trip to sequoia -ch. 41 cont.

Ch. 41 (cont.)

      I rolled in the burned and scorched awning of the Road Warrior and put all the lawn chairs in the folding compartment and earlier I had as well placed my chainsaw carving equipment into the storage as I had them before. Deb was really happy to have received the mermaid and initially was not going to accept any payment for what she did to get us back on the road again. Both Darla and I insisted she present us with a bill as it was her livelihood. I carved because I wanted to and that Ann who owned the Road Warrior would have insisted on paying her for the help. She was an oasis for us to land in after the fire. The Road Warrior was a mere representation of its former self with a few battle scars and a shit wagon tied on back. But it was still fully functional and in much better shape than after the fire. All the bells and whistles were working and when you opened the door to the Road Warrior the step came out right on cue automatically. Life was good. And all thanks to Deb.

     Deb handed me a package and told me to store it with the rest of the stash I had which was  dwindling as of late and thanked me for the carving , then leaned into me for a hug, and I kissed her cheek and told her I would be waiting for her call when the Jeep was ready. Darla said good bye to Deb and we climbed into the Road Warrior and was soon heading down highway 101.

    In the last couple of day’s, traffic past Debs house had increased and was showing signs of returning to normal. The Santa Ana winds having died down, and were not pushing the forest fires as much.  That they had claimed was the biggest culprit for wildfire spread across California.

     As we drove along Darla and I discussed at length or at least I talked and Darla listened to me as I babbled on about global warming and how we needed as humans to address the situation to avoid premature extinction of not only humans, but species of other animals as well. Global weather patterns were keeping much needed rain out of California and shifting lower into Baja region of Mexico due to global warming. So much fresh water is being dumped into the ocean causing currents that drive the oceans to find new paths to follow. Trends of weather changes associated with this shift in currents was making deserts into lush oasis and turning lands that once depended on these off shore currents and rain into tinderboxes like the area around San Francisco. This is making it hard on the massive redwoods and sequoia trees to sustain themselves.

      Wild fires were always common in California but it seems this year they are way above normal as an increase of fifteen percent more fire due to the tinderbox conditions that seem to be trending up due to the above normal dry conditions.

     Weather in other parts of the country also seems affected. Ohio which has just about as many gray days as it has bright and sunny days now seems to have an increase in sunny days and a decrease in the amount of rain we normally see in a year. Sea levels are rising and when hurricane Sandy came on shore in New Jersey and New York people began seeing the effects of global warming.

   Our untamed use of petroleum products and coal are primarily responsible for most of the global warming in the last century. We have cut down massive rainforests and our forests at home also took a hit from domestic use of wood products to build our houses and factories. We are replanting some of these areas now but it is too little too late. But it is also the only thing we have to save us from the effects of global warming. It will take as long for our planet to recover or longer than it did to get this way. So we may be looking to at least a hundred years of temperature increases before we see a decline due to changing our current use of fossil fuels and timber deforestation.

    Alternative fuels need to be encouraged and the technology needs to be increased in these fields to make them a viable alternative to our current use of fuels as a future resource that is that is clean and causes no harm to the environment. Profit takers are still heavily dependent on our current use of fuels and third world nations will be slow to accept any change at all. Countries like China are very dependent on fossil fuels to feed their burgeoning global market.

    Horror  stories of future huge environmental atrocities such as a northern passage for ships through our artic region is hoped for by the profit takers making global shipping and profits much larger as it takes less time to transport goods to market. Let’s hope for the polar bears we never see that. If we do Manhattan will look like Venice as Times Square will be under water.

    All the while we have to feed ourselves and farming will have to adjust to the climatic changes as we go along. This will be tough as the greenhouse effect will kill crops in some areas and create new farmland in others. Areas up north closer to the Arctic Circle may be our next farmland to feed the people. If we haven’t already mined it for the tar sands they are proposing to dump on the market now.

    This is what Darla and I need to focus on and the fires were a set back to us as we lost nearly a week in looking for farmland and in the process of doing so, that we get caught up in a firestorm of mother nature doing what we are trying to avoid. Hopefully we can get back on track now as we head down the road into San Francisco. We see evidence of where fires had crossed the highway 101 and the scorched remains of timber lost as well as the animals unable to avoid the wrath of a wall of fire as they hunker down after seeing no escape and die violently. Deer, bears and a variety of smaller animals are always lost in forest fires. We see the devastation of the trees and our personal loss of homes in a fires path but rarely do we focus on the wildlife lost to these fires.

    After having experienced what it is like to be in the path of a forest fire it enlightened me as to how much more we need to set aside farm land for the future. To plant it in trees and reduce the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere and to provide much needed habitat for our wildlife. As well to have as a reserve to hedge against future profit taking from the industrialists who would like nothing more than to have all humanity drove into the ground from their rampant practices of profit taking.

    I also think we need to look at how to control our population’s growth. To level off at where it is or see a decline in our numbers as well would be nice. And let’s not do it through war. War is just a façade for the rich to get richer on the backs of those less fortunate. We need population control from proper education. Practices of overpopulation as that seen by the Catholic religion and others as they want to further their ideology through more followers, is the sort of negative influence we have on population control.

      Reality tells us less humans, means fewer resources used, and this helps stop the cutting of our rain forests.  It will also help ease our food supply so that every child that is hungry can be fed. If we don’t stop our population growth we will; have no resources and mass starvation and disease will occur at this point. We have no other planets to go to and it would not be feasible for any but the rich to escape from this planet if we did.

     We head into San Francisco in the dark and soon found the Wal-Mart Darla said that was close to the RV dealership where we needed to get the Road Warrior repaired to its original shape.

      I pulled in along some other campers and climbed out of the Road Warrior and stretched my legs and breathed in the night air. After a while of relaxing in the night air, I went to where I stored the herb and rolled up a doobie out of Deb’s stash she gave me.  Darla and I relaxed in the couch watching a movie as we shared a joint after returning inside the comfort of the motor home. Darla said good night when the movie was finished and slipped into the bedroom , and I fell asleep imagining nothing as I was tired and relaxed.