Huge batches of tomato and vegetable sauce follow one another in suffocating heat. It smells good. It’s the time of year when everything ripe is “caned” for fall and winter.
The first leaves have fallen. Others yellow prematurely due to heavy rains (and the deficiencies that this causes) such as those of corn or soybean plants or even those of vine heads. A snowblower also, for sale, on the side of a country lane. Then this heat which, hopefully, like a last minute rally, will be able to overcome the faults of the last two months.
Summer wasn’t over, it seemed. And difficult return to reality, like a thermal shock; It was 12 degrees Celsius in the Gulf of Alaska this week.
An hour after departure, on the way back, the pilot said:
“On your right, down below, we see forest fires. »
In reality, it was on both sides of the plane. Northern BC, as they say. At an altitude of 45,000 feet, we could clearly see the gigantic plumes of smoke on the ground. Ah yes, I thought, sometimes reality is a rubber band that springs back into shape.
Note to all: for the guilt and social condemnation which also float in the air on our footprint, I am planting a mass of trees in a year, to at the very least pretend to respect the carbon neutrality of a life far from ‘be exemplary.
It is elsewhere that reality strikes; in the necessary exercise of being informed and being a good citizen. Because the news, for five days, did not go – by choice – to the middle of the ocean. Like these children who make the world disappear by hiding their eyes.
From the fires therefore, caught up by an avalanche of news on exploding homelessness, on societal fault lines, on war, education, the decline in the rights of Afghan women (and women everywhere on the planet), on Pierre Poilievre, again inflation or the billions of failures of a burning world. Tab…, I said out loud, reconnecting with the present. Are we going to go to the holidays? Mother Christmas, I want air conditioning and happy living conditions for all humans. Isn’t this, moreover, the basis of who we are, as declared by the UN (and its disconnected from reality)? To be born equal, well yes. Air conditioning for all, therefore, in our priorities. And universal toilets, while we’re at it.
A small airport on an island in the North Pacific. Ten chairs. Two doors. Men/Lihlaanga and Women/Jaadaa. On a seafront a few days later, I asked a young man from the Haida nation.
“Is there a debate here about gender neutrality? »
His response (translated), and removing the words hello And fucking :
“No, life is elsewhere. We don’t have that luxury here. »
I love hunting and fishing guides, because they live and occupy a territory. It is reassuring to listen to them about survival. The young man weighed and measured the catch brought back by the fishermen during the day. To make a sad observation, one suspects.
“We are more concerned about the small size of the fish and their decreasing numbers than about the stories of the people in the city. And guess where the fish we catch here in the Gulf go?
– In the big cities ?
— No, anonymously. »
And a little in the news here and there, and in this persistent smell of the end of the world which has surrounded us for several years.
The cucumber plants have dried up. Pumpkins appeared through thinning foliage. The corn is coming to an end and the onions are emerging from the ground. Apple trees are heavy and loaded. Summer bends your back. We move forward, we have to. Each in their own territory under the same sky and the same moon. A little worried.
In the meantime, it smells like tomatoes cooking. There will be something torn from the daily apocalypses.