I’ve become Monty Don Corleone as oblivion hangs over our heads
JAMES Kirkham’s moment of truth was more dramatic than most.
As the 120-kilometre wide wall of ice appeared out of the morning gloom, he could feel the sense of foreboding in his blood.
“It felt like this was the sort of thing that could cause the end of a lot of civilizations, a lot of people’s lives,” he later recalled.
What loomed out of the Amundsen Sea at the Antarctic researcher was the Thwaites Glacier, also affectionately known to scientists as the ‘Doomsday Glacier’.
The sediments he helped collect from the bottom of the 61-metre-high cliffs that day formed part of a study published last month.
It confirmed some of those worst fears of foreboding, that an irreversible tipping point is approaching in the melting south pole ice sheets.
These days more normal people are walking around with this new and strange knowledge in their heads. That we are witnessing things that can spell the end of civilisations.
They react at first by issuing sober warnings. Then progress to a stage of jumping up and down, waving arms, and wondering why no one is listening.
In the news business, we live alongside that finelyhoned sense of impending doom like an old friend.
Bunker
We can confidently reel off this week’s top threats to society and civilisation from geopolitical conflict, civil unrest and rising ideological extremism to volatile food supplies, pandemics and climate breakdown.
But increasingly people in what has become known as the “collapse aware community” are also finding there is a stage beyond doom to this weird state of being.
And it’s not building a bunker in your back garden.
As you become aware that we are walking around with a giant, grand piano hanging by a thread over our heads, a calming sense of joy at the fragile beauty that still exists all around settles in instead.
Simple things can stop you in your tracks.
The increasing light as the clocks went forward this week.
A red squirrel crossing your path on a Dublin mountain walk – a creature that has had its own brush with oblivion.
The view from the same mountain top looking east as the Irish Sea rises to meet the horizon, forming a shimmering curtain that cloaks the great play beyond. A stolen afternoon pint.
The next generation at work and play, adding to that precarious pile of civilisation.
A kingfisher in full flight on the Dodder.
The Dubs and Derry in full flight at Croker.
The last man back after a game in full flight in the pub, getting a patient hearing even though everyone has already said it all.
That holy trinity of community, identity and friendship.
And – as I’ve recently discovered – the Joy of Seeds. The miracle that unfolds when you plant something in the soil and watch it spring into new life, new hope.
I’ve also got another method to this new gardening madness.
The most serene of exits off this mortal coil that I have seen depicted is the old Don, Vito Corleone, keeling over among his orange trees in The Godfather. A dignified end to a turbulent life and times.
If and when the great collapse comes, I can think of worse places to meet it than among a wonky patch of carrots and tomatoes and rhubarb. Just call me Monty Don Corleone.