I think that when people think of the great outdoors that what comes to mind are majestic mountains and azure skies and seas. But the word great doesn’t necessarily mean good. Ask someone from Circa 1918 if they thought the great war was all that fucking great, and you might just get an answer that suggests there was nothing great about it at all. And yet a decade later those same people decided that while stock brokers were splattering on the sidewalks that they’d call that particular time the great depression. So, just like war, a famine, a plague or a depression can only achieve greatness when it racks up a prodigious kill count.
And that’s great.
But not good.
In terms of expansiveness, the outdoors is certainly great. But I think people have this tendency to confuse goodness and greatness when contemplating our alfresco world, and that miscalculation can be inconvenient or it can be lethal.
We’ve had a mini drought going on for the last couple of weeks. I’m not sure if technically a drought means no rain or no rain and high temperatures, but we’ve been experiencing the latter situation. Hot and dry and windy as hell.
Assuming that hell is windy. But I think it’s a safe assumption considering that heat tends to generate wind and rumor has it that hell is hot. So, it’s a safe bet that Hell would have great paragliding because the only option available is updrafts.
Some people think this weather is great. It’s been 30 degrees pretty regularly and if you’re hanging out at the beach windsurfing, then I can understand their perspective. But there’s another side to this splendid weather provided by the great outdoors and that’s the fact that the bush is one idiot with fireworks away from an inferno.
Also, the heat has produced a horde of pine beetles and the dryness has almost stopped production of undergrowth that supplies blue and raspberries for the critters that inhabit said bush. As a result the bears have struggled to find sustenance enough to feed themselves and their cubs.
So, the black bears are hungry and hungry bears are not great. Just for clarification for city folk, hungry bears tend to lose their fear of people, and so they come into town in search of garbage and anything else they can find that’s edible.
Like the fawn that a fucking black bear killed and ate in our backyard yesterday.
That wasn’t great.
I suppose the good news is that the murder took place at night, so all we had to deal with was the aftermath. I’m guessing that the actual event wasn’t a Yogi and Boo Boo picnic moment, and would have been kind of traumatic to witness live, even with an Attenborough narration.
So, the weather is great if you’re on vacation at the lake.
But not so great if you’re a starving mother bear.
Observing this small example of cause and effect made me wonder about the myriad of effects from a change in weather patterns. I think that without too much effort that I could find tangible examples from all over the world that would answer my questions. But. I’ve decided that it would be too depressing so I’m not going to look, and as soon as I’ve finished typing this I’m going to try and not think about it.
I’m just going to keep telling myself that I’m old, and it’s going to be someone elses problem. I suppose that’s why most activists seem to be young. It’s going to be their problem so they’re more engaged. Also, young is good if your activism includes running from tear gas canisters and riot police. I watched this video the other day of this woman getting hydrated by a water cannon. The water stream was sweeping toward her and she just stood there either defiant or transfixed. Everyone else was running but she just fucking stood there. When the water hit her upper body her head snapped back hard enough that I was pretty sure she was dead. If her neck wasn’t snapped then the fact she was instantly airborne was pretty suggestive that she was toast. Soggy toast, but still toast.
But she got up almost as soon as she stopped skidding on her back on the street. Then she walked about 15 or twenty meters to where her bike had landed and pedaled away.
I concluded that she was a young activist.
Imagine if someone managed to stealth install a water cannon in the American Senate chambers. One high pressure sweep of that chamber and every state in the disunion would be having special elections to fill the vacancies of the departed octogenarians.
Perhaps instead of a filibuster, the average American would prefer a filiblaster. I mean, if you’re so partisan that you’re ineffective then why not literally clean house? Of course the answer to my question is that the replacements would be just as partisan and in a few months you’d have to hose them all down again.
So, my best guess is that consumerism is going to continue to fuel denial and disregard for any tangible action on climate, from almost every government on the planet.
As a result we’re destined to see a version of the great outdoors that isn’t going to be great in any way shape or form.
I’ll provide one possible and relatively immediate effect to elaborate. Consider my backyard black bear. What that bear did was move somewhere else in response to weather that didn’t allow it to survive. Now consider that California and now the Pacific Northwest are dealing with a prolonged drought and heatwave. Consider also that the population of Los Angeles and Phoenix and Seattle continue to increase. In our lifetime those people could be faced with two options. Option one is start a war with Canada and take their water. Option two is move somewhere else.
A climate immigrant so to speak.
Imagine my dismay over one black bear that migrated to my backyard because of a food shortage caused by a water shortage.
Now imagine forty or fifty million thirsty and hungry black bears with no where to go and very little to lose.
That’s climate immigration, and those immigrants don’t give a shit about borders. Also it’s likely they’re all armed. Which is fair because you can rest assured that the people whose direction they’re headed are also armed. At least the people to the East. The people to the North should give this scenario some thought and maybe change their gun laws before it’s too late to deal effectively with an army of thirsty Americans with AR platform assault rifles.
I suppose that if we survive then someone can call this period of human history, the Great Migration. Or maybe the Great Migration wars depending on how things work out. I mean it’s entirely plausible that the Eastern and Southern seaboard of the U.S. could move inland enough that New York and Miami would be compelled to join the migrants. Eventually everyone could converge at Belle Fourche South Dakota for a gigantic shoot em up.
Kristi Noem might even have some policy regrets as she feeds cartridge’s into her magazines from her Mount Rushmore sniping position, while watching immigrants flood into her state that aren’t invited to work in the meat packing plants.
But I doubt it. She doesn’t strike me as the introspective earth mother type.
Anyway.
I really believe that the Great outdoors is going to provide all kinds of examples of why it deserves the title of great. Great floods, great hurricanes. great drought, great wildfires, great tornado clusters, and great extinctions.
Not to be outdone I’m sure that humanity will gather in the last hospitable sanctuaries and fight a new war until the population is sufficiently diminished that the land can support the survivors. We’ll call the time the Great something. Not sure what we’ll call the event but it doesn’t really matter to the Great outdoors.
Because nature will have ended our idiotic argument about who or what’s responsible for climate change. The Great outdoors will have solved our emission and pollution dilemma for us.
Because we’re too fucking stupid to do it ourselves.
And maybe that’s when the title of Great will be absolutely applicable to the outdoors.