52 http://www.earthislandjournal.org
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0WIZM\PM[MKPIVOM[IٺMK\QVOaW]' As the interviews progress, I
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I feel a burning deep in my chest, rising up into my throat.
My stomach is tense. I drive home, my head full of things lost.
No more bees. Mussels disappearing. No clams. Cannot take these new
costs. Drought. Need more irrigation. Too much rain. Not enough
rain. Don’t know what to expect anymore. Unpredictable.
Not sure we can keep doing it.
I get my son undressed for his nightly
tick check. Once rare here, ticks
have spread into new areas as
their habitat range increases
with the warming
weather. This means
that ticks are active
for more days each
year, and in places
that were formerly
inhospitable to them,
like my backyard in
Maine, the state which
now has the highest
incidence of Lyme
disease in the country.
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I sometimes reach up to scratch an itch behind my ear, or
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revulsion, then rage. I dream of chairs turning into ticks, of
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of these nightly tick checks. It’s hard enough getting a toddler
into pajamas, but getting him to stand still while I comb his
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room, naked, laughing. “Stay still,” I say, but no, this is a
game. “Chase me Mama,” he screams. I turn and look out
the window, take a breath. No, this is not a game. This is a
very real danger. Yet, however foreboding the motive, here is
an opportunity to witness my son and his sweet body, growing
and changing so fast. A tiny gift wrapped up in a new ritual
of climate vigilance.
W
E’VE HAD OUR HOME FOR TWO YEARS, and are
experiencing the hottest August on record whereI live. Intense humidity that doesn’t lessen even at night. I
feel like I’m moving through a dense, scorching fog. To cool
myself, I head to the ocean, scoot gently down the rocks to the
edge of the water, and slide in. The record heat waves keep
on coming. It’s the second warmest day in recorded history
in the Gulf of Maine and the third straight year of drought
on land. I talk to farmers who have resorted to feeding their
cows hay twice daily, because the grazing lands are too dry to
produce healthy grass. The lettuce is bolting due to the heat.
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one farmer says. “All I can think about is water. Water, water,
water. Are we going to have enough? Are we even going
to be able to grow lettuce here, in Maine, in 10 years? I’m
a glass-half-full kinda gal,” the farmer says, “usually. But I
think we’re all going down the shitter.”
When I began this project, I set out to record observa-
tions on the changing
climate from the stand-
point of those who work
the land and the sea.
What I am really doing,
I now understand,
is bearing witness to
catastrophe. Every day,
I swim through a sea of
change. The shoreline is
changing. The winters
are changing. The bugs
are changing. Every day, I listen to these stories of changes
all around us. As the worries and the losses and the fears, and
even the denials, pile up, my insomnia worsens. At night, I
cycle through the stories I hear during the day. My belly is
in knots. My breaths are swift and shallow. I stand up and go
to the window. A delicate moon shines lightly on the barn.
Shadows of the pines stretch out across the lawn. I put my
hands on my belly and breathe in and out.
The baby comes two months later, in October. We nap
during the day, awake for only a few hours before the sun
drops again. We do not leave the house. We do not listen to the
news. It creeps in anyway. Thick descriptions of the coming
chaos are released out into the world. I read that when this
baby becomes an adult, there will be no Arctic. I read that
statement again. “Will live on a planet without an Arctic.” I
read it one more time. The baby has fallen asleep, rosy and
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the kitchen and look out the window. In the rush of things, I
had not properly cleaned up the garden or planted the garlic.
The garden beds, now frozen, are still full of wilting kale andWhat I am really doing, I now
understand, is bearing witness
to catastrophe.