Prologue:
We have tipped the balance scales of our homeland. We've infected the skies that now drench to the bone. Topple bridges. Blanket farmlands. Turn streets into rivers. Turn rivers to 20' walls of water whose pictures hang crooked and upside down. Whose people are missing. Lost together on islands that used to be cities. Whose propane tanks explode while floating downstream. Fire one year. Flood the next. Colorado caught in the tumbler of a weatherworld never yet seen, the hundred year floods on the fast track to ten. Damage random. Safety random. The choruses drastic--Come gather 'round people wherever you roam. Admit that the waters around us have grown. Time for--simplify, localize, tenderly care for the land and skies—changing.
Story:
A crustacean, a little lobster with orange speckled pincers, nearly walked under my bike tires yesterday, disoriented on the sidewalk. I stopped the bike—my first tour of the world after three days of pounding rains—and called to Jeff up ahead. The tiny red creature turned toward my voice, lumbering toward the curb and road just inches away. Jeff stopped only long enough to pick it up—as I cried, "You can't pick them up, they'll pinch you!"—just behind the head. He mounted his bike with the little shelled clacking crawdaddy held delicately under his right handlebar. Off they went for a nearby ditch. But the ditch was a phony, lined with black plastic and ugly pipes, so Jeff kept sailing. Past the drowned gopher town, past the sluicing horse pasture with an awe-filled flying crustacean.
I called encouragement as they picked up speed. "Not the lakes!" Jeff said over his shoulder, "Too close to the street." The silty man-made Rec Center lakes fell behind as he headed for South Boulder Creek. A quarter mile that mudbug flew. Earthbound, waterbound no more. We left both bikes at the police tape and sawhorses--Danger! Trails Closed. No more danger than this flying crawfish had endured. What forces had dropped it in our concrete cultured cut-off world?
We squished through the mud-covered concrete path to the wild-flowing creek, dropped down the wet embankment and Jeff set the dull red complexly segmented waggling kid down feet first in a shallow puddle. Bug became silt. The mudbug back to earth. And water. Hidden and harbored by home.
Come gather round people, gather and admit and accept it, that soon you'll be drenched to the bone.
We have tipped the balance scales of our homeland. We've infected the skies that now drench to the bone. Topple bridges. Blanket farmlands. Turn streets into rivers. Turn rivers to 20' walls of water whose pictures hang crooked and upside down. Whose people are missing. Lost together on islands that used to be cities. Whose propane tanks explode while floating downstream. Fire one year. Flood the next. Colorado caught in the tumbler of a weatherworld never yet seen, the hundred year floods on the fast track to ten. Damage random. Safety random. The choruses drastic--Come gather 'round people wherever you roam. Admit that the waters around us have grown. Time for--simplify, localize, tenderly care for the land and skies—changing.
Story:
A crustacean, a little lobster with orange speckled pincers, nearly walked under my bike tires yesterday, disoriented on the sidewalk. I stopped the bike—my first tour of the world after three days of pounding rains—and called to Jeff up ahead. The tiny red creature turned toward my voice, lumbering toward the curb and road just inches away. Jeff stopped only long enough to pick it up—as I cried, "You can't pick them up, they'll pinch you!"—just behind the head. He mounted his bike with the little shelled clacking crawdaddy held delicately under his right handlebar. Off they went for a nearby ditch. But the ditch was a phony, lined with black plastic and ugly pipes, so Jeff kept sailing. Past the drowned gopher town, past the sluicing horse pasture with an awe-filled flying crustacean.
I called encouragement as they picked up speed. "Not the lakes!" Jeff said over his shoulder, "Too close to the street." The silty man-made Rec Center lakes fell behind as he headed for South Boulder Creek. A quarter mile that mudbug flew. Earthbound, waterbound no more. We left both bikes at the police tape and sawhorses--Danger! Trails Closed. No more danger than this flying crawfish had endured. What forces had dropped it in our concrete cultured cut-off world?
We squished through the mud-covered concrete path to the wild-flowing creek, dropped down the wet embankment and Jeff set the dull red complexly segmented waggling kid down feet first in a shallow puddle. Bug became silt. The mudbug back to earth. And water. Hidden and harbored by home.
Come gather round people, gather and admit and accept it, that soon you'll be drenched to the bone.
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Epilogue:
18.22" of rain fell on my house in 2 days. 20" of rain is the annual average here. Until now. Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of their country. My country is underwater. More rain moves into our skies today. Heaven help the cattle and horses and farmers and ranchers east of us. 4 people dead. 218 are missing. 10,000 refugees. Rivers roaring at us—CHANGE.
18.22" of rain fell on my house in 2 days. 20" of rain is the annual average here. Until now. Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of their country. My country is underwater. More rain moves into our skies today. Heaven help the cattle and horses and farmers and ranchers east of us. 4 people dead. 218 are missing. 10,000 refugees. Rivers roaring at us—CHANGE.
The mudbug's new home.
