All a bit biblical

It’s strange to see the sun out today. After what’s seemed like forty days and forty nights of rain (it was actually forty days’ worth in fifteen days), it’s all a bit biblical. In 25 years I’ve never seen anything like it on the island. And the flooding here is nothing compared to other parts of the province.

Yesterday, in what looked like it might be a break from the rain, I went for a walk with a friend and his dog.

This is what the trail into the multi-trail park looked like. Fifteen minutes into our walk it started pouring again. Oh, well, we were there now. After we’d been stopped in our tracks on multiple trails by impassable “lakes”, we finally found a less soggy way out.

Yes, it rains in November here and that’s fine. After a long, hot summer the groundwater needs replenishing and people’s cisterns need to refill. Rain is good. Biblical deluges not so much.

It was hard to believe yesterday that not so long ago much of British Columbia was on fire.

In the 1950s and 60s, post-apocalyptic novels and films were popular. The apocalypse envisaged (and feared) was atomic. There’s been no nuclear war, simply the continuing war we’ve been waging against this planet’s ability to sustain life.

Geographically and philosophically British Columbia is what stands between Alberta and unfettered access to Asian markets for its filthy tar sands oil. Mother Nature doesn’t care.

It’s not as if she hasn’t been warning us for years, but have we cut her any meaningful slack? No, we (or rather our governments) have not. To hell with future generations of life on earth. 

Après nous le déluge.