Holocene

Last Monday I was loaded with a very heavy, and in retrospect, poorly balanced load of racks, got a case of the high-speed wobbles, thought I had it under control until I hit a down-hill-- and lost control. 

Thankfully no one was hurt or worse.  And despite pulling a 180 and making a yard sale of the highway, I was not issued a citation.  Conversely the attending officer commended me saying, "It looks like you did the best you could, with a shit situation." 

Forty-five minutes later the racks were all cleared off the highway, I had given my statement and it was like it had never happened.

Except that I was exhausted from the traumatic experience of losing control of a vehicle.  A chemical thing, the body's way of repairing frazzled wires that got overheated in the moment.  Maybe it was just this heat we've been having.

Saturday we tried to beat that heat all day, stayed inside, except for some swimming, and then had ourselves a movie night. 

Kaleb has been loving the Ice Age movies and he hadn't seen 'Ice Age: Meltdown' yet-- so that was the winner.

First thing Sunday morning, taking advantage of the 24-hour rental window, he was watching it again. 

Let me back up-- Kaleb, now 5, has been very curious about Reality vs Pretend lately, specifically regarding "The Avengers". 

It is probably a byproduct of my growing sense that his generation will be inherently and completely delusional having spent their whole lives with Media-- but I felt compelled to inform him that a gigantic, muscle-bound, green-skinned mouth-breather named Hulk exists only in pretend stories... A person like you and me imagined and dreamed up the Hulk, and drew his picture.

That has lead to the recurring clarification-question like that which greeted me Sunday morning, "does the Ice Age exist in our world?" 

At the time, I gave him a yawning, "No, honey."

I thought about it, but refrained from mentioning, somewhat sadly in my opinion, that the three main characters in the Ice Age movies-- Woolly Mammoth, Saber-toothed Tiger, and Giant Sloth-- are all extinct species.

But actually, technically, the answer to his question is "Yes".

For roughly the past 12,000 years We have been living in a geological epoch known as the Holocene--this little interglacial warm period which is part of what's considered "The Current Ice Age" (aka Pleistocene Glaciation) which has been ongoing for the last cool 2.58 million years.  Earth has seen several Ice Ages come and go in its 4.54 billion years.

Which is weird, because it's hot as hell outside.  Look around and everything is just crispy.    

Rivers and streams, slowing to a trickle.  Wild fires raging across Colorado and New Mexico.  And the Midwest is breaking heat records from the Dust Bowl era.

Today the thermometer on the deck read 114.

Bill McKibben wrote about Global Warming in this month's Rollingstone, "In the course of this month, a quadrillion kernels of corn need to pollinate across the grain belt, something they can't do if temperatures remain off the charts."

But crops are already failing.  And almost all the fields I drive by everyday show signs of major stress.  A growing number of Farmers are simply tilling under their crops and cutting their losses.

When Justin Vernon wrote the 2012 song of the year candidate, "Holocene" he said, "The title is a metaphor for when you're not doing well. But it's also a song about redemption and realizing that you're worth something; that you're special and not special at the same time."

I'm grateful that no one was hurt in the accident.  There are a million different things that could've gone worse. 

And at once I knew I was not significant. 

My youthful invincibility took a massive hit.  Facing death in the past has always made me feel mortal, but not like this.  I've never lost control of the events pertaining to my own life quite like this.

It's stuck with me, had me thinking about the Kurt Vonnegut quote; “Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of--"God damn it, you've got to be kind.”

It's had me thinking about how little time we actually have on Earth.  And yet, how much a handful of moments define your life-- the best of which, almost inconceivably, are the ones where you have no sense of time whatsoever.

And then how much everyday life has even changed since the first iphone came out in 2007.  Five years ago.  And where will we be in five more?

How much change the world has seen since the advent of the Internet.  Or since World War II.  We don't even have photographs of our ancestors from more than three generations back.  And what were they like in the 1700's or 1200's.  Or 5000 BC.

Because you take into account the fact that the entirety of Humankind has basically come about during a 12,000 year sliver of Earth's history-- with an exponential spike in the last 150 years since the Industrial Revolution.  150 on 2.58 million on 4.54 billion years. 

It makes you feel special and not special at the same time.

And how much time, how much evolving, how much Nature has had to happen for you to get to this one singular moment?

And the most difficult question to answer of all-- What to make of it?