A Brain for All Seasons -
Human Evolution and Abrupt Climate Change?

I read this several years ago and found it fascinating. Without remembering the details, it sounds like he and you are on the same wave-length.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the tip. I seem to be coming across a load of interesting nonfiction titles lately. Here is another one:

Darwinian Happiness: Evolution as a Guide for Living and Understanding Human Behaviour