The Pacific Northwest is a benign place where the weather rarely goes to extremes. Our beautiful inland sea protects us from the furies of the ocean and mitigates the harshest swings of seasonal temperature. We don't have searing heat and humidity in the summer, we don't have sub-zero cold or often even snow in the winter. Sometimes the winds will howl, but typhoons are scarce. The threat of rain is frequent, but hardly dangerous. The only thing that prevents us from relaxing completely in our Garden of Eden is the earth itself. Being on the edge of a tectonic plate means we are subject to the same quake/volcano/tsunami possibilities as Japan, Indonesia, Chile and the other countries of the Pacific Rim. The geologic record suggests a pattern of major earthquakes every three hundred years and we are past due. Our portion of the fault-line running up the west coast is locked right now so the prediction is for the next quake to be a doozy....around 9 on the Richter scale. Of course no one really knows what or when it will happen, just that something will. Eventually.
I think of this every time we visit our friends' cabin on Whidbey Island, which they have been generously sharing with us and many others for thirty years. The cabin was built in the thirties and was a modest one from the beginning, but its location directly on the beach just at the point where no-bank gives way to cliffs makes it the perfect jumping off point for hours of private beach walking. I always try to visit my favorite cliff sometime during our stay. It is a low one as cliffs go, but shows unmistakably how the sea bed reared up towards the sky in some long distant cataclysm. The sharp line angling through the middle is said to be the mark of the last great quake. I don't know about that for sure, but it seems clear that something happened suddenly. The quality of the clay below the line is quite different from that above. The effects of erosion on this bank, with its subtle coloration and textural contrasts never fail to touch me, or let me go without a sense of warning.
This time it occurred to me that the big earthquake isn't the only scary thing hanging over my head. I realized that I have been waiting for the end of the world all my life. I was sent home in grade school during the Cuban missile crisis because everyone feared nuclear annihilation...maybe that day...and the fact that nothing actually happened did not rid me of the fear that it would. The nuclear danger has seemed to ease in recent years, but I know the possibility still lurks in all the fissile material swirling through the hands of very angry people. Still, I'm not fretting so much about atomic bombs these days, but more about climate change and the breakdown of the economy and the government. The Wall Street collapse of 2008 was a very close thing and nothing has been done to prevent another one. Apparently nothing can be done because the government isn't working anymore. If even modest gun control legislation is impossible in the face of endless mass shootings and the will of over 80% of the voters, how will economic reform or climate change be addressed in any useful way? It feels like being tied to the tracks waiting for the approach of a slowly moving freight train. The Big One.
Judging by the number of movies lately that have featured ruined post-apocalyptic cities, I'm not alone in my disquiet but the only remedies seem to be local ones. We can affect the world immediately around us even if the larger world is out of our control. It is still possible to join with our families and friends around the table and make the connections that sustain us. I just think we need to expand our definitions of who constitutes family and friends.