PUTNEY — We wait for the next hurricane to hit. Not hit us - we are inland, and north. But what, really, is our separation, our safety?
Now we have drones and satellites that take photographs of the Earth from above. They capture hurricanes; they watch the ice melt. Now we are free, above it all, in a certain way, while the swirling cloud patterns, the rifts, and the fissures are preserved.
But what good are records of the breakdown, while mortals on Earth cry and slog?
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I've been fascinated with the arctic recently. Maybe it was the hot summer.
It's one thing for me, wrapped in my down quilt, to sit and read about fatal polar expeditions, where ill-equipped explorers resist the inevitable lure of falling asleep in the soft snow.
It is another to be planted into that snow in heavy boots, or frozen in an ice floe on a boat, the world around so endless, open, vacant. Finger tissues screaming frosted pain, nutrition minimal.
And yet, the ones who choose the explorer's life are from the optional class, thrill and adventure seeking, name and fame seeking. Doing it for fun.
What do I want to see, really? Do I want to keep reading and living vicariously the life of the push-the-edge traveller? Enjoying the high-resolution photographs of Antarctica as she falls apart? Following the path of the circling winds as they carry billions of gallons of water to dump onto our continent's edge?
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I perch and watch, carrying a sign, at times, or firing an email to an undecided senator. Privileged to be above the rising waters, this time.
From the space station, they say this hurricane is a real monster - they had to use a super-wide-angle lens to capture it. This makes me salivate not with fear, but with anticipation. Except that my children and grandchildren may be just a teensy bit too close for comfort, in Jersey and coastal New York City.
The maple business, my brother's, was supposed to be at the Natural Products Expo in Baltimore this week, but they have decided to stay home in Vermont. Shock waves and after effects will ripple outwards from the storm's point of contact.
We have seen these movies, newsreels, scenarios before. The Weather Channel has learned how to cover them really well, for those of us who need to know where to go and for those of us who want to view from the armchair and speculate about data points on the graph.
On the one hand, we have a growing chorus of voices, articulate, knowledgeable and well-placed, like the head of the United Nations, warning about the accelerating pace of change.
These voices describe the degradation of that usual, age-old force guiding our weather patterns, the jet stream. Apparently, it has been upset by the warming ocean. So large storms get larger and stall out and dump dump dump their floodwaters.
What will the new patterns be? Will there be patterns, or chaos? How long does chaos take to resolve into something new? Or to blow up?
On the other hand, of course, we have the slugabed, naysaying profiteers pillaging the remaining carbon stores, oil and gas and coal, timber and peatlands, grabbing for their own families, stuffing their mouths and their closets and their well-perched mansions like that speedy top-hatted devil on the Monopoly board. And arming themselves for when the starvers and not-taking-it-anymores come after them.
Just a few years ago, I thought it was going to turn around, with peace and love, and I bemoaned the cynics who had given up on pulling together to save the whole lot of us.
But now? I am watching a spectacle. I am mourning for our children's children and for the ones floating in boats and wading through rivers.
Mourning is as ethical as I can muster.