© 2012, Danise Codekas
So, if the planet is dying, are you going to grab a seat to an outer planet? Been thinking about the possibility, that is now a reality, the more flights and advances SpaceX makes, as a private, commercial carrier into outer space, that I just might buy a seat on that space flight, from Elon Musk.
Leaving the population area of Seattle-Portland-Vancouver corridor, I realized how much I like peace and quiet, however, I also have tremors about never returning to earth, should I take off in a SpaceX seat. However, that is true for any time you leave home. You may never return.
Critical mass extinction grows as our numbers expand, human, animal and bacterium. At the same time, knowledge on how to save the planet expands, also. Side by side, life/death, extinction/expansion walk together into the future.
No one knows what is going to actually happen, however, their influence on your psyche, as to what to believe, how to live, can turn the tide toward annihilation or integrated balance of needs, space and peaceful co-existence.
Driving across this side of the North American continent, 3 times in the past 2 months, gave me a lot of re-adjustments in my thinking about what is really endangered out here from Seattle to Los Alamos.
Farming, water, fighting over wind energy costs vs. benefits, lack of food for animals because of the droughts, local restaurants that what to serve local, organic grown produce cannot find farmers who can fill their orders, and fast food restaurants advertising for help as people leave small town areas because of lack of work, failure of their ability to pay mortgages.
Selling off farm animals, and large acreage, because they cannot feed the livestock, because of the drought which inhibits their ability to water their lands, and prohibitive costs of shipping in feed, due to gas prices. I see the connectedness of my food chain, to weather, the economy, closure of schools because families are migrating to urban areas hoping to find employment.
If there is one thing that will be said about this depression, and it is one, it will be the migration rates in population over the past 3 years, which continues as fewer areas provide jobs for current populations.
There are not that many large cities between Albuquerque and Seattle. Driving two different routes, twice, there is Seattle, Portland, Yakima, Pendleton, Boise, Twin Falls, SLC, Provo, (may as well include those 3 together, as it is one long industrialized-residential strip along routes 84 and 15), Farmington, Gallup, then the smaller towns in between, like Moab, Green River, and Cortez.
Lots of mountains, desert, plains and miles of land, stretching out like the Atacama desert, with no human in sight, except the fellow travelers along the road.
Sometimes I wished to be back in the big city. Almost took a left, at SLC, the first time I drove back to Gig Harbor, so that I would end up next to San Francisco Bay. I wanted to smell the ocean, feel the dampness of the fog on my body, after driving for 3 days across the Southwest.
However, the thought of driving across Nevada desert, when I could be climbing Snoqualmie Pass, and be sitting at my favorite bistro across from the Gig Harbor Marina, gave me clarity and the will to drive on. On the way across the Pass, rain tested my wipers’ speed. It was a welcome back to the Pacific NW which I shall never forget.
And yet, here I am again, in the Southwest. When I drove into Gallup, it started pouring rain. Last night, for the first time in months, a storm came through Albuquerque, bending trees and sage bushes, dark, mysterious skies, and finally the sky could not hold back and let the storm rip overhead. Appreciate rain is something that I will remember to do, when I depart the Southwest.
This is a place I have wanted to experience for a long time. It is a dream of mine to live in a geodesic dome home, and here, near Santa Fe is where I imagined the dream to evolve into reality. It is still a dream, however, whether it is here or not, is not important since living here for a few weeks, in the past 2 months, between trips, has satisfied my curiosity about my ability to enjoy the environment, and how my body would respond.
My body feels good here, today. No aches, pains or any other glitches which I am aware of when living in the wetness of the Pacific Northwest. I am on an exploratory journey, again, trying to find that place, or a few places, which work for me physically, emotionally, creatively and humanly.
If I do not explore them now, check them off the list, or keep them on, I fear unhappiness and restlessness will continue to grow, as it did the least few years living in the Pacific NW.
A friend wrote today that we are all experiencing blowouts in our lives, professionally and personally. He listed some of the agitated reactions that are being observed by him with himself and his family and friends. People are reaching for something new and they are not sure what it is, he says.
I think we are all expanding our lives, and we create the opportunities to do so, throughout our lives. At this point in history, so many more of us are communicating the changes we create and blast them across our social networks with speed and immediacy.
The ability to do so, at lightening speed, has never occurred in human history. These changes affect us intensely, because we are able to experience and explain them, immediately, across the planet to friends, family and strangers, with pictures. Thank you, Vinton Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee.
So, in some ways I consider my migration a success, and in other ways a failure. Balanced, I am in that in order to know whether something will work or not, you have to do it, go there, experience it, say it, write it, build it, film it, sing it, paint it, photograph it and then share it with the world. Quietly successful until perfection occurs, could take forever.
Input from others assists when I falter, doubt myself, doubt the process. Cogitating advice from others takes place, however, the next move comes from a feeling, an urge inside me. I learned, long ago, not to blame anyone else for the way I am designing my life. When I come to a fork in the road, sometimes I can go both ways, and in that a new way evolves.
So, Elon, save me a seat on that off-planet, vacation shuttle you have parked in your garage. Next September would be perfect, or even the New Year’s Eve flight for 2012.
"Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough." –Elon Musk
Or, as one of my ancestors once wrote, in a similar, 500-400 B.C., mindset,
“There is in the worst of fortune the best of chances for a happy change.”--EURIPIDES, Iphigenia in Tauris
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