Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

By Tamar Reno

 

We’ve had our fair share of fire and rain around here. This past Mother’s Day, the mother of us all made sure we were awake by tossing an earthquake into the mix, rattling morning coffee cups and church pews indiscriminately. What’s next, a pestilence or a cloud of locusts? Apparently, we’re getting the latter, as Brood XIV cicadas, a 17-year brood, emerges this year. You can already hear their songs played on repeat as they look for love in all the wrong places.

A few days before the earthquake, which was centered in Tennessee but felt by many in our area, local apple crops were hammered by hail. It’s hard to avoid superstitions when it feels like we’ve been cursed.

My dad used to tell a story about a farmer named Sweeney. Sweeney was one of those guys who just couldn’t catch a break, living on the edge of ruin. Like many farmers, he borrowed against the next crop to sustain his farm through the current season. Farm life is precarious.

One year, things were looking good for ol’ Sweeney. He had a bumper crop, and it was the day before harvest. This crop was going to be enough to pay off his debts, fix his old tractor, put something aside for the next year, maybe even take his wife on that cruise she kept talking about. 

A hailstorm came out of nowhere and destroyed his crop. All of it. Gone. Sweeney walked through his destroyed fields, lamenting his luck.

He came back inside and found a note from his wife on the kitchen table. The note said she’d run off with an encyclopedia salesman from Mecklenburg County. As Sweeney sat at the table, his head in his hands, he looked out the window and saw that his barn was on fire.

Sweeney shook his fist at God. “Why me?” he cried, “Why me Lord?”

The clouds parted. A booming voice came down from the heavens. “I don’t know Sweeney. You just chap my hide.”

Maybe it really is that random. Or maybe it’s not personal at all. Maybe there’s a price for living in paradise. Or maybe the world around us is changing, and we can no longer afford to pretend otherwise. 

Whether you believe that climate change is caused by human activities or is simply cyclic or manufactured in a lab somewhere for nefarious purposes, facts are facts. Global temperatures are rising. Glaciers and ice sheets are melting, contributing to rising sea levels. Weather patterns are shifting, and extreme storms are becoming more frequent. Atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are at higher concentrations than at any time within the last 800,000 years. Plants and animals are experiencing habitat changes, affecting range and life cycles.

If Helene taught us anything, it’s that this isn’t someone else’s problem anymore. We can choose to acknowledge it and figure out how we’re going to adapt to our own changing habitat, maybe even consider how we can slow it down a little. 

Or we can be like Sweeney and shake our fist at God.

Tamar Reno writes from her home in Green Creek. You can find more of her writing at tamarreno.substack.com or email her at thehorsesofbearcreekfarm@gmail.com.