It was the summer of 2015 when I first glimpsed the apocalypse.
June — which in Portland, Oregon is often referred to as “June-uary” for its brisk temperatures and dreary drizzle — instead shimmered in a haze of heat. Our lone window AC unit was not equipped for the grim procession of 90+-degree days, and neither was my nine-month-pregnant body.
Maybe the heatwave was just that: a heatwave. I wanted to believe it, I tried to believe it. But I knew better.
Five weeks after my son’s birth, we took an over-ambitious roadtrip to Southern Oregon to share a lakeside cabin with my sister and parents. But there was a problem that the owner had neglected to mention: our lakeside cabin had no lake.
Instead of blue waters lapping up against the back of our property line, as the Airbnb photos had so brightly promised, there was an eerie collection of dead plant matter and dried goose shit. One had to embark on a treacherous quarter-mile journey to find a murky body of water, buzzing with flies, for which “puddle,” not “lake,” would be the most accurate description.
It made me wonder, for a moment, exactly what I was doing bringing children into this world.
At the time, Donald Trump had yet to be elected President; in fact, he had just announced his candidacy about two months prior. He riding down an escalator—a bizarre scene that, in retrospect, was far more apocalyptic than our current surroundings. But back then, we were all laughing, confident that our country’s first Black president was about to be succeeded by our country’s first female president. In the meantime, Donald Trump would keep us all entertained.
I used to worry about climate change, but only when there wasn’t anything else to worry about. That is to say, not very often. Like any good citizen, I sorted my recyclables and composted my daughter’s sandwich crusts, and tried not to buy too many groceries in plastic. But I worried most about the things in front of me, and for many years, climate change loomed “over there,” somewhere on the horizon. It was terrifying to think about, so I did my best not to.
I still maintained faith that we would do something, anything — but still, it was downright spooky to look out our back window and see the spitting image of the apocalypse.
Gazing out at the brown wasteland that comprised our view while nursing my five-week-old baby, I wondered, was this the “wilderness” my children had to look forward to? Was this the wilderness they would share with their children? Dead plants and goose shit? Parched forests that threatened to burst into flames? One natural disaster, followed by the next?
Then I remembered that I was on vacation and obligated to have some fun. We found a swimming pool 30 minutes away that was bright blue and swarming with families. Sitting on the green, sprinkler-fed grass, the air punctuated by gleeful shrieks of children, it was easy to think about popsicles instead of the apocalypse.
A lot can happen in five years. By the time my “baby” celebrated his fifth birthday, Trump, now President Trump, was spewing hatred in all caps on Twitter, a deadly global pandemic was dominating nearly every waking hour of our lives, protesters were being suffocated by tear gas, and federal forces were roaming the streets of our hometown.
It was layers upon layers of distress. I was beginning to think we might just do ourselves in without help from Mother Nature’s wrath.
It was toward the end of Labor Day weekend when we smelled our first whiff of smoke. “Is there a fire somewhere?” I wondered aloud.
Turns out, most of Western Oregon was suddenly in flames. As hasty evacuation orders were issued in surrounding counties — a prospect I could not even begin to fathom — Portland Metro residents watched the air thicken outside our windows, blurring trees, cars, streets, and buildings with the same heavy shade of gray.
Day after day, our home was enshrouded by pollution levels so extreme, at times the highest number on the air quality index was rendered insufficient. Outside, the sun burned blood-red, the skies a hazy shade of orange. Outside, the air that we depended on to fill our lungs with oxygen was, in a word, unbreathable.
Inside, we drew the curtains and danced to Spice Girls. We built Lego towers. We cooked meals and our children bickered over whose turn it was to set the table. We cleaned and nagged and watched movies and read stories.
This is the paradox of modern parenting. We bumble about in our lives, wrapped up in the minutia of our days — the exhausting lists and schedules and squabbles — and we pretend that everything is more or less ok. All the while, we are staring down the barrel of a catastrophe so hopelessly overwhelming and so rapidly approaching, we feel paralyzed in the face of it.
And all the while, our country’s leaders, bloated with wealth, have done nothing to stop it and everything to advance its coming.
The rains came, eventually, and life returned to “normal,” whatever that means these days. Of course, there was still a pandemic, and cops were still killing unarmed Black people, and Trump was still using excessive exclamation marks on Twitter. But at least we could stand outside and take a full breath.
Months passed and the rains turned to ice, encasing the city in a hard crusted shell. The weight of it tore the limbs off trees, leaving thousands without power. Outside, quiet descended. The empty streets stretched and glistened. Under different circumstances, they might have been beautiful.
And again, the rains came, this time to thaw, and spring arrived with its familiar welcome drizzle that we used to complain about before experiencing the fury of fire and the indifference of ice. The world burst into color. Trump, now former President Trump, was banned from Twitter, the pandemic was winding down, and maybe, I thought, just maybe, I had been overreacting about it all. There was still so much beauty left in the world, so much serenity and calm, so many days when the air sparkled, plump with oxygen and scented with pine.
Then in June of 2021, I checked the weather app on my phone and saw it was going to be 107 degrees. I said, “Holy shit.” The projected temperatures continued to climb, reaching numbers I’d never seen on my weather app before: 110, 112, 115 degrees.
Before having children, I’d been lucky enough to travel to many warm-weather climates. I had sweat in deserts and in tropics and on beaches, but I had never, in my 40 years on the planet, experienced 115 degrees.
The heat was like a wall everywhere I turned. It smacked me and suffocated me and settled into every crease and crevice on my body. For the third time in less than a year, we were confined to our home, looking out through our windows at an inhospitable world.
And I asked myself: Is this our new normal? Is this the world we are leaving to our children?
As resources become more scarce and we contend with ever-multiplying disasters, will we band together or will we continue to deepen divides? Will we become more compassionate or more callous? Will we unite for the sake of our children, or will we clutch and grab at what we can take? Will we sacrifice for the greater good, or will we sacrifice our world’s most vulnerable?
The pessimist in me already knows the answers to these questions, knows we are careening wildly toward a future of ever-raging inequality, wildfires, and storms.
There is actually a word for what I’m feeling: solastalgia, which describes “the distress caused by environmental change.” For me, it manifests as a concoction of raging fury, acute fear, immense grief, and utter despair.
Is it possible that I’m taking this all too seriously? While there may not be anything more serious than the apocalypse, as a dear friend pointed out, Earth will persist with or without us. We’re not really approaching the end of the planet, just potentially the end of our time on it.
We walk around like the weight of the world is on our shoulders, even though we know it’s not, and then the world reminds us that it’s got a lot going on that doesn’t concern us in the least. There are seven billion other people, yes, but also vast, vast stretches of woods and rocks and mountains and lakes and oceans that get along perfectly fine without humans at all. Much better, in fact.
It makes me feel incidental, in a good way. Sometimes it’s comforting to be small. Maybe I need to stop clutching at the future, stop operating under the illusion that the world cares about me — or any of us, for that matter. And maybe the best I can do for my children is to hold them close, enjoy the time we have, and immerse them in the nature we have left.
Another mind meld! (https://flowerchild.substack.com/p/the-frog-in-the-pot) Though I can only aspire to write as well as you.
I keep coming back to this tweet I saw a while back: Cliff 🦖 Jerrison @pervocracy: It's very hard to maintain mental health because so many coping strategies are based on the idea that your anxiety is unwarranted, and right now needs more of an "okay, extremely warranted but you still gotta water the plants or you'll have fascism AND dead plants" approach.
Although I don't have children, I relate to how you end this piece. We can all "hold [each other] close, enjoy the time we have, and immerse [ourselves] in the nature we have left."