A niece once told me of her fantasy to have a mansion with dozens of bedrooms so that, when the one she was using became too messy, she could just lock the door and move to a different one. I can understand her dream because I dislike doing housework at least as much as she did, though I don’t know what she planned to do when all the bedrooms were used and sealed off. Perhaps just buy another mansion and start over?
As I understand Iowa’s history, many of the farmers who started out in Iowa when it was first opened for settlement didn’t stay for generations. The territory was mainly prairie rather than forests; the land didn’t need to be cleared of timber (which grew mainly around rivers and lakes) as much as it needed to have the tough prairie grasses plowed up so they could plant crops they were accustomed to growing. It took a special breaking plow and multiple oxen to do that job, one that was beyond the abilities of the ordinary farmer and the equipment he had.
Farming methods tended to stay the same as those of the countries from which they emigrated and didn’t necessarily embrace the best conservation practices. So, when the soil began to show signs of abuse and neglect, and the younger generations needed more land, the farmers left their depleted farms and headed west again. A new wave of immigrants took advantage of the abandoned farms and homes and began taking better care of the land. I see in these stories a pattern that is beginning to repeat itself on a much grander scale.
I believe that one of the reasons mankind has always been so interested in space and the other planets has something to do with the possibility of having somewhere else to go if we should need to abandon our planet. Many people believe that beings from other places have visited Earth in the past, and some think that the human race evolved from long-ago visitors from another world. While I do not subscribe to that theory, I think it explains the attitude that, once we have thoroughly depleted the resources available here on Earth and cannot continue to exist as we have, we will be able to simply pack up and flee to a new planet where we can continue our wasteful ways. Until, I assume, we wear that one out and need to move on.
I read somewhere that, if all the suns in the Milky Way were reduced to the size of grains of salt, they would fill an Olympic size swimming pool. That’s a lot of salt. And that’s just the suns. There are, no doubt, countless planets and other satellites orbiting those suns, and that’s where we’d need to look for a new home. I must concede that just knowing that there are so many planets in just our galaxy, we are probably not the only “people” who have evolved in the Universe, but if that is true, then we have to also believe that if life evolved on another planet, then it could be very different from us. The planet and its inhabitants could be too strange or hostile. But even if they are like us in an environment just like ours, they would hardly welcome us moving in, crowding them out and wrecking their planet as wantonly as we are wrecking our own.
When we think of how briefly human life has existed on our planet compared to the age of the planet itself, and how much we have changed our environment as a by-product of the changes in our civilization, it seems apparent that nearly all the damage that has happened to our planet is related to human activity. We have nobody or nothing to blame for the problems that global warming has brought, except for our own thoughtless self-indulgence. While plants and animals have evolved and adjusted to changes in the past, it was a slow process. Today, the changes we have caused are occurring too rapidly for Nature to have the time necessary to adjust. I doubt if the Starship Enterprise can find us a new planet in time.
A former volunteer and substitute teacher in the Solon schools, Milli is an artist and poet who lives near Morse where she also creates unique greeting cards and handmade books.