a prelude for april

Spring has arrived limping into the month of April; there is still a chill in the air but it is definitely a spring chill, and if the days are often grey and blustery, it is spring rain and spring wind that makes them so. There are blossoms on the trees, and with the wind the streets and sidewalks are lined with a carpet of fallen petals.

I've been thinking a lot recently about Seattle's relationship with nature. This is a city of trees: even far from the heart of the city, places which in most urban areas would be an endless blight of concrete, there are trees, older and wilder than the ones downtown. And even downtown, where constant foot traffic requires some thought to be given to walkability, the trees and their roots tear up sidewalks, a constant reminder that we exist at the sufferance of Nature and that she could destroy us at her whim. That urban trees are often scarred creatures only makes that reminder all the more stark: these trees have endured the worst that we can throw at them and they will continue to endure. Oh, we can destroy them with axes--so many trees have fallen to sate capitalism's endless need for growth--but they outnumber us. They will outlast us. And can you imagine how beautiful this city will be when humans have gone?

The fantasy series I've been working on, some of the stories of which have appeared on here over the past few years, takes place in a city that I've always imagined as something like Seattle. It is a city on a coast, a trade hub, a city that imagines itself to be at the heart of its own particular idea of progress; it is a city which is glorious and filled with nature and a city which is being consumed by roots and vines. It is spectacular, it is a tragedy waiting to happen. I also realized recently that there is an old story that mine parallels: that of the tower of Babel. It was never a conscious parallel, but it was always a story about a tower that pierces the heavens; it is a tower that granted mankind unprecedented mastery over their world, and a tower that was always destined to fall.

Sometimes I worry that I'm too close to the events I am trying to portray. I stopped with my science fiction stories because the future always seems like it will be even worse than I imagine; and my fantasy story is a chronicle about the end of empires, and some days it seems likely that our own empire will fall before I finish that one.

But the weather is changing. The days are getting longer. And for now, at least, we can be glad to count Spring among our allies.