One sticky day this past summer, I left my wife, by her request, in our car while I ran into a hardware store to pick up a few things.
We had been in town for much of the day, and she was tired and didn’t feel like traipsing through aisle after aisle of garden hoses, spray paint
and plastic fittings while I jabbered
on about adjustable wrenches
and sandpaper.
When I slid back behind the wheel, my slamming door jarred her awake from an impromptu nap. At almost the same moment, we noticed a young woman in the car next to ours. She appeared to us to be healthy, reasonably prosperous, and about 25, and she was finishing off what was left of a bag of fast food.
We’re not in the habit of staring at people while they eat — after all, my table manners could probably use a little brush-up, I’m sure — but it wasn’t what this lady was doing with her food that bothered us; it was what she did with her trash.
Looking straight at us with a “What are you going to do about it?” glare, she promptly shoved the last bite of her sandwich into her mouth, wadded her wrappers and sack together, and along with what appeared to be a plastic cup the size of an industrial drum, tossed the whole mess out of her driver’s side window onto the steaming parking lot.
She smiled as she slammed the car into gear and peeled off in a cloud of exhaust, apparently pleased that she’d shown a couple of old snoops what attitude was all about. I imagine that in her mind, we must still be sitting there in our car, our mouths hanging open, hopeful that a “constable” would drive past so we could describe her car for an APB.
We simply thought she was a lazy slob.
Ironically, at about the same time, I happened to be reading Alan Weisman’s superb “The World Without Us,” a fascinating look at what our planet would be like, in some cases within weeks, if we — human beings — simply ceased to exist. Whether it be through biological disaster or the Rapture, Weisman removes us from the scene, then paints a picture in incredible detail of what the Earth would be like without us.
Rather than writing a grim post-apocalyptic piece in the tradition of a rerun of “The Twilight Zone” or Richard Matheson’s “I Am Legend,” Weisman, a journalist whose work has appeared in publications such as The Atlantic Monthly and the New York Times Magazine, interviewed a menagerie of experts, from oil refiners to marine biologists to art conservators, to come up a with a remarkable account of what happens to buildings and roads and endangered species of animals and plants when mankind is no longer around to put its 2 cents in.
My nightlight burned a little longer than usual as I read about the Rothamsted Research Archive in Britain, a repository for more than 300,000 soil samples, about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — a free-floating mass of plastic and other household waste two times the size of Texas — and about what would happen in a matter of just a few days if there was no one manning the pumps that keep the subway system under New York City from flooding.
Yet, the writer also tells us of unspoiled places, like the Bialowieza Forest in Poland and its 500-year-old oak trees, and the Korean Demilitarized Zone, in which humans have rarely stepped foot since 1953. Of nature’s ability to repair itself, Weisman said in an interview just a week ago with blogger Gerry Canavan, “I didn’t write this book because I want humans to disappear. The bottom line is that by getting rid of everybody, we can see how nature restores itself.
You see how fabulous it is. If nature could do this if we just lightened up, isn’t there a way we could do this by living in balance, not in mortal combat with nature?”
It was all a bit sobering; a bit humbling, too. Humans have many redeeming traits, but surely stewardship of our own backyards is not one of our most pursued.
Yesterday evening, I was taught once again why that’s a shame.
The sun set in a glorious western sky of oranges and pinks. A walk in the cool near-fall air was highlighted by a stand of rust-colored orchard grass, by a field of soybeans turning to gold, by a small grove of sassafras trees just now going red, and by the purple foxtails that blew gently in the breeze near my own door.
Perhaps the girl in the parking lot that day was raised differently than Joanie and I were; perhaps she merely believed in the ages-old fallacy that if it weren’t for people like her, there’d be fewer minimum wage-paying jobs out there since the store surely keeps someone on the payroll to clean up parking lot trash and return shopping carts. It’s a misguided theory of positive good.
There’s an even older adage that I learned, and it reads something like this:
If you open it, close it.
If you use it, put it back where you found it.
If you drop it, pick it up.
If you empty it, fill it up.
If you make it messy, clean it up.
Both Weisman’s book and our sloppy friend got me to thinking, not about whether human beings are going to be populating the planet much longer — that’s too big of a question for a simpleton like me to tackle. But I do recall a poem by Sara Teasdale that rings true, to me anyway.
In 1920, Teasdale wrote “There Will Come Soft Rains.” She closes it by saying:
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If Mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
It was just a sack of trash in a parking lot, but it was a reminder to me to clean up my own act, and that we can’t get along without Planet Earth. It, however, as Weisman reminds us, can get along quite well without us.
Mike Lunsford can be reached at hickory913@aol.com, or by regular mail c/o the Tribune-Star, P.O. Box 149, Terre Haute, IN 47808. His book, “The Off Season, The Newspaper Stories of Mike Lunsford,” is scheduled for release this fall.
Mike Lunsford
The Off Season: ‘There will come soft rains…’
- Mike Lunsford
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A walk in the woods
I went for a walk in the woods one day last week after work. It was a warm and green afternoon, and a fresh blue breeze blew in from the west like a new spring friend.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘Dowsers’ provide hope more than science
My grandfather was a man of God. Many times I saw him, his right hand held high in the air at his Wednesday night “prayer meeting,” praising the Lord before weeping at the altar on his knees. And yet, he was a “dowser,” a “diviner,” a “witcher” who, as a favor, would grab a forked sassafras stick and find water for some poor unfortunate whose well had gone dry.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: As of today, it’s unofficially spring
Despite the calendar telling us not to rush things, I think it is all right to go ahead and say spring is here. The Ides of March has passed, Easter is coming soon, and I have already been out in my yard with a rake, getting my boots muddy. It looks like spring to me.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Twain’s Sawyer helps us yearn for ‘wilderness of childhood’
My cousin, Roger, stopped in one day last summer for a glass of tea and a little conversation. Rog has lived an hour’s drive away for years and now, and besides summer reunions, I don’t see him nearly often enough. He’s a good man who has raised a good family, and he owns a healthy sense of appreciation for not only the life he has now, but also the lives we had years ago as kids.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Cheerful green of wheat fights winter blahs
There is a light drizzle of freezing rain tapping at the door of my cabin today. It is little more than a week before the words I am writing are due to appear on your breakfast table or work desk with your morning coffee and scrambled eggs. But I write when I can, and today, despite a full schedule of televised football games, and the stacks of ungraded papers in my briefcase, and a good book lying open on my nightstand, I am clacking away on a keyboard to the whir of a heater and the steady drip of my gutters.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: On the simple joys of watching it snow ...
It began to snow about 20 minutes ago, as I write this, light, wind-driven flakes that fall silently into my woods as I watch from a window.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: On this day above all, ‘Peace on earth, good will to men’
More than a year after his wife’s death, the great American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, wrote in his diary on Christmas Day.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Remembering a Lefty Frizzell-kind of Christmas ...
My brother and sister and I sat around a Thanksgiving dinner table a month ago, shifting in our seats just enough to make our yet-to-be digested turkey sit a little more easily, and, as we often do when we get together, we reminisced about our childhoods for a while.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The wonders of wading in ‘The Iridescence of a Shallow Stream’
I have no idea how many times I have written a story that begins with the wistful phrase, “When I was a boy. ...”
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Little man who came to dinner changes feel of household
My 7-year-old nephew, Carson, came to visit us last week. That in itself isn’t earth-shattering news, for he often drops by with one of his parents or the other, the last time dressed as a ghoul for Halloween. But for a couple like Joanie and me, whose youngest child is now nearly two decades past Carson’s age, having a little guy like him in the house, even for a few hours, takes a bit of adjusting.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Reflections: a bit of red glass and our daily thanksgivings
I sat in the half-light of my old desk lamp a few nights ago, a chilly wind blowing in from the northwest that made me appreciative of my long-sleeved shirt and purring heater.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Growing up — and ‘old’ — with many mouths to feed
At our family reunion last summer, I asked my brother if I could borrow a pair of photo albums he had put together. Over the past couple of years, I have committed quite a few of our family’s old yellowing snapshots to newly cropped and digitalized lives, and I wanted to do the same with some of the pictures John has collected for himself.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Violets in October – a pleasant surprise
I guess I don’t pay much attention to the weather forecasts these days because it surprised me a bit when our furnace kicked on a few nights ago.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A library is a good thing — even a little, homegrown one
I grew up with libraries, and I can’t imagine there ever being a time when I won’t want to wander one exploring it like some bookworm-Balboa, finding an author or title that I never really knew existed before. Creating those “Eureka” moments seems to be a dying interest now that so many of us download and digest books electronically without ever really considering that there just might be some hidden gem we’d have liked even more had we simply stumbled upon it on a shelf by accident. I think those moments of discovery are not unlike kicking up lost treasure a mile from where X marks the spot.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The ‘soothsayer’ who came to dinner
I’ve had a good time opening my mail these past few weeks. Sure, I still received the usual junk about lower credit card rates and satellite television packages, but the genuine letters made me smile; most were about a story I wrote in late August.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The agony of de‘feet’ has this writer on his heels
I don’t know if I can electrocute myself by using a computer and soaking my feet in a pan of warm water at the same time, but I am contemplating taking the risk. My feet, particularly the right foot, have staged a 10-digit rebellion over the past few months. After a half-century of commendable service, my pods are screaming to be taken in for repairs, a big inconvenience for a guy who works on his feet all day and whose “sole” form of serious exercise is putting one foot in front of another walking the local roadways.
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Mike Lunsford: Summer’s hidden beauty worth the wait
The great naturalist John Burroughs once said that nature teaches more than she preaches. I can’t recall a summer where that rings true more than this one, for that old sun of ours truly taught us a thing or two these past three months.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time to redefine the concept of ‘assisted living’
Although it has been nearly two months now, I can’t forget the few afternoon hours I spent on a hot June day this summer at a local “assisted living” facility in town. I had been asked to speak to a group of men there about Father’s Day, but for most part, the wonderful old guys who came to listen certainly made my day more memorable than I did theirs.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Observations on smooth stones and blue-green water…
It was raining when I began to write this. Although no one could rightfully call what we got this afternoon a “downpour,” it was nice to have my windows open to hear the steady drops of a passing shower tapping on my dry-as-dust deck and hard-as-concrete yard.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: This summer has us recalling the heat of ’36
It was “only” 99 degrees one afternoon last week when I decided to work on a backyard deck. With a jack and a drill and a little more sweat than I wanted to invest in the project, I went about the business of leveling its sags and dips a bit. The sun pounded down on my head and shoulders like a thug’s blackjack, but as I packed my tools and drank a glass of cool water under a big maple tree a few hours later, I couldn’t help but think about how lucky I’ve been these past few dusty and drought-stricken weeks. I have worked under this summer’s heat lamp for only a few hours at a time, but God help the roofers and utility linesmen and firemen, and so many others, who are out in it day after long hot day.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: We had no better friend than Andy Taylor
The world is a sadder place now that Andy Griffith has died, but at least we still have Andy Taylor.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Wading deeper into the subject of Blue Herons
Like a relative who has worn out his welcome, the hot, parched weather of this young summer has already overstayed its visit with us, so my wife and I have found ourselves walking our road later in the evenings to keep our feet cool and our backs dry.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Thanking two dads whose gifts have never stopped coming…
It is nearly a week until Father’s Day, but I have had my dad, and my father-in-law — a second dad to me — on my mind today. I wrote about both men just a few weeks ago, but I have set my mind to write about them again anyway. I don’t want this story to be sad; they both loved to laugh and wouldn’t want that. No, I just wanted to tell them hello, and to thank them again for what they still do for me.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Raising a flag for my father, veteran or not
My daughter, Ellen, and I stood at my parents’ graves on Mother’s Day a few weeks back and talked about how it couldn’t possibly have been so long since we lost them. My dad, for instance, has been gone for 16 years, and that is nearly unimaginable
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Time to become one of the boys of summer again …
Besides writing for a living, I teach school, and I’m not ashamed to tell people that I still love my classroom. I’ve been a teacher for 33 years, all of them in the same school district, and virtually all of them in the same building. But I also have to tell you that if the next few weeks don’t slide by pretty quickly, I may just let loose of the last thread of sanity from which I have been dangling for a while now. There are a lot of teachers out there who feel the same way.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time for us to get the real lowdown on dirt…
I have had my hands in the soil as of late. Two Fridays ago, I planted a viburnum bush, three chrysanthemums and a yellow poplar, not because it happened to be Earth Day, but because it was sunny and warm, and I had the whole afternoon to myself. The dirt I scraped out of and back into the shallow holes I dug near a backyard picket fence smelled good, and when dampened with a few sprinkles of water, it soon found its way into the deep wrinkles of my knuckles and under my fingernails. For the most part, I have nothing but good things to say about dirt.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Make big money: Raise worms at home for fun and profit…
When I think about all of the crazy things my brother and sister and I did just to make a few dollars when we were kids, I can’t help but feel a little sorry for teens this summer as they try to find jobs in what is supposed to be a very tight market. Money, to say the least, was a rare commodity when we were growing up, but you have to at least give us credit for trying.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d…’
Had white lace curtains been hanging in the west window of my cabin, I would have had a perfect Wyeth painting to watch last Thursday. A gentle breeze was wafting through my screens, and the sunlight of a warm late March day was fractured by the window sill as it poured onto my legs and feet. I could catch the scent of lilacs as it was carried in by that wind, and it and the subtle melody of the chimes that hang just outside made me as lazy as an old cat.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A report from the country as a new season brings sense of renewal
Regardless of what the calendar may yet say, spring has happened. It couldn’t have come too soon, and it wasn’t just last week and its windy 70s that have convinced me. I have been keeping a journal of sorts in my head for a fortnight now, stashing away reports of birds and buds and sounds in the crammed cabinets of my mind, all in a file marked, “The New Season.”
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Feeding time at the homestead draws a host of new guests
I stepped outside into the warmth of an unusually mild early March morning last week to do what I always do just before I grab my briefcase and book bag and lunch bag and head off to work. It’s nearly always dark when I leave, even as the sun gets up earlier and earlier in the late winter, so I often go about the business of feeding our cats with porch lights on and a flashlight in hand.
- More Mike Lunsford Headlines
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Raw: Utah Teen Arrested in Death of His Brothers
Boy Scouts Decision "First Step" Say Activists
Raw: Jurors Deadlock on Jodi Arias Penalty
Raw Video: Washington State Bridge Collapse
Sheriff: No Sign Killing of 2 Kids Was Planned
Raw: Heckler Interrupts Obama on Guantanamo
Obama Offers Drone Strike Defense
Boy Scouts Mom Supports Gay Inclusiveness
Closer Look at Okla. School Where Children Died
Johnson: Don't Blame Islam or UK Policy
Two Suspects in Murder Known to London Police
A Slice of Apple History Up for Grabs
Obama Defends Drone Strikes, With Limits
Raw: Scuffles in London After Hacking Death
Raw: 80-Year-Old Climbs Mount Everest
Boy Scouts Approve Plan to Accept Gay Boys
Britain Attack Believed Linked to Radical Islam
Chain-Reaction School Bus Crash Injures About 50
Wash. State Man Arrested Following Ricin Scare
Oklahoma Family Reflects on Lost Son
AK-47-wielding thug may be the most bumbling crook ever
Oklahoma Survivors, Heroes Survey Damage
Trout's cycle a boost for Angels
Raw: New Video of Deadly Oklahoma Tornado
Kim Kardashian Flaunts Pregnant Bikini Body in Greece
NBA star pledges $1M to help tornado recovery
Shakira's Shocking Talent
Morgan Freeman falls asleep on air
GRAPHIC: Blood-Soaked Machete Killer Caught on Tape
Elin Nordegren Furious With Lindsey Vonn For Parading Kids in Public
Camera Captures Climber As He Loses Grip And Falls
Helen Mirren Meets with Dying Boy in Queen Elizabeth's Place
Crowd Chants '¡Si, Se Puede!' After Passage of Immigration Bill
DWTS Crowns a Winner
Police Ram House to End Hostage Standoff
Demi Moore a Rocks Bikini at Harry Morton's Family House
Anthony Weiner: I'm running for New York City mayor
Kate Middleton's Dress Flies Up
VIRAL: Baby makes epic soccer goal
The Hangover Baby All Grown Up
