Reckoning

It is mid-day and it is dark and ominous. Friday night I was sitting in the mountain house having dinner with my sister and a couple of friends. It had been hot as hell all day and we were sweltering inside the house while eating but no one seemed to mind too much. All of the sudden, literally out of nowhere, the wind picked up outside and began blowing HARD. The temperature immediately dropped about 20-30 degrees, the sun disappeared and the air was filled with a wild and frantic energy. The electric lights began to flicker on and off before finally deciding on “off.” We lit a candle and continued our dinner, just went right on with our evening. My friends went home and my sister retired to the cabin. I spent the night on my fold-out sofa on the screened in porch. It cooled down so much during the night I had to get up in my sleep and find more blankets. When the sun came up in the morning I shed the blankets as the light shone on my skin and I began to sweat.

When I left the farm to go see about work and my food at Mountain Creek the reality of the storm that seemed nothing more than an anomaly became apparent. Trees were knocked down everywhere, power lines dangling, branches snapped like twigs….and there was the eerie, ominous silence in which we have now became engulfed. I got into town and was startled by the long lines of cars at the gasoline pumps. The temperature kept rising and rising and the day was spent in a surreal mindscape of damage and ruin. The heartwarming aspect to all of this is how people behaved. People were patient and kind with one another, even in the gas pump lines, there was no cutting, no honking of horns, no yelling or bitching, just calm as if there was nothing out of the ordinary.

I wonder if this is how it will be when it all really goes down and goes down for good. We won’t know it’s for good at the time. We’ll think it’s just a matter of time before order is restored. But when it really happens order will not be restored, the power won’t return. We will be left to fend for ourselves. The small community I live in will survive. These are country people with country ways. Sustainability isn’t just a catch-word or a trend to these people; it is a way of life. Hell yesterday farmers were out cutting and bailing hay just as they would have been doing anyway. There was a slight air of panic in the towns from tourists coming off the interstate but the local people, for all their flaws and faults, were non-plussed and I found myself happy and proud that I was among them. My two years living in the cabin has prepared me for moments like this. All the trappings of civilization fall away and you find yourself surrounded by the silence of the real. I gave up TV over two months ago. I use the internet sparingly, a bit at work and a bit at a coffee shop in town. I can now live without these things without going mad. They don’t matter. What matters is the cool air at night, the feeding and watering of my dogs, the checking in on my neighbors and family.

I’ve long known there will be a reckoning…a reckoning we will see and experience in our lifetime, a reckoning that will make things worse before they get better. Storms come and go through time, it ain’t nothing new. But when a combination of events takes place, it will change. I don’t know if we are headed for a new dark age or not. I don’t know how it will all play out but I do know that our current civilization cannot continue on the path it is on without dire consequences. Our leaders are still completely blind to the truth. We are meant to believe that if the “economy” just gets better, things can go back to “normal.” Well, I’ve been alive for forty years now and I can tell you that there has been nothing normal about the past four decades. Our economy is a lie, it assumes continued growth. On a tiny planet among the stars there is only so much space, so many resources…it is up to the earth itself to shake off our beehive madness. Whether or not this is a conscious act of the planet or just a matter of cause and effect is irrelevant. We have grown beyond our means and it is beginning to show. We need a time-out. We need to pause and reflect. If we won’t do it on our own the earth will do it for us. It will knock down our towers and silence our televisions. It will remind us of the preciousness of clean water and healthy food. It will learn us to be kind to our neighbors, to look out for one another, to finally realize we can’t do this alone. Our addiction to fossil fuels and a way of life that is beyond our means will be broken sooner or later. There is a reckoning in this wind.