Even as the world careens toward an unknown future shaped by
anthropogenic climate change, with horrible blizzards and hurricanes on the US
East Coast and spring in January on the West Coast, there are still things that
give me hope and make me happy. For some reason, I was acutely aware of these
things yesterday on my way home from the university.
I experienced a profound sense of relief when I finished my
last class of the day, walked outside after five o’clock in the afternoon, and
saw the sun still shining. Just a month ago at that time it would already have been
pitch-black night. It was strangely reassuring to know that no matter how much
we screw up the environment on earth, the larger universe will be unaffected,
the earth will still rotate on its axis, the sun will still go through its
usual seasonal variations, and everything will continue to hurtle through space
in a pattern that humans cannot meddle with. Life elsewhere, whatever it is,
will go on as before. I understood at that moment why many cultures have
worshipped the sun, because it is one obvious predictable element in a in a
world full of micro-scale unpredictability.
One neighborhood on my way home has an unusual number of
flowering plants and trees. I was particularly moved by the sight of a huge
star magnolia tree in full bloom, abundantly offering up its genetic material
to the process of evolution. Even if the human race reproduces and consumes
itself into extinction, whatever flora or fauna remain in tune with the prevailing
conditions of the natural world will conquer and survive. Life will go on.
In that same neighborhood I noticed, for the first time, a
set of steps leading up to the entrance of a house, each vertical surface
decorated with a beautiful pattern of tile mosaic, mostly in gray, beige, and
silver tones, incorporating many pieces with a mirror surface. Someone had
taken the trouble to decorate the outside of their house with a unique art
installation, probably crafted from broken bits of tiles and mirrors that would
otherwise have been thrown away. It was all the more beautiful with the evening
sun shining on it. Human creativity still exists in unexpected places.
On our property I see rafts of purple crocuses that have
spread from an initial planting, purple, yellow, and white crocuses coming up
in places where we never planted them, hellebores, cyclamens, primroses, and
all kinds of tender succulents spreading in wild exuberance among the native
plants, and fruit trees with buds ready to burst open any day now. The
ornamental “fruit” trees are already blooming. It’s tempting to think that
humans’ perverse attempts to grow plants outside their native habitats will
eventually lead to fast evolution of vegetation throughout a changing world, even
when natural dispersion and selection can no longer keep up with the rate of
change.
That night, sitting at my desk and looking out the window,
the sunset was spectacular. The entire sky glowed red as some benign clouds
moved in from the west. There will always be beauty in nature and the universe,
whatever form it takes. I’m optimistic enough to think that from time to time
at least a few people will shift their attention away from the shadow world
delivered to them through their electronic gargets for long enough to see all
of the marvelous things that exist in the real world that surrounds them.
[Animals walking off into the sunset by M.K. Curlionis, 1909; sun graphic and star magnolia from Wikimedia; other photos are mine]
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