Augury At Dawn
I think I shall always remember August 2021. This is when, in the midst of my own life changes, it was reported that the Gulf Stream is on the verge of collapse. The possibility of such a catastrophic event was first brought to my attention by Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth. Scarcely fifteen years later and, as all things climate related, it is happening much, much faster than previously expected. What has always remained in memory about the possibility of a dead Gulf Stream is that it would lead to colder, wetter weather across Europe (possibly even and ice age), while resulting in devastating droughts in other parts of the world — parts of the world already facing climate change related desertification. The news this month of the ailing Gulf Stream has made the prolonged rains of this past winter, rains that did not end until June seem a sign of all to come. This is what I think every day as I rise at 6:30 am and step outside. Most of the mornings here in Chãos, where I am volunteering at Vale dos Cavalos equine therapy center, have been dark, the clouds low and charcoal gray or indigo. It is blustery and cold and after the day begins to warm and perhaps the clouds to dissipate, the winds howl continuously out of the north-west. The average temperatures here have been below average, and until mid-day we are in layers with arms and legs covered. As the sun sets between eight and nine o’clock the temperature drops precipitously, and the constant wind becomes icy.
I find myself investing larger amounts of time in keeping fear under control — working to prevent dread from paralyzing my ability to have hope, to make plans for a future I am increasingly skeptical I will be able to have. In the afternoons over these last few weeks I’ve read Mary Oliver’s personally selected volume, Devotions, and many of those days have turned my own pen to writing about nature — about the sun and wind and the olive trees and the horses stamping in the orchards and the cooing doves. I find myself wondering how long we will be able to write about afternoons in August without it being undeniably an account of the end-times? I wonder how many summers there are left when we can afford ourselves time for simple pleasures — and then I quiet my racing mind and pick up a book or listen to classical music or walk down the hill to the oldest, most twisted and lovely olive tree I have ever seen, and I rest my worry in marvel. There is still time this August to marvel at the perseverance of a tree older than most nations, and certainly older than the problems of this uncertain age.
The fires have been, for the most part, too far away for us to be too concerned — and after writing about fire every summer for the last ten years as my life in New Mexico and then California was surrounded by conflagration — smoky skies and months on end when it rained ash, I prefer to keep fire out of my notebooks this year. Prefer instead to fill them with wind and birds and cicadas and the memories arising with that particular stimuli — the harsh rattling bugs in the bushes and trees, the smell of horse manure and dog breath as excited hounds make a temporary home in my lap.
Yes, the Gulf Stream may fail, but today is hot and I plunged into a cold river and lay in the sun reading and discussing metaphysics, and I felt normal and wanted to feel normal. There is always time for fear and worry and survival but there is not always time to be cooled by moving water or to make new friends or choose an afternoon of life over the necessity of avoiding death. The future will be hard, so I take advantage now of the chance to feel ordinary gratitude, and indeed — even awe at the spectacle of this marvelous, mysterious, magnificent planet. It is all OK, today — it’s OK to swim and eat nuts and crackers on a river bank and lie in the sun before plunging once more into the cold depths of a river still vibrant with fish and dragonflies and life — for water is life, isn’t it? Some day I will need this memory to carry me through some difficult hour when there will not be time for such an afternoon, and I will be happy to have it there, waiting — a perfectly ordinary day when I was content and swam and read and listened to a bird singing unseen in the trees of a perfect August afternoon.