Tim Barrus: Jonah’s Mountain
I am amused and sustained by the idea that the end of homo sapiens’ domination of the planet will be sooner than anyone suspected.
The end is irreversible now. It is too late. Many scientists know.
They give voice to this reality in private. What good would blowing whistles do. Too late is too late. Nothing as we know it will survive. In the context of geological evolution, the last twenty million years isn’t spit.
We cannot say our leaders failed us. We made them our leaders. We did it to ourselves. I wish the end would come sooner than it will because I would love to watch certain people lose their golden wealth and die. I would hope it would be painful and strangulating. One can dream.
So our children are angry.
And.
Have they risen up to take hold of the reins of culture. Hardly. They are insignificant.
Their parents are insignificant. Their parents are ephemeral, and it doesn’t really matter what college you might bribe.
We Casandra People know. Whales are dying on plastic grocery bags. Life can no longer sustain itself. It is dwindling all around you if you care to look. The Blue Jays have not returned to Jonah’s Mountain. The crows, smart birds, Crows, are ascendent. Not even eagles will survive. They will be overwhelmed. They are already overwhelmed. I have only seen one up here in five years.
They still shoot bears and bear cubs up here. We saw a mother and her cubs, all shot, and hanging by their necks on ropes tied to the branches of an oak tree.
The boys stood in their boots stunned.
They were mute. They know what men are like. They know death. It has been the dog who bites their ass most of their worthless lives. They know what it means.
They can all smell hatred a mile away. Homo sapiens consumed by their own hatred of themselves.
I just kept walking. I wanted to get to the top by sunset.
But no.
Among the lot of us, we had one foxhole shovel. They’re like Swiss Army Knives.
Darren and Smurf climbed the tree. They cut the bears down.
Harrison, shirtless, dug the hole.
Smurf wept.
A forest fire of visceral emptiness of whirl-wind echo and outrage. A scream at the way things are. At life. Smurf is not going down without a fight. Kid has guts.
We are quite able to set up tents in the galaxies of the dark.
By the time we got to the top of Jonah’s Mountain to camp, the sun was a memory and the scrub pines struggling to grow up there were lost in a whisper’s shadows.