THE ABIOGENESIS BLUES

 "The earliest known life-forms are putative fossilized microorganisms, found in hydrothermal vent precipitates, that may have lived as early as 4.28 Gya (billion years ago), relatively soon after the oceans formed 4.41 Gya, and not long after the formation of the Earth 4.54 Gya."

  Every race, society, religion and culture on earth has a creation myth. Most include a gob of mud dug from the depths of the cosmological waters and (as in the Haida and Lenape) plopped on the back of a turtle. This forms the basis of mother earth. For the Shawnee it's "Our Grandmother" who gives birth to homo sapiens. In Christianity it's that couple of hotties in the garden.  

In Genesis: 

"And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so.  God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning the second day."

    The similarities in the explanation of life's origins on planet earth are surprisingly similar. Gas turned to water turned to solid, and from that supercharged, liquified mud sprang life. From those silly little squirming microorganisms emerged human beings. What we humans have forgotten in our quest to dominate all life forms is that everything that lives dies....even that steaming turd on the back of a turtle. The highest life forms on earth will end up up killing all that nourished it into being. It's unavoidable...... natural. Climate change - urged on by human habitation - has accelerated the process to the degree that we feel helpless to stop the downward spiral. It's a logical feeling. Just go with it. The snake will eventually devour itself bit by tasty bit. 

     As my favorite cynical teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg put it "Build back better....blah, blah, blah...." We humans are great at rhetoric and procrastination. There is nothing anybody can say to change our bleak future. We need sticks and stones not words. We are all going to die and so is mother earth. We are in the first throes of that death rattle today. Sit back and enjoy it.

  As you can surmise from the last couple of blogs, not much is happening in the woods. Last night I saw a squirrel with a white tip on its tail and a cruising buck at about 120 yards. No does. This morning I saw one buck (too far for a shot) and once again no does. What's with this lackluster rut? Climate change? This lack of action has me pondering the big issues in the tree. We've shit our nests to the degree that there will be no cleaning up the mess. So-called western civilization (white men) are mostly to blame. The east, in China, have also climbed onboard the extinction express. Communism and capitalism have joined forces. There is little hope of reversing the process. Slavery, imperialism, colonialism, industrialization, technology and even "God" all play crucial roles in destroying the world. Putting whitey on the moon cost us dearly.

   This is not to say that we can't make the most out of what limited time we have left on the turtle's back and a better future for our progeny. But we can not leave it to industrialists, politicians or the idiot rich to change things. We all feel helpless because we are. The ancestors have screwed us royally. As a psychotherapy-industry emerges to deal with depressed college students too concerned with the climate to make their beds, my advice would be to go outside, toss your cell phone in that scum covered pond surrounded by forest fires, climb a tree (that's not burning) just before dawn. Then scan the swamp covered by the season's first snow fall and thank your lucky stars you can enjoy one last split second on mother earth. Make the most of it.