Large Fierce Mammal

Storm…., by Dinosz (Click to enlarge. Source: Deviantart)

“To be Truly prepared to Live in the world is to understand and accept complete exposure to it in all its manifestations. No species in Nature, and you may be surprised to learn this includes our own, is naturally predisposed to ‘master’ the elements, nor holds entitlement to live apart from them. Rather, to Thrive is to take your place as a part of them, and to do otherwise as our own species tends to do is an expression of ill advised and contemptuously destructive preference.

“Even as a ‘mere’ element of weather, wind is undeniably that most indomitable and capricious of Elements, manifesting moods diverse as soother, mover, overturner, and destroyer of dreams, all rolled into one …

“… Growing up in the seaport town of Lunenburg on the south shore of Nova Scotia, I absorbed an awareness of wind as an element of the Natural world that could as easily make a Man’s fortune as his Wife a widow. In the Lunenburg of my youth, it was a rare family that didn’t wear the scars left by the August Gales of 1926 and 1927 that took the lives of 138 Mariners, and still today people telling stories of family lore around Lunenburg County kitchen tables are as likely to refer to a departed loved (or even not so loved) one as ‘lost in the August gales’ as that one of the wars took them, and heads still nod in sympathetic understanding. ‘Hurricane season’ has a special meaning to folks with loved ones at sea.

“Soul inspiring, deadly, not to be trifled with — all these describe the Natural element called ‘wind’ as Men have come to know it. Capricious? It may appear so. Untrustworthy? Naturally! These can as well be used to describe wind as any other Force of Nature, but most often spring to lip when outcomes fail to match expectations. This is very wrong headed because as creatures of Nature, we can only expect that She will provide what is needed while caring nothing for what is wanted, and none of it has anything to do with any one of us personally beyond what we ourselves do to better or worsen our chances.” ~ Winds of Change — Part the First — MAAJAKal Inspiration

As my regulars here will know, not only was I was born, and all but for periodic dashes of a certain key ingredient raised, in the Town of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, I launched and for the first 17 years of its now 40 year life, based my business out of it.

My professional pursuits have served to highlight on a localized level the Truth of what should be known to all on the broader scale — how exposed to trial and tragedy humanity and its works can be based simply on where people live, and what they do for a living.

“History is rife with massive social upheavals of both man-made and Natural cause, and outcomes having far more to do with the the coping mechanisms brought to bear by the common man than the commandments of any sovereign or elected official. While it is said that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, one of those coping mechanisms I refer to is a determining factor in making that happen. You see, coping continues through and beyond the upheaval until the return of something resembling stability permits acceptance of the new reality, and the tentative daring of hope for its improvement. Among those who shared the experience, little needs to be said, if it even can be said, and subsequent generations may thereby become progressively more detached from its grim realities in the spirit of being spared it.

“Whatever the source of travail, the common thread is the human factor, and to study history without that in mind will provide but a skewed and meagre understanding indeed ….” ~ A Long Winter’s Night — 2020 Edition Day 3: Comparisons

And yet we have coastlines festooned with beautiful habitations, built upon previously “undeveloped” rural land absent question or concern over why no one has ever before built a house there. Agricultural, forest, and wetlands overtaken by development with only lip service, if that, given to the possible outcome of destroying natural filtration and drainage conduits, and placing high demands on groundwater aquifers. We have calls for all but immediate dismantling of vulnerable energy delivery and telecommunications systems once kept at an accepted state of reliability by robust engineering and diligent preventative maintenance, in favour of delicate alternatives operating in a house of cards level state of interdependence where backup measures only work if their backups are still working, and so on up the line. We have a pervasive view from which cultivating a lifestyle of self-sufficiency is branded at odds with the greater “good”, leading to urban mindsets entering rural spaces in a state of superiority over the wrongheaded primitives who happily live there.

I offer tonight’s Dark Sentiment as preamble for our next gathering upon which we will undertake an illustrative case study featuring east coast Maritime weather, a transplanted west coast family, and that which befell them.

Until then.