1. A Fable for Tomorrow
THERE WAS ONCE a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in
harmony with its s urroundings. The town lay in the mids t of a checkerboard of pros perous
farms, with fields of grain and hillsides of orchards where, in s pring, white clouds of bloom
drifted above the green fields. In autumn, oak and maple and birch s et up a blaze of color that
flamed and flickered acros s a backdrop of pines. Then f oxes barked in the hills and deer s ilently
cros s ed the fields , half hidden in the mis ts of the fall mornings.
Along the roads , laurel, viburnum and alder, great ferns and wildflowe rs delighted the traveler’s
eye through muc h of the year. Even in winter the roads ides were places of beauty, where
countles s birds came to feed on the berries and on the s eed heads of the dried weeds rising
above the s now. The countrys ide was , in fact, famous for the abundance and variety of its bird
life, and when the flood of migrants was pouring through in s pring and fall people traveled from
great dis tances to obs erve them. Others came to fis h the s treams , which flowed clear and cold
out of the hills and contained s hady pools where trout lay. So it had been from the days many
years ago when the firs t s ettlers rais ed their hous es , sank their wells, and built their barns.
Then a s trange blight crept over the area and every thing began to change. Some evil s pell had
s ettled on the community: mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chickens; the cattle and
s heep s ickened and died. Everywhere was a s hadow of death. The farmers s poke of much
illness among their families. In the town the doctors had become more and more puzzled by
new kinds of s icknes s appearing among their patients. There had been s everal s udden and
unexplained deaths , not only among adults but even among children, who would be s tricken
s uddenly while at play and die within a few hours.
There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example—where had they gone? Many people
s poke of them, puzzled and dis turbe d. The feeding s tations in the backyards were deserted. The
few birds s een anywhere we re moribund; they trembled violently and could not fly. It was a
s pring without voices. On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins ,
catbirds , doves , jays , wrens , and s cores of other bird voices there was now no s ound; only
silence lay over the fields and woods and mars h.
On the farms the hens brooded, but no chicks hatched. The farmers complained tha t they were
unable to raise any pigs—the litters were s mall and the young s urvived only a few days. The
apple trees were coming into bloom but no bees droned among the blos s oms , s o there was no
pollination and there would be no fruit. The roads ides , once s o attractive, were now lined with
browne d and withe red vegetation as though s wept by fi re. These, too, were silent, deserted by
all living things. Even the streams were now lifeless. Anglers no longer visited them, for all the
fis h had died.
In the gutters under the eaves and between the s hingles of the roofs , a white granular powder
still showed a few patches ; s ome weeks before it had fallen like s now upon the roofs and the
lawns, the fields and streams. No witchcraft, no ene my action had s ilenced the rebirth of new
life in this s tricken world. The pe ople had done it themselves.
.. .This town does not actually exis t, but it might eas ily have a thous and counte rpa rts in
America or elsewhere in the world. I k now of no community that has experienced all the