The Bones of a Dying World

What a grim title this post has, eh? 

Don't worry, though - it is actually a narrative of  hope. 

My house is an older, rustic cabin that sits quaintly atop a small grassy knoll nestled in a mountain valley higher up in the Appalachian Mountains.  I have four seasons here: icy winters where the tree limbs go bare and the ground freezes, sprintimes when the wisteria blooms infuse the entire valley with their fragrance, hot, humid summers where a lot of our time is spent wading and kayaking the river that runs down through the mountains, and beautiful orange/crimson/teal autumns that bring sleepy afternoons and hands warmed over campfires. I live a blessed life. 

And it's from here that I write this:  from here, looking out over my mountain valley and the calm, serene quiet that enfolds me, I sit and know that outside my window there are the bones of a dying world.  

It seems macabre to think of it this way. And yet, it's clear that this is what it is.   Not the planet itself - the planet may very well be nearly indestructible for all I can say (save for any cataclysmic collision with some unknown foreign space obstacle, of course).   I quite imagine that this great mother of ours will remain long after we are a distant, dusty memory.  And it may yet still be here when even the memory of us has become fable and faded into dim twilight.   I like to think so, anyway.  I like to believe that our mother - though she goes through tremendous upheavals and changes to her climate, biosphere and atmosphere periodically - will remain strong long into the unseeable future.  Climate change, actually, is farily common to our planet - it happens all the time. And the planet's biosphere is adaptable. But never before has their been a climate shift like what we're seeing now - in the Anthropocene, where we've squandered our resources and abused with our insatiable need for cheap energy. 

So no, I'm not talking about the planet itself.  I'm talking about the world.  

Climate change has happened frequently in the timeline of our Earth. 

The world - the cultures, the lifestyles, the Westernization, the globalization, the cheap energy - all of these things that we have collectively come to know as our world - these are the things that are dying.   And in the process, our planet is tossing its wild mane about and shaking its head at these annoying bipedal primates who have exploited its resources for so long.   And I can't say that I blame her for that. 

But in this case, the death isn't something to contend with or be fearful of (death never really is, though).  In fact, as it has the capacity to bring us to something newer, better and gentler.    In some of my essays,  you'll see that a better world is not only possible, it's already on the way. It's only up to us to reach out and embrace it.   

So amid the bones of our dying world, we can work together to create a new one: where we rely less on stuff out there, and more on each other.     This is what I hope for; what I pray for - what we need.