end times

Though the skies are finally clear as I write this, for the last month or so, the AQI (Air Quality Index) has hovered between 180-300 which means: “Unhealthy: Everyone may begin to experience health effects”, and “Hazardous”. By now, it feel like not only does everyone know what the daily AQI is, but most people have an AQI app on their smartphone so they can track it regularly. The other apps in regular use this summer have been Watch Duty which shows me the active fires in my county, and Genasys which gives me the status of evacuations for my zone. Our zone number is pinned on the fridge so everyone in the family knows which zone we are in case of evacuation. We also have our “go-bags” packed, and filled with things like N95 masks, extra clothes, water filters, and snacks. We have water tanks filled in case of power outages too. Last year, we borrowed money from our retirement to purchase a small used horse trailer and used truck to haul it so that we could evacuate our animals in an emergency. It’s hard to imagine bugging out with 8 sheep, 30 chickens, 7 ducks, 2 cats, and 2 large dogs, but now we know we could do it if we had to.

I was thinking the other day that there was a time not too long ago when I didn’t regularly joke about the apocalypse. Now, when I type “a-p-” into my texts, apocalypse is the first word to pop up…not apparently, apartment, applaud or appease… I think pre-Covid, while we were all aware of climate change and it’s related disasters, it all felt very abstract and far away. Then, the spectre of Covid brought tragedy, fear, change, and disaster into the lives of so many who hadn’t experienced it before (at least not in a daily, personal way.) And since Covid, I think it has felt like we all stepped onto a moving planetary walkway that is heading faster and faster towards a definite end, an end beyond that of just regular old mortality. We all joke about it now, but in a nervous sort of way.

Rebecca Solnit talks a lot about hope and climate change. She regularly posts stories on her Facebook page about the things that are going well for our planet…newly discovered species, revitalized habitats, communities working together for positive change. I find this hopeful and heartening and such a welcome change from the doom and gloom, but it can sometimes feel rather disconnected from what we see around us. In our county alone, the McKinney fire last year burned over 50,000 acres, and this year’s Happy Camp Fire is at 28,000 and only 50% contained. My teenager and I have the numbers of all the animal evacuation sites in our phones because we expect to volunteer with them every summer as pet and livestock owners flee their homes and place their animals in the care of the shelters at the fairgrounds. We now have “fire season” every August, which seems to coincide with scorching temperatures, so the double whammy of smoke and heat leaves us housebound for days trying to find fall movies to watch, hopeful for cooler days. Last week, kids from our daughter’s running team were running in respirators. We have a regular conversation now which is something like “where would be the coolest, wettest place we could live..?”

Our friends and extended family used to poke fun of us for our homesteading dreams… “Gonna build a bunker?” haha. But now, some of them are saying “…ummm, if you guys make that work up there, we might need to join you someday…ya know, just in case…” It’s a joke, but one that we hear a lot as collective worries about the state of the nation, planet, and humanity seem to congeal into a big lump of doom. Suddenly, friends are cheering us on in a new way, asking about gardens, brainstorming with us how we can set up water catchment systems. People we know who have never cared about things like butchering, seed-saving, and off-grid living are now curious. And it seems like this resurgence of interest in all things homesteading isn’t just about wholesome living, but rather attached to a certain concern that those skills may soon become useful and necessary like never before. Learning to adapt to a changing world is now on everyone’s mind.

Recently a friend came to visit, and when we started talking more deeply about how we were doing, the conversation turned to the sense of loss and worry in the air. He said things feel pretty bleak, and we tried not to dwell on the feeling of helplessness that seemed to inspire, quickly changing the topic to better things. And in some ways, that’s the key. Not ignoring what’s happening around us, but working to find the positive too. This year had more rain than the last two, and our spring wildflower bloom was inspiring and beautiful. Our homestead life has helped us to ground more into the rhythms of seasons, animal and plant cycles, as we use our hands to grow food and nourish our family. We feel an immense sense of gratitude that we just get to be here, for another sunrise.

Lately, I’ve been hearing talk about another round of Covid. We live in a pretty isolated area, but we hear friends in the city are wearing masks again, and there’s concern that this fall might bring a new bout of the pandemic. People are nervous about the idea of new lockdowns and restrictions as we share a collective PTSD from the last few years. On the other hand, I teach remotely now (something I learned to do during Covid) and as a result, I get to work from home with students and colleagues from all over the world. A positive consequence of the pandemic is that many of us have adapted to new ways of working and learning, and some of those adaptations have brought us closer together despite physical distance. But does it always take a crisis to shake people out of habits and to learn new creative ways of living our lives? What does the current crisis of gloom and doom mean for us and how does the disruption that comes with worry inspire new choices and different paths? One of the reasons we ended up on these forty acres is that the intersection of the pandemic, job stress, and growing older made us think, well, it’s “now or never”. So, what’s your “now or never”? And what will it take to make you just go for it as we muddle along in these end times together?