You
wake up tomorrow and discover that all the hydrocarbons in the world --
all the oil, gas and coal -- have vanished. Evaporated. Crumbled into
dust and blown away.
Since it's dark, you have to stumble around
looking for a candle, hoping that all your candles aren't made of
paraffin, and wonder how you are going to light it when your butane
lighter is now empty. You have water, for now, but your fridge and
freezer are not working, so you start to guess how many days' food
supply you have left and how long before it spoils. You estimate that
after two weeks you'll be relying on dry goods and canned goods, and
expecting that they'll have to do, since by then the stores and
restaurants will be empty and abandoned.
You're cold in the dewy
morning air, so you add a few layers of clothing, and then wonder how,
from now on, you're going to keep them clean. You remember from your
university days washing your clothes by hand in the sink and hanging
them to dry. But even then the detergent you used was petroleum based.
You
wonder whether to make a run for the store before everyone else empties
out the shelves. But it's a long way on foot, and how much could you
cart back, anyway, even with your bicycle, which has no carrier on it?
You're
puzzled by the fact your cell phone isn't working, even though it has
some charge left in it, and there are no radio stations on the air. You
have no idea if TV stations are still broadcasting, and the morning
paper hasn't come. You rummage around for the non-portable phone you
keep for times of power outages, but you can't find it in the dark.
You
stagger outside, seeking to find some meaning for this bizarre event
through conversation with others. All your neighbours, at least those
who slept at home last night, are out at the end of their driveways,
looking bleary-eyed and bewildered, talking quietly. The cats and dogs
seem enchanted by this strange occurrence, and the dogs rush, tails
wagging, between the huddled groups of people who are munching various
foods they've scrounged from their cupboards and fridges, hoping for
morning treats.
What you notice most is the silence, the
incredible peacefulness of this morning scene. You can hear birds that
you've never noticed before. Although it's past daybreak, you can still
see the stars. There's a sense of exhilaration, not dread, among the
people you meet, as if they'd been liberated rather than deprived of
the fuel of their civilization. Work responsibilities that yesterday
weighed heavy are no longer important. It is as if everyone has
discovered they have all the time in the world.
Within an hour,
plans have been formed to pool the neighbourhood's perishables, to keep
them in one cool shared place, and to mete them out, fairly and
carefully so they last as long as possible. Henceforth, all meals will
be communal, shared with neighbours whose names, yesterday, you hardly
knew.
The parents of one of the neighbours, you learn, are
farmers with dairy cows, free range chickens and several acres of
vegetables. An expedition is formed -- a bicycle brigade -- for the
ten-mile trek to this farm, to see if the owners are well and safe, to
offer services to replace those once done with oil-powered technology,
and to procure supplies for the coalesced neighbourhood group. This
group of 35 people includes a bed-ridden senior, a child with Down
Syndrome, a two-month-old baby, six people with various allergies,
three diabetics, and a woman in an electric wheelchair (now powerless).
These people lives within five minutes' walk of your home, but
you didn't know most of them existed until today. Now they're your
community. So are six dogs, four cats, and various furred, feathered
and scaled creatures, animal companions now dependent on your
collective largesse.
This is not what you'd expected. There are
no looters, no gangs, no crazies with guns trying to protect what's
theirs or take what's yours. You're not sure what will happen next, or
even if this is all a dream. But you do not feel terribly concerned.
You have a plan, as part of this quirky new, quickly-assembled
community. You are doing what you can. No panic is called for, and
there's no point in it anyway.
The silence is astonishing. You
have time, space and opportunity to think. There is no hurry any more.
There is no worry, either. There is a sense of comfort, connection,
security, self-control, independence. It will be winter, soon, but
there's plenty of wood stacked up, and unlike the other sources of fuel
and heat, it seems to be intact. You know wood is bad for carbon
emissions, but you have high-efficiency fireplaces, and besides, with
no more oil or coal being burned, will global warming still be a
problem?
In an hour you're going to take your dog for the
longest walk of her life, as you join the ten-mile bicycle brigade to
the neighbour's parents' farm. You've never milked a cow before, and
your dog's never even seen one.
You are singing to yourself: "Now she's wild with expectation on the edge of the unknown",
and you know the song's about you. "It's enough to be on your way, it's
enough just to cover ground, it's enough to be moving on." You're on
your way.
You feed your dog, eat some cereal, drink some juice,
kiss loved ones goodbye for awhile, and cycle over to join the group,
loaded with water, blankets, baskets, ready for the trek. One member of
the group has a crank-powered mp3 player, yesterday a conversation
piece, today a staggeringly valuable rarity. You are missing your
music, already.
You wonder how all the people, all over the
world, are coping. The people you know and love, and now cannot talk
to, and may never talk to again. The people you've never met, in
struggling nations, who will find this day not terribly different from
yesterday, people who have spent their lives learning to live the way
you're just about to begin to learn to live. You feel a sudden affinity
with these people.
You are becoming someone else, someone you
could not have been yesterday. Someone more connected to the land, to
the people in your community and all over the world, to
all-life-on-Earth. The sun is shining, now, and the colour of the skies
and the trees and the eyes of the people beside you are richer, more
real, different from anything you have seen before, and you're so
overwhelmed with awe and wonder and you're laughing and crying and so present it's almost unbearable.
|
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