Living with the Climate Crisis – August 2018

 In Siskiyou County in far northern California, we have now been living with smoke since July 5.  We have only seen our mountains a few times since lightning started the Nachez Fire to the northwest.  It got much worse when the Carr Fire blew up.  Now whatever way the wind blows, we get smoke.

I’ve been experiencing a primal fear from the smoke and filtered yellow sunlight. My body is saying “Danger! Look out!”  This is not the first timeI’ve been in smoke from nearby fires, growing up in Northern New Mexico, living there and in southwest Colorado, and now here for 14 years.  Sowhat’s making this so much more fearful?

Maybe the fire in Redding—following last year’s huge fires in Napa, Sonoma, and Lake counties and in Ventura and Ojai—has cut through my complacency.  I finally get on a visceral level that a wildfire could ravage my own house and town at any time.  It seems more like “when” rather than “if,”  considering the drought conditions and high temperatures.

And there’s no hiding place, nowhere to go that is safe in today’s world of climate chaos.  While we’re in high fire season throughout the West, the East Coast is flooding. 

I am so much more comfortable and secure than my neighbors in Redding—and so many other people throughout the world.  I know I am one of the lucky ones.  I may suffer some anxiety from week after week of smoke, but I still live in a functioning home, with stores nearby to supply almost every need.  

This is how the smoke has affected me: lethargy, low grade physical discomfort, free-floating anxiety, low motivation to do various tasks around the house or connected to my work, forgetfulness, and confusion.  These symptoms could be a result of psychological impacts, the toxins I’m breathing in, and/or my age, or all of the above. Whatever the contributing factors, I think it is important to notice these effects and take them into account.  I am trying not to expect myself or others to function as well as we usually do; I am trying to be gentle and compassionate with myself and others, even while I do what I can to mitigate these effects. 

I believe more and more of us are likely to experience similar impacts in the days and years ahead, even if we escape the worst of the ongoing disasters.  Business-as-usual just doesn’t work anymore.  Neither does “getting back to normal.”  Collectively and individually, I believe we need to face the hard cold (or hot) fact that we are in a time of crisis and radical change.  And crisis and change rarely come without suffering and emotional impact on everyone, not just the ones most affected.

It has helped to take some obvious steps that I’ve neglected up until now: making sure our important papers are up to date and readily at hand, planning what we would grab and what leave behind, putting gallon jugs of water in the car, and putting together a “go-bag.”  It helped to call our insurance company and check out our coverage.  It helped enormously when our neighbor cleared ladder fuel from behind his back fence and continued his efforts behind ours.  

Perhaps what helped me the most was looking around my house at all my beloved possessions and imagining having to let them go.  It would be heart-breaking andI know I would survive.  I think this kind of letting go will be essential as we face the unknowable and probably terrifying changes that the climate, economic, political, social crises will bring.  We will need to get down to the essentials of life that will help us survive and even thrive:  love, friendship, generosity, compassion, courage, caring for one another (friend and stranger alike), connection to Spirit (however we conceive that dimension), and our radical interconnectedness within the whole web of life.

Epilogue

After I wrote the reflections above, a friend offered to share a room with my spouse and me on the coast for a respite from the smoke.  We were able to join her to enjoy three days of beauty and smoke-free air.  

I walked on the beach alone fairly early one morning, and sat on a driftwood log for a spell.  At first I felt soothed and peaceful as I watched the tide move slowly up the beach.  Ah, all is well. 

But then I remembered reading Saved by the Sea, by David Helvarg, and his heartbreaking accounts of dying coral reefs, choking quantities of plastic waste killing marine birds and amphibians, military operations that deafen and destroy whales and other sea mammals.  I can no longer take comfort in the idea that the oceans will survive, at least not the creatures of the seas. 

I find myself grieving the loss of life everywhere due to human insanity.  A school bus bombed in Yemen with a US-made bomb.  My country—mostly wrong these days.  And only little straws of hope for change.  The consummate greed and cruelty and violence of this economic/political system—a seemingly implacable force like a tsunami sweeping over the land, destroying everything in its path except a few lonely structures that somehow survive.  Or like a raging wildfire with its toxic smoke spread far and wide.  Nothing to be done; nowhere to go; no safe place.

Maybe I needed to get away from the immediate crisis to feel more strongly the grief at the huge losses we are collectively experiencing and will likely face in the years to come. Nonetheless, no matter what happens, we can still love and care for one another and the living beings with whom we share this Earth.