Notes from the Burning Age

by Claire North

There came a time when humankind had dominion over all the earth. With their might, they tore down the mountains and built cities there. With their wisdom, they conquered the seas and skies. Great medicine there was in abundance, and even their gods called humanity special, the chosen creature raised up above all things. For their children, they laboured, to make a better world, and that world would be of man’s making. Yet their children did not give thanks for the labours of their elders, and lo: the skies turned yellow, the air too dark to breathe from the workings of their industry. The cracked earth bled poisons. The sea rose and salted the land, and no wall of man could restrain it. In winter, the ice melted; in summer, the world burned.

Grief never leaves, but life layers itself on top of the pain, time forming fresh scabs over bleeding wounds, no matter how much we wish we had stayed in the burning forest.

Inequality breeds contempt, Council says. Did we not learn from the great burning how the richest considered their lives more valuable, their moral worth and social deserts superior to those of the poorest? Did we not watch them build walls to keep out their fellow humans, proclaiming, “He who is rich is better to keep alive than the poorest teacher, doctor, nurse, builder, mother, father or child?”

People believe what they want to believe. Tell them what they want to hear. Social media moves faster than fact-checkers, so as long as you . . .

Humans are hard-wired to find the worst in a situation, did you know that? It was how our ancestors survived, expecting tigers when there were none, expecting disaster so that when disaster finally came, they were prepared. So we have always blamed ourselves for the very worst that the world must offer – blamed our sin, our wickedness, our evil ways. But when there is good in this world – when our hearts keep beating because they are strong, when our limbs return to life because we are young and vibrant and want to live – we say it is a blessing. We thank anyone but ourselves and dismiss pride as arrogance, ability as hubris. We even know this about ourselves, can recognise our own genetic traits. And yet knowledge, it seems, does not yet triumph over instinct.”

Humanity grows arrogant, forgets that it is part of the world, not above it, and we have failed.

I am the mountain. Is the mountain a living thing? Does the kakuy slumber in the stone? Is this world a breathing, conscious thing? Or is it madness, humanism run wild, to say that sentience can be only defined by humans, that a network of neurons surpasses in value an ecosystem that is fed from the blackest pit of the volcanic ocean to the highest bird in the sky. As if the mountain could ever be “merely” rock; as if the sky could ever be “merely” air; as if we were not all spinning creatures within the kakuy of the world, turning through the stars.

“Why do we give thanks to the kakuy?” the Medj asked, and the congregation sang its ritual response – we give thanks for the sun that warms us, the moon that guides us, the sea that carries us, the sky that gives us breath. These were the words Nadira had sung, the first night I met her. I tried to sing the ritual words and could not. The kakuy have no interest in the prayers of men; why heed the imprecations of an ant? We give thanks because we are the mountain. We give thanks because we are the forest. We give thanks because to honour the kakuy is to honour ourselves; we forgive ourselves, we love ourselves, thank our bodies and our sight, our coming in and our going out. We know at last what we are – life shining in a pearl of blue spinning through space, separate and together. Thank you, sky and earth; thank you, sister and brother of sea and fire. We are one.

Your mistake is imagining that in understanding the size and majesty of creation, the wonder of this world and the richness within it, you become small. A tiny scuttling thing without centre, without identity and form. You fail to see how, in grasping your small place within this life, you become part of something that is so much bigger than you could ever be when you were being a hero alone.

The forest will return, of course, one day. One day, there will be nothing but forest on the earth, when humankind is gone. The forest was always better at co-operation than man.