It is now the halfway point, equal distance between the equinox and the solstice, and the first snow has come to our home in the north country. Night before last it fell, and again it is falling just a little this morning. It is quiet; the songbirds of summer have departed for the south and the winter chickadees have not yet arrived. Only the sound of a solitary crow greeted me as I walked across the yard to the work house. It is not winter, not deep winter, but all the preparations have been made, for the time has come when we will say goodbye to this year, the year of our Lord, 2024. Year of our Lord, why that turn of phrase? A tinge of irony, irony and sadness? We are in the midst of the sixth great extinction, but the clear science documenting that fact has now become an obstacle to the absolute necessity of continuing to live in our customary fashion and tending to our primary need, the need to grow our sacred economy.

The numbers 36, 60 and 4 add to 100. It is a fact. The total percentage of the biomass, the weight, of all mammals on earth is one hundred. Of those that are human beings, our weight totals thirty-six percent. The percentage that is the livestock we raise to eat is another sixty. The percentage of biomass that remains of all the wildlife in the world, all the thousands of wild mammals, from shrews to elephants, from lions and tigers to bears and wolves is four. Human beings and the cows and pigs and sheep we eat are ninety-six percent of the biomass of all the mammals on the earth. This, too, is a fact. But four is still a big number, and there are always zoos.

Climate scientists have been sharing with each other some new misgivings. It appears that the earth’s warming trend is running ahead of the projections of their models. Some are alarmed, others think that it is a momentary blip. Of course, such uncertainty provides a very good reason to delay. We should be certain, and the end of the century is a long way away. Only the very young now alive will be around then. Young children; like ours, or like our grandchildren.

I look in the mirror. The sum total of my impact on the planet in my 74 years is huge. More than most others, by far. I need to remember to turn out the lights in the living room when I leave it and go to the kitchen. Yes, I will help.

Folks from native traditions spoke about listening to what the others had to say, not the others of their tribe, but the other life forms that lived in the same place with them. It was a universal truth, the native peoples on every continent said the same thing, that the world is alive and aware. We listen, but we don’t hear anything. Yes, a few of us are trying to again learn how to hear, but the instructions are unclear and the maps misplaced. We can no longer hear what they have to say; the trees, the birds, the grasses. Perhaps those native elders were only using metaphor, these were just stories that were told to the children? We don’t hear the trees speaking, we don’t know anyone who does, except perhaps as wishful thinking. It is quiet now, the snow covers the yard and it is very still. All is quiet. Very peaceful. Soon the solstice.

“At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,”
T.S. Eliot

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