the pelican

once more with feeling

raining

ah water.

the creek is up.

some brief glorious relief from the heat.

would like to say that the heat has broken, but it’s predicted to be back into the nineties again in a couple days. it’s been on average about 94 since May. this summer, there have been something like 48 days of over 90 degree heat. several over 100. but that’s just an official summer count, since June 21, and doesn’t even take into effect most of May and June.

oh but there’s no such thing as global warming. oh no.

don’t you know it’s just a pet theory for those silly chicken-little tree-hugger types.

still you have to admit that the denial machinery has had to shift gears a bit as these changes seem to be happening faster and becoming more obvious than those who would prefer to not have this fact within their privately created “reality” would like. and so the basic media refers to what’s happening to the weather these days as “climate change.” they still can’t quite bring themselves to admit that we’re being cooked alive. that we’re turning this beautiful planet into a toasted wasteland. a harsh dry desert.

and maybe it seems so much more obvious at altitude.

born here. lived here most of my life. it's the mountains that draw me in, keep me from leaving.

still i can not get used to looking up into the mountains to see them so bare. so empty. in a fuzzy haze. no snow. glaciers gone. so hot. so dry.

noticed a couple years ago that they finally changed the sign on the glacier view overlook.

now it just says “overlook.”

remember so well, as a kid, our science teacher took us on field trips into the national park. he pointed out several glaciers, saying how many thousands and thousands of years they’d been there and how they helped shape the land, the moraines. how they melt ever so slightly at such and such a rate, how their slow melting and trickling provided us with clear clean water, and natural cooling breezes, and how many more thousand years they’ll be here with us. how we rely on them. how we need them. what a different ecosystem it would be without them.

and now, all within the last 15 years, gone.

poof.

in fact, in colorado they say there are currently only two actual glaciers left, which really are not much more than glorified snowfields. but heck, they’re the remains of what once were glaciers, so we’re going to stick to that original name for them for now, even though these little clumps of ice will probably be gone in a year or two as well.

so up on trail ridge, the tundra, once considered precious, so delicate that tourists had to stay on little wooden sidewalks and platforms. one step off and you’d have a ranger down your throat just like that. one step on the tundra would crush the tiny plants and leave a scar that would take years and years to grow back. but these days these days oh these days it hardly matters. the tundra is cooked. pan fried, really. baked to a crackly crunch like a cheetoh. dust. dry, mostly. brown. and the people walk all over it and the rangers don’t seem to hardly bother. why should they.

the old rocks up there above tree line that hadn’t even seen sunlight in thousands of years, now with all the ice gone, they bake in the sun. and yeah i know they’re rocks but i swear i can feel them recoiling, withering, shrieking in the sun. drying. fading. crumbling.

used to be, you could see the ute trail across the divide. just a tiny path across the tundra. the vegetation was so fragile, the indians respected this and crossed it very gently. stuck to the narrow path single file. we knew this because their last hundred or so year old footprints were still visible.

were.

i used to look at their footpath and imagine the world as it was not that long ago. and how beautiful and full of life it had been for a very very long time. seems like a fantasy to imagine native americans hunting and camping and living in this place. the beauty. the freedom. crossing the divide in the summer on foot. the awe of being up above tree line among the peaks. the snow. the high altitude lakes. marmot. lynx. bear. big horn sheep.


but now look around and it’s bumper to bumper SUVs. can hardly maneuver through the parking lots. the fuel exhaust and the pollution and the heat and the bright sun.

now you can just pull right on up into the realm of the gods in a big black SUV and look out at the wonders of nature through a windshield. windows rolled up, AC blaring, a bag of potato chips and a soda and a movie playing on the dvd in the backseat. the complete drive-through experience.

not sure if i miss the tundra or the footprints more.

everything seems to have been burned. used up. consumed.

and in such a short amount of time.

just like that.

we’re just seeing the crumbling edges of it all now.

and one day, not that far in the future, all the fossil fuels that have been used to try to burn this place to a poisoned smoldering cinder will be gone too.

and i have to wonder if this fragile beautiful ephemeral organic life we take for granted will even continue to share experience by then.

i wonder.

and i think about my 21-year-old niece and 10-year-old nephew.

and i wonder.

and so for now, i will just stand barefoot in the soft damp dirt under the trees and offer up my gratitude for the rain. and ask the ancestors for their forgiveness for this blind and selfish ignorance. and for all the harmful actions, all the fear, all the suffering.

and i will ask forgiveness from everything. every tree and plant, every bird and rock and cricket. i will ask forgiveness from the earth herself.

and i will search my soul to find a way to forgive myself and release humanity from my sad harsh judgments and rigid expectations.

and try to hold the pain of the knowledge of the women and children and all the casualties of war in my heart.

and i will ask again and again for guidance and understanding and focus.

and i will cry.

and i will breathe.

in the rain.

posted by: limine at 21:07 | link | comments (15) |

Comments:

#1  15 August 2006 - 03:20

 

exactly

rustymadgal

#2  15 August 2006 - 03:56

 

You have painted that canvas in words so very effectively that we can see it too.

Here in the lower altitudes global warming is also very evident, although not as dramatic. Where we used to be able to set our clocks by the daily rainstorms, now they are sparse and sporadic, and desalination is a serious topic. Our wetlands are disappearing rapidly.

We mourn with you and worry about our grandchildren's future.

Great post, J.

InMyLife

#3  15 August 2006 - 13:56

 

So beautiful, so sad.

mafidl

#4  16 August 2006 - 02:09

 

You do write beautifully. I was particularly touched by the last part with "and so for now, i will just stand barefoot in the soft damp dirt..."

behindtheblink

#5  16 August 2006 - 04:51

 

The other day I was on the trail, and two people whoosed by on their bikes. I thought of my year in the wilderness, more than 30 years ago, how we couldn't have imagined bicycles on the trail then, or the gutting of the earth that has taken place since then, the nascent environmental movement. In wildness is the preservation of the world, eh? lovely entry, J, as always.

Leigh

#6  16 August 2006 - 04:52

 

whooshed

Leigh

#7  16 August 2006 - 08:05

 

beautifully expressed m'dear. i've overhead the news just recently, telling us floridians that the state has decreased in width by almost half in the last few years. blame it on the hurricans, blame it on erosion, blame it on rising high tide levels. but good golly, don't go blamin it on global warming, perhaps the word is just to big for small minds to wrap themselves around, like the space program and walking on the moon, the masses turn away from The Big Picture.

Anonymous

#8  16 August 2006 - 10:14

 

Lovely and sad.

I can't see any way to break our collective sense of entitlement. So let me join you in tears, in the rain.
'mouse

Anonymous

#9  16 August 2006 - 16:08

 

I've already expressed my sorrow at what is happening in Colorado - and I guess everywhere else. However, I have to take issue with the commenter #7
"...i've overhead the news just recently, telling us floridians that the state has decreased in width by almost half in the last few years..." I think he must be reading the tabloids too much. That just isn't true. Some people who live here might say that's too good to be true - hahaha.

mafidl

#10  16 August 2006 - 16:13

 

I live in Florida.

I wish this damn state would shrink in half. Unfortunatley, it's as fat as ever...

NeutronNorman

#11  17 August 2006 - 21:50

 

Hummm, welllllll, hummmmmm, it's one thing to roast coffee with a heat gun and a bread machine, but beyond that, my appliance use is sorta normal.

v

taming

#12  20 August 2006 - 07:37

 

yes, you caught me, i'm sure that i used my literary license and high hopes in over-exaggerating the loss of width.

G

Anonymous

#13  21 August 2006 - 19:10

 

perhaps all of the suvs will grind to a halt, wherever they are, when the fossil fuels run out, and we'll be left with this eerie silence...and only our feet to take us places.

i'll cry, too, if it all disappears...if there's nothing left. i just hope there's something to replace it - just as lovely, maybe less fragile...

leave only footprints.

barkalot

#14  22 August 2006 - 10:35

 

thanks for all the nice comments! i came very close to not posting this because it just seemed too sad and dismal. hard to hold the sorrow.

but it's my bloggy and i'll cry if i want to . . .

oh if only all the big SUVs would just grind to a halt -- to cut emissions so drastically could really have a positive effect. maybe not so much to cry about if that happened!

yeah it's hard to watch it all disappear -- sad to see. and happening so rapidly too. can't get used to it at all. so strange to look up at the mountains here now. they look foreign and bare and cooked. so different from even just a few years ago.

still amazing to me how many people are still in denial. are they really that disconnected from the world of nature to not notice? to not feel it? to not see it?

'mouse's comment about the sense of entitlement i guess kind of says it all, really. perhaps it is less a lack of awareness and more of an unwillingness to acknowledge what is happening? i don't know. i'm not a scientist, but it's pretty darn obvious to me, that's all i do know.

goliard: i think ultimately we all understood what you were trying to say. (and your talents will always have full literary license in my world!) :-)

limine

#15  24 August 2006 - 04:20

 

It has taken me an abysmally long time to come up with a coherent reply to this amazing post, which I have read -- I kid you not -- about seven times.

I am thinking back now to my visit in June, when your lovely sister and I were riding up to the little town where you grew up, and I saw high rushing water on other side of the road. Sis told me that was due to the hot, drought-ish conditions under which you were all living. It was a little moment of cognitive dissonance for me: In the mountain town where *I* grew up, a hot drought-ish summer would drop the water levels of the Delaware and Lackawaxen rivers so sharply that you could see the pebbles on the river bottom as you drove over the bridges. The kind of rushing water I saw in your neck of the country was the kind I used to see after torrential rainstorms in my hometown, that swollen rushing churning river foam.

"You get *higher* water levels in hot weather?" I said, a little dumbly.

"It's due to the melt," Sis replied.

I think of that moment every time I cross a street in midtown Manhattan, or every time I walk past the Waldorf-Astoria, which sits next door to my office, and see a stretch Hummer idling at the curb.

Did I mention that I absolutely love your post? Long may you wave.

Anonymous

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