Calamity Rain
“The rain has spoiled a lot. And destructively added to any misery that was already in play. But it acts blithely in other parts, glistening on plants, filling streams & wells that were low, saturating wayside places, with a moody glee. From a certain point of view, it is the unnatural outcome of weather moderation or modification, due to things either politically determined, or unchecked by humankind. For those of us lucky enough to be outside the flood zone, it is a time of reflection, and helpful action. We’ve been hit before, in turns. Our roads have washed away, our livelihoods dismantled, our focus diverted to short, or long term crisis. The shock reverberates throughout the state. And in July, there is normally a checklist: get next winter’s firewood under cover, earn tourist dollars, bring in hay, maybe even take a vacation, or relax at home while not working, grill outdoors, and visit cool ravines, while wild water is tame enough, and warm enough, to soothe, and refresh. It’s all thrown off now, and splintered by grief. Fragmenting plans, throwing up mud, shovels, rakes, alternate routes, homelessness. It’s true: part of the population is still harvesting summer. It’s hard to fathom the divide, or take in the cruelty of random loss. I lean up against it, in my own life, minus flooding. How it’s possible, to have so much taken away, so rapidly, probably is not a foreign concept to anyone, who’s lived. On my small plot, there is certainly, too much water right now. I can’t mow, I can’t get my truck up the farm road without digging into the track & spinning my wheels. My gardening work is dependent on dry weather days. But I’m not having to rethink my whole world, not today. It’s not 1998, and my road is still here. My friends who are excavating their businesses from a shitload of mud, and hauling up rotten inventory to curbside, are doing double duty, not me this time, if dodging a bullet means anything. I’ve still got guests arriving, miraculously, to stay at my lodge. I’ve moved 5 cord of wood in the last couple weeks, so that my winter will not so fractious. It’s a marginal economy I belong to, with little room for further complication. The minimal pleasures of when things are not hard, is still operating for all of us, in an awful hierarchy of chance. Yet the thunder clouds pushing moisture into our land, the dark, the light, the enigmatic nonsense of who is up and who is down, it makes its way into every moment of every day, especially when this kind of insane weather event strikes only a part of us. I take it as a warning, and a call. Walking across what was once a forest, now a lawn, feeling the squishy remnants of a deluge, calmed by flowers, alarmed by deaths, there is little left to the imagination. God’s green earth is under our care. We who are still left standing, are the biological titans, tasked with saving the planet. Call me grandiose, call me lunatic, but the hearts strong enough to still beat & breathe are the future, and the way. We won’t settle or plant a flag on something that has been engineered to eliminate our kindness, or defeat our mission of curation. This amazing terrain is for us to clean, and clean up, and to fight for, with all our might. We are not A.I., we will not be removed.”