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It felt like spring for the first time in a week at least; it’s been — ironically — a pre-global warming April in the northeast; a throwback to when early spring was actually unpleasant; I’d grown accustomed to 75 degree March days, 80 in April. The earth seems happier, more at ease. Days are clearer, wild animals grow bolder. What we perceive as bad times are the earth’s good times; we grow wealthy in inverse proportion to the health of the earth. Perspective matters. The century following the greatest outbreak of the bubonic plague was a time of incredible relative wealth — one man was paid what six were paid in the previous century; peasants enjoyed the wealth of the forests and fields as never before. Collective memory is short, ecological memory even shorter.
