Riding The Storm Out
/The last day is usually the day before the next
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The storm hit Florida with hurricane wind, rain, and flood. The talking heads on TV wrung their hands and opined, "The worst disaster in five-hundred years". The Man-Made Global-Change crowd said it was just like they prophesied - and you know why, too!
A lot of folks seem to think cataclysmic storms are freakish. They're taken completely by surprise, despite the fact that storms of devastating fury happen with a certain regularity every single year - and have done so since the end of the last ice-age.
Were people as naive before modern times?
Did the Seminole think hurricanes unusual? or did they expect hurricanes the same way they expected wildfire, sickness, internecine raids, alligators, and all the other inconveniences that typically came their way.
I don't think they blamed themselves for the hurricanes. They'd need credentialed experts to think of something so silly.
Before the last part of the twentieth century most people were unaware they had the power to change weather patterns. They'd just ride out the storm with nary a suspicion they could have done a thing about it.
Bad storms have always been around. We insist on thinking each one worse than ever.
The Great Mississippi Flood of nineteen twenty-seven covered twenty-seven thousand square miles of ten states in thirty feet of water. It rained without stop from August of '26 though the Spring of '27. Nearly five-hundred people died, over six-hundred-thirty-thousand were busted beyond repair.
Did anyone back then consider that their mass-produced, carbon-spewing jalopies might be the reason for the unnatural deluge? Probably not. Only current experts are that smart. Back then, folks were more likely to remember the forty-days and forty-nights of Noah's flood and wonder what they'd done to deserve such punishment.
Flood and drought are commonly considered abnormal. Historic record says they happen time after time, throughout every age.
The Medieval annals of the Anglo-Saxon chronicles tell of a drought that lingered without a drop of rain for year-after-year-after year. The ground shriveled and cracked, crops failed, people and their livestock starved and died. The streams dried-up and the fish died-out.
Many were certain the Apocalypse was upon them.
Curiously, they lived on an island surrounded by a sea filled with food and water.
After a while they learned how to get the salt out of seawater and discovered ocean fish to be pretty tasty. Was it the cultural change that eventually evolved into British Fish & Chips?
The old timers expected trouble and were relieved when it didn't happen.
The modern western world has had it easy for so long they've convinced themselves that sunny days of peace are normal. They should know better. They do know better. They just prefer not to think about it.
When inevitable disaster strikes, they're shocked and indignant. "We must make sure this never happens again"!
Humans have no way to ensure any such thing.
Nature's schedule, whether fury or calm, cannot be managed by any amount of human tinkering - no matter how much effort the faithful put into trying. Earthquakes, solar flares, and ocean currents will continue to produce enormous geological entanglements impossibly beyond human understanding, or control. The Earth will do as it will.
All we can do is ride out the storm and hope for the best.
The ant can bite the lion. The lion won't notice.
By K. L. Shipley
Website: https://www.eclecticessays.com