The first thing I see on waking is Orion, bright against the still dark of the morning sky – and that sliver of a pinned-on moon, too bright to be real, but there it is. But the chill in the air. How is it that it feels cold when the temperature says it’s not? It is all so suddenly, thoroughly, autumnal - it is as if the rug was just pulled, yanked, flipped, and the season changed. But this has been, I suppose, a year of the rug being pulled. And now the El Nino warnings –not just El Nino, but a super El Nino, fed and amplified by climate change. Extremes, unpredictability. Most climate watchers have had the good sense to stop saying unprecedented, because really, the very notion of precedent must be extinct. Such a perpetual sense of instability, unmooredness. Yes, aren’t we all just adrift. But my morning routines usually serve to keep me grounded. The same time, the same path. Reliable. But this past week, things haven’t been quite what I anticipated. At first, it seemed chilly, but the tomatoes are still green, pumpkins the same. Surely there is more summer to come. Then it seemed too warm for the dark brown of the joe-pye weed, and for the fireweed to have been drained, left with only with faded red leaves. I search for my morning regulars, raven, sometimes even fox, can’t find them, not in my mind’s eye, not on the land itself. Things seem untrustworthy. How to tell, these days, between normal and abnormal, between business as usual and catastrophe? Instead, there’s a fisher and a few blue jays. Fishers are peculiar, they move strangely, that slow sidewise gallop. How can a gallop be slow? And blue jays, so many voices, they have, such a range, everything from cooing to sonar. What are they saying, to each other, to me? Are their many voices meant to confuse? What to make of all of this? Perhaps they are all harbingers. // harbinger (plural harbingers) 1. A person or thing that foreshadows or foretells the coming of someone or something. Synonyms: forewarning, herald, omen, premonition, sign, signal, prophet, precursor harbinger of danger; harbinger of doom; harbinger of spring //
I am wondering, and then, at the bottom of the road, like an apparition – did it look like this the day before? - a blazing beauty, a Manitoba Maple full bore in her autumn colours when all around her is green. She is lite up like a fire, like all those fires, all those fires everywhere this summer… North-western Ontario Siberia Manitoba Algeria Italy Chile Argentia Spain Ireland British Columbia Australia Quebec Brazil The Balkans Greece Northwest Territories Scotland And the over 53,000 wildfires that have burnt across the United States so far Was this small tree chastising me, sending a signal perhaps? But in these days of doom and beacons and warnings, our oracles seem diminished by the barrage. We can’t discern or understand the message for all of the chatter. But maybe that’s not it at all. Maybe, probably, this is just a garden, just a landscape, a cast of creatures, all trying their best to get on with the business of survival. Of preparing for winter. They do not have the time, nor likely the interest, in acting as warning signs for the most selfish and belligerent of all species. It seems that if there ever were any harbingers of doom, they must surely have been exhausted by the futility of it all. Fed up. Worn out. And really, what is the point in a head’s up from a harbinger of doom? The doom is already here, we’re standing it in, feeling its heat, seeing its tides rising. And all the while as it stalks up and down our city streets and through our fields of grain, laps up around our doorsteps and takes down our mountainsides, we dither on, musing whether this may or may not be the right time for more pipelines, for another parcel from Amazon, for another AI data centre. Doom must be both delighted and, deep down inside, thoroughly disappointed - such unworthy opponents we’ve turned out to be. So, what now, now that we find ourselves right in the thick of it? Cheek by jowl with doom? How to cope? Well, I have been on the lookout for sound advice. This is my round-up of the best I’ve found: Be better neighbours. Pay attention. Learn more and be stronger. Get off our fucking phones. Plan ahead. Stock up. Give more, if you are able, to food banks and shelters and emergency aid. And don’t put up with any divisive bullshit – someone isn’t on board, wants to fawn over bitumen or tech bros or nonsense like pitting and prioritizing economics over/against ecological preservation, that argues that immigrants, or women, or trans folk or protesters are a threat - let’s not waste our time, better to step over them, keep moving towards constructive action. Because there is work to be done. And beneath these same morning stars, at other times and other places, other folks have stared down doom. It’s our turn now. Sources & sober reading: https://news.un.org/en/story/ https://climatedata.ca/news/ https://www.nifc.gov/fire- Read my other work! If you like my writing and would like to support it, please pick up or order a copy of my new eco-gothic novel, The Haunting of Modesto O’Brien, at your local, independent bookstore or order direct from my publisher, Latitude 46: https://store.
You might also be interested in my climate change trilogy The Wintermen, also available for order from https://store. Brit Griffin is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell Brit Griffin that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won't be charged unless they enable payments.
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