Ruminations

Blog dedicated primarily to randomly selected news items; comments reflecting personal perceptions

Sunday, March 07, 2010

Nature's Histrionics

Now, that must surely represent the ultimate of 'being in the wrong place at the wrong time'. To be present during two catastrophic upheavals, one after the one, and survive them both must surely represent as blind good luck. Of course nature is neutral, completely indifferent to anything that occurs under her watch and her instructions. The welfare of any of the host of creatures dependent on her and her goodwill and alternate hysterics are of no moment to her.

And presumably, as the most powerful of all imaginable forces in unknowable nature, she pursues no vendettas, simply winds the clockwork of her mechanistic creation and sits back impassively as time clicks by and her instruments of creation and destruction wreak their events on the natural world.

There are not many who actually worship nature, but most certainly she is admired, her handiwork acclaimed, and the more intelligent among us take note of her activities and do our best in avoidance.

Humankind has been adept in forecasting when their mistress-in-existence is about to embark on yet another one of her unpredictable but generally awesome adventures. If we are able to, we attempt to step out of the way of her servants' misadventures, lest we become hapless victims.

It's doubtful, in the event of massive earth-shaking events, when tectonic plates become unreasonably irritated with one another's too-close proximity culminating in a gigantic hissy-fit that sufficient lead time could permit a massive and vast evacuation of the areas surely affected. So a family living in Haiti, the Desarmes, were fortunate to survive their country's 7.00 Richter-scale earth shudder.

"In Haiti, they got me out from under the ruins of a house, and I felt lucky to have survived", recounted Joseph Desarmes, the family head. "To come to Chile and go through the same situation, you can't imagine how I felt." He's right there; it is unimaginable. The entire family, parents, adult sons and their families and three cousins left Haiti and travelled to Chile. Just in time to experience the 8.8-Richter-scale quake.

Over 230,000 people died in Haiti as the country virtually collapsed around them. But the Desarmes family did not number among them. If the Desarmes family is religious, they will ascribe their miraculous survival of two quakes, mere weeks apart, to divine intervention. Talk about beating the odds - in a secular interpretation of their good fortune.

It's not too difficult to relate, in a micro-manner. Having lived in Japan and experienced a number of unremarkable quakes, but remarkable enough to someone who had never been so acutely aware of their possibilities. It is an experience like none other, to feel the earth shudder under your feet out-of-doors, or everything quiver and tremble around you, indoors.

Yet it was a tremblor of no particular significance that we experienced right where we live, in Canada, over a minor earthquake-prone zone, exacerbated by the ground under us comprised of leda clay ans sand, that really fixed my imagination. When an unimaginably loud roar encompassed the area, and the house shook, and shook, and shook....

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