Yesterday I read about a woman whose mother had drowned in an idyllic French village where she’d lived for a number of years. The mother was 71; which is no age, right? The woman was in England with a week-old newborn, and couldn’t get to her mother to see if she’d somehow survived a fast and furious torrent of water careening down the valley following what was euphemistically described as unseasonal weather. It was, in fact, unprecedented weather. By the time another relative managed to get to France, and confirmed her mother’s demise, the sequence of emotions experienced during acute grief hit the young woman with a vengeance. Life instantly became extremely challenging and bewildering, but thank the gods for a distracting newborn, who would, tragically, never know her grandmother.

Most of us know about climate breakdown –– a term gently but inadequately described previously as climate change. We’re inclined to push it to the back of our minds as we make lesser plans and shopping lists. We’ve read about the subject for ages, in reports by well-respected journos working for responsible media outlets. Now is the time for all of us to decide what we’re going to do about it, personally and practically.

My mother used to say, there are none so blind as those who do not want to see. Who do you know who’s put serious mitigation measures in place? Do you yourself have an escape route for survival? Has your local council published a plan, and are you familiar with it? Are you securing your home and garden stuff? Do you have adequate insurance? Have you made sure older and young family members fully comprehend the threat? How much do you tell children about the world being upended, suddenly, possibly in the near future, maybe in the dead of night? How many precious belongings are unlikely to be recoverable after a catastrophic weather event? How well do you think you will cope with the fact that there might be little resemblance –– and perhaps none at all –– to the lives you were living a matter of weeks ago?

This wasn’t intended to be a doom-and-gloom post; but I am greatly concerned. No, it’s worse than that: I’m frickin’ terrified; about our governments’ lack of urgency. I believe that if people loved the natural world around them more, they’d shout louder about ensuring the planet’s survival. So please, go for a long walk among tall trees; give one a hug*; breathe in their majesty as well as their oxygen. You don’t have to have a big garden to put a tree in it!

Admire the Silver Birch’s autumn wardrobe. And distant ranges of high craggy peaks. In Pollença Mallorca, el torrente (de Sant Jordi) is reduced to a trickle when rain is in short supply and temperatures soar. But this autumn, after at least a day’s worth of constant torrential rain, it doubled in size as it shifted billions of grains of the Serra de Tramuntana.

‘Thinner and thinner wears the cloth… moths pass out of sight, beyond belief, their absence briefly noted, if at all, as distant memory, half-forgotten grief.’
From The Lost Spells by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris

*I’ve never told anyone this before, but one day during Melbourne’s lockdown, I walked alone to a pocket-handkerchief park in St Kilda, a stone’s throw from my house. I hugged a mature tree with a wide girth, so my arms didn’t go around it; and I sobbed. I cried for all the people who were worried sick at the time; and all the people I couldn’t visit, near and far; and all the people far away where covid was much worse. My tears fell onto the bark; I looked up towards the crown; the tree was silent in its steadfastness.