In choosing today’s image, I was struck by its background, with lush greenery visible everywhere.
It’s quite the contrast from the same spot today, the washed-out gold of heat-seared grass fraying above dull, dry, and dusty earth.
Wings took this photo seven years ago, and our world has altered drastically since then.
In point of fact, it was not quite seven full years ago, either: He captured this image at the end of September in 2011, six weeks later in the year than our current date. And then, the gold of autumn, at that point less than a week into the season, was just beginning to peek through the tall thriving stands of green.
This year, the trees began turning in mid-July. The hay was a total loss; there was no water for irrigating, and no rain, either. On that September day seven years ago, Wings caught the image of a silver horse in a green world, a small blue dun being glowing with mischief and shimmering with spirit. On this day, we are reduced to two horses, a red paint and a dark sorrel, bold spots of fire upon a scorched earth.
The silver horse was a boarder even then; not technically ours, although in her mind, she certainly owned us. Her owner of record sold her some years ago, and she lives now at the other end of town. Of the herd into which she first came here, one has traveled to the other end of the country, Wings’s share bought out by a co-owner; the other two succumbed to cancer within the last seventeen months, along with one who would join the herd seemingly out of nowhere two years later.
Some of our elders believe that every seven years, everything changes, turns over anew. I’m no longer sure about the “anew” part, but our world has certainly changed in that time. And while it’s comforting to know that the silver horse lives on elsewhere, the green world in which she was photographed all those years ago is in no way so sure a thing.
We are perforce learning adaptation, like it or not: no irrigation, no hay, no garden this year. It has freed up a great deal of time on certain fronts, but it’s a wash at best; the time saved on irrigating and planting has gone instead onto efforts to save such plant life as we are able, to keep the soil alive and well for next year.
Because we hope there will be a next year.
There is always the risk that this is it, that we have passed the tipping point, that this 500-year drought that has in this reached record extremes could become our new normal, that, El Niño year notwithstanding, we might once again have a snowless winter and an equally rainless monsoon season next summer.
For now, we must place our hopes and our faith in the stories the elders told, of a renewal that begins after every seventh year. And 2011 was, in point of fact, the year that we first bore witness to climate change in real time; it could reasonably be said that that year’s climate events led directly to those of this year, in a mostly unbroken line. If so, perhaps with winter’s arrival we shall be able to begin anew.
But a little luck wouldn’t hurt, along with the prayers we send up daily. Wings has created countless silver horses over the course of his career as an artist, miniature talismanic spirits of power and grace. Perhaps it’s time to wish upon the silver horse who once owned us, a small and magical alien spirit with a nickname to match who spent her years with us in the greenest of worlds.
Perhaps she, and we, can find a world renewed.
~ Aji
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