Nature's Tears

My wife loves the little stuffed animals she receives when she contributes to wildlife protection organizations.

The most recent one represents a howling wolf, but viewed from a certain perspective it more resembles a weeping wolf.  How appropriate!

Not just scores of species are on the brink of extinction.  The shared home of every living creature, our host planet, is being murdered by the one species that fancies itself dominant.  Homo sapiens.

Such a misnomer. “Wise man.”   Better “greedy man.”  “Arrogant man.”  “Ignorant man.” “Self destructive man.” “Despicable man.”

The wolf shall weep.  For the poisoning of the water, and the air, the dying trees and plants, the vanishing prey, the lethal heat. As the great cats must weep, and the raptors, and all the creatures that fly, and those that burrow,  and those that swim; those that nimbly leap from crag to crag high on the  mountain, and those that roam and rumble and  prowl the jungles and the vanishing rain forests.  All must weep as vain, vile, war-making, greedy man first despoils and then destroys our home. Foremost among the destroyers is the loathsome creature in the White House, simpering and proud of his willful ignorance of science, of his disdain for truth. By withdrawing this country from the Paris climate accord he has assured his place in history — beside Hitler and the Holocaust in the chapter on genocide.

Forty-seven scientists have now been fired from the Environmental Protection Agency.  Its director told Congress that more dismissals will come because what's important is to stop wasting money on such profligate activities as regulations to keep water and air clean. He mocks the notion that human activity is causing climate change, despite the overwhelming weight of science to the contrary.

Protected public lands will be opened up to polluters, drillers, miners, rapists of the land. Animal habitat will be destroyed, rivers and streams befouled, irreplaceable cultural and  historical artifacts obliterated and a handful of billionaires will get richer.  Three-thousand-year-old giant sequoias  will be cut down. The unspeakably beautiful American west will become a vast wasteland.  

The wolf shall weep.

Roadrunners have built a nest in  the tree outside our door in the northeast corner of the patio. We have lived here nearly 20 years.  Never have we seen the fiercely independent roadrunner nest so close to an occupied house.  Our neighbors have a nest, too.

Drought? Habitat destruction? Climate change? All of the above.

Today one of the roadrunners hopped from the tree-nest to the stone wall around the patio.  She strutted a bit, then paused and faced east toward the Organ Mountains. These are the crown jewels of a vast new national monument, established by President Obama to protect an area of beauty, cultural significance and religious veneration for the Native American tribes of souther New Mexico.  Now the barbarians of Washington will dismantle it.

The roadrunner stood motionless on the patio wall, staring toward the mountains.  Surely she, too, was weeping.