Life is good — er, no, it’s a nightmare — ah, but good! No! Nightmare!
By Pepper Trail
It’s early fall, and Ashland is filled with tourists and tanagers. The tourists are here from the cities, come for our quaint little shops and adventurous restaurants, for the theater festival and the wine, for the bigleaf maples turning gold along the river. The tanagers are down from the higher mountains, here to feast on the ripening madrone berries and chokecherries. Jays and woodpeckers make Lithia Park noisy with their clamor, competing for the acorns that are weighing down every branch. It is a bumper crop this year, some still as green as unripe apples, others a mature glossy brown. This is the feasting time for the birds, the squirrels, the deer, and the bears, and easy golden days for the people. Life is good.
Across America, masked men pile out of military vehicles and drag women on their way to work out of their cars, lead farmworkers out of the fields in handcuffs, push their way into courtrooms to lay their hands on refugees. Visitors are seized in airports, held in detention and isolation, and deported or released with no explanation. National Guard troops “patrol” the streets of the nation’s capital, aimlessly pick up trash, their presence senseless, solely a demonstration of the brute power claimed by a tyrannical President. It’s a nightmare.
On my favorite hiking trail, the last of the wildflowers, the goldenrod and tarweed, glow in the afternoon sun. The spicy scent of vinegarweed fills the air, and flocks of juncos and sparrows scatter as I pass, their eager search for seeds briefly interrupted. Vultures circle effortlessly overhead, drifting south toward California, and – wait, is that a Golden Eagle? Life is good.
At the whim of the President, billions of dollars approved by Congress for AIDS prevention, for international clean water projects, for food aid are cancelled. Nearly completed wind energy projects are terminated, wasting millions of dollars, while dirty coal-burning power plants are ordered to keep operating. Every government effort to study and respond to climate change is shut down, and among the words banned from federal websites are “climate science,” “global warming” and “alternative energy.” It’s a nightmare.
Soon it will be time to take my granddaughter apple-picking. Life is good.
The integrity of the Centers for Disease Control is destroyed by an anti-science zealot, as world-respected scientists are fired or resign in disgust. It’s a nightmare.
Farther ahead, there will come the clean days of frost, and then winter’s snow and the time of silence and peace. Life is good.
Partisan sycophants fill every leadership position in Washington, and anyone who publishes a fact, produces an analysis, or ventures an opinion that does not “support the President’s agenda” is terminated. Congress and the Supreme Court do nothing. It’s a nightmare.
This is the constant dissonance so many of us face. That is, the lucky ones, like myself, who are citizens, who are white, who are not in economic crisis, who live surrounded by beautiful wild places that nurture our souls and provide refuge from the daily deluge of nightmarish news.
What are we to do?
Not long after Trump took power, after he pardoned all the January 6 insurrectionists, I saw a meme circulating on the internet: “If you ever wonder what you would have done if you lived in 1930s Germany … you’re doing it.” And that, I think, is right on.
I have friends who spend their days scrolling the news, who incessantly listen to podcasts detailing the latest outrages, who call and write their Senators and Congresspeople every day to demand action. They are consumed with rage. I have other friends who boast that they never listen to the news, who focus on enjoying their lives. And I have friends who are sunk in despair, overwhelmed by the daily cruelty, corruption and lies of this administration.
I find myself whip-sawing between these extremes. I read the headlines. I go to the demonstrations organized by our local Indivisible group, where I wave my sign and I chant the chants. I believe that inaction in the face of this fascist takeover of America is immoral. But sometimes — often — it all becomes too much, and I must disconnect and find sanctuary in nature’s beauty.
In this time of natural abundance and national crisis, what do you do?
What should we all do?
Biologist and writer Pepper Trail roams the Klamath-Siskiyou bioregion from his home in Ashland.
