Sometimes when you are in the eye of a hurricane, the breeze is gentle. Miles away, the storm crushes buildings and uproots trees.
In our town, in the gentle desert, it’s like that with only memories of damage humans have done to the land, like the Willard town flood in the year before my birth. That flood in 1932 forever changed my grandmother’s farm. Arising from deforestation around Willard Peak, heavy rain sent mud and boulders down steep mountain slopes, covering her part of town. It flattened her orchard and spewed mud and debris into her pioneer home. My mother read of the disaster in the Chicago newspapers, as she pondered giving birth to me.
The scarred land of my grandmother’s farm was never the same. Unintended error is a curse of human condition. Modern error magnifies human folly. A local flood is one thing, but cloaking the Earth’s mantle with toxic carbon pollution is another.
Consequences of hurricanes flooding coastal cities and droughts and coral reef death and sea life decimation are modern errors, but not enough to awaken the sleeping masses. The meter of danger does not sound the alarm. When is it too late?
We are in the Anthropocene Age, meaning our Earth home is being ruined by humans. The train of disaster runs faster toward a new apocalypse.
The cliche: “We can’t see the forest for the trees” stifles our ability to see our folly.
Richard H. Keller, Salt Lake City