in stages, as with incremental dismantling process of lichens, water solutions, frost-wedging. Thousands of years are tied up in these mechanisms, yet they are quick-change compared to the slow subduction of lithospheric plates or the tireless prodigious accumulation of glaciers—flake upon flake.
But the air is an element of an altogether different character from those forces beneath our feet. The atmosphere above our heads is ephemeral and swift in comparison. Semantically it’s best not confined to that space above our heads, for it encircles and infiltrates our own bodies continuously. Momently we fill our lungs, and even the cells of our flesh respire. We commingle among gases, constantly exchanging gas for gas in this friendly reciprocal atmosphere.
Or is it so friendly? We know that it is not as kind as before. We know that it has begun to change, that progress is rapidly altering it—perhaps beyond our powers of repair. The great surging jet stream, the forceful fronts, milky swirling low-pressure systems, the spacious aerial mountains of airborne particles, all within the generous water cycle by which everything is washed—all these thunderous atmospheric mechanisms are changing. And, according to Senator George Mitchell’s World on Fire, when the oceans have sopped up as much CO2 as they can hold in solution, our atmosphere will become that of a hothouse. The projection, made by Goodwin Obasi, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization, is for 50 to 100 years. A mere flake on the surface of geologic time. But they don’t yet know how these effects will play out.
As I entered the bruised and blasted neighborhood of my backyard my breathing was labored. The atmosphere, as in recent days, was heavy with low-level ozone, and my skin sticky with excess humidity, as though the heaviness of the hothouse were already upon me. About my feet the weathered ruins of our air cleaners lay everywhere, crumpled and broken, going only to decay and the eventual blessedness of soil. Leaves, curled and brown, crackled to dust beneath my tread. I stepped gingerly and high where broken branches of a once respiring life lay in heaps and tangles. Yet many trees still stood. This was no clearcut, but a better kind. Selective cutting. But scraggly standing bits of life, spindly and tall, were themselves bruised and torn by the skidder and many would not fully recover from their wounds, bearing hence the slow-wrecker of insectan pests and disease.
Down I came, picking my way over a river of bones, fascinating leavings broken, stripped bare. Some were pummeled to shreds. The skulls of granite, formerly hidden in soil and leaves, now popped into view. I teetered on twisted bones of boughs across stagnant pools on which swirled the resin of trees. Stumps were coated pale blue with caked sap, the dried outpourings of their vascular systems. The sweet odor of cut wood lingered, diminished and stale. The loggers, tough daring workers who support our woods economy and who must make a living for their families, had moved on to other forests weeks ago.
I clambered down, passing without seeing the flash of white revealing our neighbor’s house: I just kept walking, fascinated, upon the undulant river of bones. Then I awoke seeing the pale solid wall through skimpy trees: the lot of the wood-turning mill whose owners, in providing work for our community, had taken wood away.
Enthralled, I had gone too far, missing the path back to my house.
Comment: In its atmospheric changes, Maine will change. It will become a warm place to live but a dangerous place in which to raise kids in the sun. We will have ozone we don’t need at depths where we do our breathing, and at heights where we need it for protection from ultraviolet rays we won’t have it. Nemo me impune laccessit. This may be the future of Maine.
I’d rather fall into a thicket of thistles.
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