Climate Change: Culture Change
By Dr. Meg
A lack of snow in Western New York State reveals the adaptation
which already becomes necessary for residents. If New York was ever the Empire
State, snow seemed the breath of God, raging for half of every year here.
Now that breath appears occasionally as mist when cool air
creeps over the warm earth. It comes and goes as Empires do. If a hole has developed
in the ozone layer high above this earth, it could hardly be more daunting than
confronting a landscape without its weather.
This area was history on the hillside every year. Just as the
glaciers once withdrew from this state, dragging their bodies with long
fingers, so every spring saw the heavy-weight snowfall withdraw again,
releasing human kind and unkind from a beautiful white prison.
Tobogganing allowed that prison to become a playground for
children and sprites of every age. The Cassadaga Country Club transformed its
golf course into a slick run. There, adolescent boys steered those toboggans so
that the girls, riding in front, of course, would feel a whole mountain of snow
fall upon them—as the boys drove straight for the drifts, and shrieked with
laughter.
As the lakes in this region froze and refroze, creating Olympic
quality ice-rinks, whole villages gathered on ice-skates, looping like birds on
the loose. Those who clung to hearth and home on such occasions could look out
their windows and view Currier and Ives paintings come to life, and know Art
was as real as their eyes.
Now, the parkas hang in the closet, along with the hand-knit
sweaters, the long underwear, the ski-hats, mittens, and leather boots. Frost
bite claims no victims. Nobody complains about chill-blains, or races to the
fireplace to snuggle together over hot cocoa. Cars race by as they would in
June or July. The year has lost its rhythm.
If this apparent climate change continues, all the songs and
poetry dedicated to a Winter Wonder-Land will lose their meaning for future residents.
Modern realistic paintings portraying white landscapes here will be as distant
from understanding as Bruegel’s “Hunters Returning Home,” evidence of a time
when people went over cliffs without knowing why.
So, now at least we know why people once did rain dances: It wasn’t just for the crops. It was for visions
which were real once upon a time.
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