Now, I was watching the press conference where our Canadian government was rolling out its “National Adaptation Strategy.” It is a good thing that I knew it was about the environment because that title pretty much could have meant anything. It could have been about how Canadians were going to adapt to totalitarianism or sex with robots or adapting perhaps to the fact they no longer have any right to raise children as they might have had or not having jobs or enough money for food or rent or… well the endless list we all know by now.
But this of course, was about climate change. How fortunate, I thought, that the speakers had such good timing with the oft-cited backdrop of the raging forest fires with which to hammer home their point.
The whole little conference was held in a garden on a sunny lovely day in British Columbia and after we had been blessed and encouraged by the Indigenous speakers, our first real speaker was the Minister of Natural Resources who was going to explain to us how the government was going to reduce risk and prepare communities for climate change impact.
Virtually the first words out of the Minister’s mouth were how they were going to “turn it into an economic opportunity.” And there was a part of me that just decided I had had enough.
Not everything is economic. Not everything. I thought of Elon Musk’s lithium fields burning now perhaps up north there. I don’t know why I thought of that. So I turned it off and went off to feed the raccoon. Again.
My little stray raccoon is not an economic opportunity. He simply touches his cold wet nose to my outstretched finger before digging into the leftovers I’ve dished out. Sometimes he simply looks at me for a long time, down there at my feet before he eats. It is as if he is saying something. Trying to ask me something or tell me something. It is not fear. I don’t know.
I think then of the vast boreal forest out there with its towering trees and the varied calls of creatures and the edge of the wilderness. Wild. Untamed. Unknown. Untrod. That Northern Heart of Darkness. His eyes looking at me. The way his pointed little snout and masked face comes out from the black shadows to the pool of light there by the door. He comes from a different world. I do not know how much he knows or what he knows or where his little raccoon hands touch the earth in his travels. I do not know where he sleeps or how far he has come to be here. I do not know if he hears the voices from the fires north of us. A mourning cry—a wild creatures’ collective unconscious.
For it is a terrible time of year for fires. Too early now. The young ones not yet raised who could not escape. The awful truth of it. But we try not to think of that. Perhaps he simply wants to know why the air is smokey. Perhaps my raccoon is not thinking anything. He just wants a bit of carrot. I see too much in his presence. Read too much in his eyes. Project onto him my own dark thoughts.
For it is a dark world now.
And I am chastised for saying so. By everyone in all directions. It is not what people want. It is not what people need. It is defeatist. It is depressing. It is discouraging. It is wrong-thinking. It is, for those uninformed, an indulgence in pessimism when we must think positively. It is for those in propaganda cults, where most everything is going on the same as it always has, just weird and incomprehensible. To see such darkness.
But I am old. I know some things. I have known darkness. I also know it is always darkest before dawn.
I know this because I am up feeding a raccoon then and the darkness is like India ink spilled across the sky to the silent grey ground waiting. And when the sun rises… well, there’s a reason for the phrase “dawning realizations.” That is what happens. The pale snout emerges from the shadows to find nourishment.
The people learn. It is possibly the only way to truly learn. The lessons then are scorched by reality, fire-fraught with consequences, and seared into memory. The people learn well. When their time comes to actually learn. Because they have to. Fantasy cannot go on forever.
Then the waiting and the watching and the confusion ends. The children of the earth will remember their heritage of the fight for freedom and democracy and humanity. The fight was not about adaptation strategies to an economic end. It was never about that for the children of the earth. Just for the ones that would enslave them.
And while we might wait and watch, the dance of the children is yet to come. And it will be glorious. Some are already dancing. Can you see them? We’re not to know when it will happen. But it will. One day. One decade. One century. Maybe even tomorrow.
Next week we may discuss anything but raccoons and rapacious-sociopathic-human-hating-totalitarian-dismissive-war-mongering-elitist-bubble-minded-controlling… oh never mind. But still, do we forgive them for they know not what they do? Or do they know what they do and forgiveness is a blasphemy? Or do we hold their pain in comfort for what they found themselves doing because they had their reasons, their secrets?
Or do we simply turn away?
This week we’ll just keep feeding the raccoon. His name is Godot. He comes out of the wild to feed and to look with those probing feral eyes. He does not know we are less civilized than he now. There is a savagery in slavery.
Here’s an earworm:
And here’s a little ditty for the children of the earth:
Syl Shawcross lives in Quebec Canada.
Visit my sub stack (sylshawcross.substack.com)
Good read as usual!! Linking today @https://nothingnewunderthesun2016.com/