We Are Unprepared. Meg Reilly Little
took a breath and started slowly. “I guess for me it was more like I needed to get back to my natural habitat.”
I waited to see if this was enough for Peg, but she didn’t appear satisfied, so I went on. “It’s like everyone is born with a certain constitution, you know? And you can enjoy all kinds of places, but there’s only one place that you feel absolutely at home in. That’s how I feel about the woods of Vermont. I could never envision myself growing old in a different environment. I don’t know, maybe that sounds insane.”
Peg nodded and smiled slightly. She appeared to understand.
August pushed off his chair and announced that he was bored.
“What do you want to talk about, buddy?” I said.
“I want to know what Peg—who is a scientist—thinks about The Storms that are coming.”
August said scientist with great emphasis and I made a mental note to nurture this interest in him.
Peg set her teacup down and picked a piece of lint off her safari pants before looking back up at August and me. She was serious all of a sudden.
“August, the most important thing for you to remember is that everything is going to be fine. You’ve got a house and two parents and me and Ash, and we’re all going to make sure you’re safe.”
August didn’t look particularly distressed to me, but Peg gave me a firm look suggesting that I needed to play a role in this lesson.
“She’s right, buddy,” I said. “It’s just weather. We’ll make it an adventure!”
It felt strange to speak that way, and I realized that perhaps I had no idea how I was supposed to speak to children.
August shrugged and looked bored again. “Okay. Can I feed carrots to the horses?”
Peg sent August to the stable with a small, dirty tote bag of carrots and sat back down across from me. Then we had a very adult conversation about August’s parents’ negligence and how we could help provide him with a sense of safety in the coming months. I was reminded again that there was a lot I didn’t know about looking after a child.
“And The Storms?” I said. “Do you think they will be as bad as the predictions?”
Peg looked into her tea. “I do. I think they will be much worse, in fact.”
“But how can you know that?” Her certainty shook me.
“Governments are conservative about such things. They have reason to be—every storm report has the potential to move markets and set into motion a series of events at a global level. It’s not willful deception, exactly. It’s more like a compulsory downplaying. If the US government panics, everyone panics. So yes, I think The Storms are going to be much worse than they are predicting.”
It seemed as though Peg had more to say on the topic, so I waited.
“And these predictions ring true to me as someone who has studied the earth for most of my life,” she went on. “In the field and through a microscope, I’ve been watching things change for years. I’ve been waiting for The Storms, in a way. And it’s not just these storms; it’s the dramatic changes that are about to start happening regularly. This is the real lie that our government is telling: they are leading Americans to believe that this winter is an anomaly, a freak event for the history books, but it’s not. There could be something bigger right behind it, and then another after that.”
Still I said nothing. Peg seemed to need to tell me this story.
“Of course, it’s not just the United States. It’s also the governments of China, India, most of Europe—the rest of the world is doing the same thing. They know that their own big storms are coming, though they will be different everywhere.”
I thought of a movie that Pia and I had seen in the theater about an earthquake in the Pacific Ocean that triggered a tsunami in China, which sent global oil prices into turmoil, causing war to break out across the Middle East and parts of Africa. After the movie, we’d laughed about how improbable it was.
I must have looked concerned because Peg held up her hands and said, “I’m not a climatologist, and any good scientist knows that there’s so much more we don’t know, so I suppose anything could happen, Ash.”
Peg said my name quietly to herself twice more, and she seemed to move on to a different thought.
“Do you know about the ash tree?” she asked. “It’s very important in Celtic mythology.”
I raised my eyebrows, trying to follow the turn in conversation. “I had no idea. I guess I don’t really know why that’s my name.”
“It’s considered one of the most powerful of all the trees,” Peg said without a hint of jest in her voice. “Actually, in parts of Europe, they used to use it to make spears and the handles of weapons. It’s associated with enchantment and healing. The pagans considered it positively holy! There’s a lot going on with the ash tree. Were your parents druids or hippies?”
“Ha.” I laughed. “No, not to my knowledge. My grandfather was a logger, though. I don’t know; that’s the only tree connection I can think of.”
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