I finally sat down and watched most of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth". In case you dropped in from another planet and don't know, this is a fairly explicit documentary about climate change on our planet. One of my good friends just doesn't accept the premise of global warming and he has tried to draw me into discussions over and over again about how this is just a media ploy to raise our hysteria level.  I never much went there with him because I figured as much pollution as we are pouring into the air that surely we are changing something about our planetary processes, but what could I do about it anyway.  I have enough immediate issues of powerlessness without getting all worked up about global warming.

 

The documentary seemed to present irrefutable evidence  that there is more carbon dioxide in our atmosphere by far than there has been in the 650,000 years they can measure.  It seems hard to deny that climate change is occurring, big areas of ice are melting, that this is a very complex process and everything will probably get much, much worse.

 

I didn't see all of the show because my granddaughters came to visit.  The documentary was fresh in my mind when K Bear, the six year old, and I went for a walk in the woods.  First we checked on a fire ant hill which I had put peppermint oil and water on to try to get the ants to move on. This remedy was provided by a friend and lo and behold it had worked.  Not only that, but I have also heard that growing peppermint helps the bees to kill the mite infestations that are destroying their hives. Yea peppermint.

 

K Bear was by no means satisfied with our short walk up the hill. She wanted to see the pet cemetery and Trouble Falls.  I obliged her and we strolled through the woods in the over 100 degrees of dry oven heat.  I couldn't help thinking of the rising temperatures shown in the documentary because it was another record breaking day around here.  This is such heat and there is no accompanying humidity! It is like Middle Georgia has been dropped in the middle of the desert.  It makes breathing shallow and almost painful. The air hurts.  It was dry all around, the leaves crunched under my feet rather than being the moist living mat of my memories. Many large trees have fallen in the last few years and their bones lay strewn over the hillside. Trouble Falls was dry. K Bear showed me the hole where water used to gush from and flow on and on down the creek.

 

Presently we returned from the dry hot woods. We turned the hose on and washed our legs, our ritual for debugging.  Later that night I was still itchy so I took a long hot bath.  The next day I began itching again and I took a look. Well over 100 small seed ticks had taken residence on my body. What a nightmare.  I have already lost so much of my mind to children, hormonal changes and a crazy youth. I have let go of less meaningful memories to make room for the ones I really needed. No way do I need Lyme's disease to further muddle my mind.  

 

The woods in these parts have always harbored ticks and August has always brought these tiny microscopic ones.  Climate change is not to be faulted for this infestation, it is just par for this area.  So watch out. Ticks abound. But these high record breaking heats, this dry sauna air, this drought - all of this is not normal. The climate is changing. Blame it on natural causes if you wish. It doesn't matter. Actually it does matter. If we are not willing to be accountable for how much carbon we take out of the ground and loose into the air then the climate changes will get much worse in our lifetime and even worse yet for our children and grandchildren. Everyone of us needs to drive fewer miles, recycle and reuse. No excuses.