I don’t see the invisible submicroscopic food-makers. One such comprises only 0.03% of the atmosphere: so little, yet so mighty in food. But even that scant content should stay beneficially small. The invisible something to which I refer is CO2, and it is on the increase in our atmosphere. At first glance more would seem better. An increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide would make for increased foliage and larger leaves. Trees would actually add girth. Foods—rice, potatoes, wheat, corn—would increase in photosynthetic activity; but the benefit would be to the carbohydrate, not the protein, content. Bigger would not be better for muscle tissue and body-building. It would not help us handle rototillers or the spade. Even insects would have to eat more to obtain protein. And this would be the effect of increased carbon on plants . . . Where plants would still grow.
The CO2 increase will heat up the planet by maybe 2°. Not much, but an increase of only 2°C will cause a dramatic decrease in worldwide crop yields. The dust bowl will return to the US permanently but this would be offset—worldwide—by a benefit to Russia, where yields will increase by 50%. Nebraska, in effect, would move to Saskatchewan. Currently marginal, arid places like those of the so-called developing world—Africa, India and Brazil—will suffer most. For Maine, projections include a one or 2°C increase in the mean temperature. There may also be an increase in rainfall, making us more climactically (if not so geologically) suited to the raising of crops. Maybe summer, and not just July, is coming to Maine after all.
There is more rich invisibility out there in the spread tapestry. Arcing above me, and spreading below, photons from the sun are just arriving off their minutes long journey from that monstrous flaming ball of gas—source of our physical life. The photons left the sun while I was working on the paragraph about food makers, but now they are interacting with pigment molecules wherever they strike: in my eyes (making images), in my skin (mutating cells), and in the chloroplasts of all those leaves emerging below me. Light, captured by the chloroplasts, will reduce the carbon to sugars. From inorganic CO2, these bright plants will produce the organic compounds of carbohydrates.
Away, out upon the remote surface of the north pond, I see the great and dead-looking mats of vegetation left over from last year. Like the nearby oak limb with its clacking leaves, they need this pump of life, this carefully balanced and mighty carbon cycle operating in respiration and combustion. They need it to revive from winter’s dormancy.
I took the GI goods out of their box and looked them over. The butter went to the refrigerator, the flour and canned goods to shelves. Disappointed when I first saw these foods at the armory. I dunno . . . expected whole pork roasts, fresh green beans, dried beans that I could bake. Had thought, from reading that flyer, that the food would be fresh and fill bags. Six cans, that’s all. The butter, though, that was something. And honey—it was processed by bees. Two boxes of raisins, too. The flour was bleached however. Picky picky.
I was hungry after my hike to Swans Ledge. So I opened two cans I could mix together: the vegetarian navy beans and twenty ounces of canned “pork with natural juices.” “Carne de cerdo en jugo natural.” With its lid off, the pork looked like an island in a sea of gooey fat. I got a spoon and, gingerly scraping, scooped out the fat. I’ll mix it with the dog’s food later. Well! The fat wasn’t much after all. The meat almost filled the can. Just a little gelatinous pork juice here. Dumped the beans and pork into a pot. Plopped that on the burner. Supper, anyway, was easy.
The pork-and-beans mixture stewed up, along with some dried onions and ketchup—added for flavor. Ladled some into a bowl and went upstairs to watch television. Allen and J.D. were out. So I plopped on the bed, blew on the soupy mixture, tasted it. Mmmmm. Maybe another bowl? Back down the stairs.
Allen came in. I was hyped. Got out the big bowl, the GI flour, raisins and honey; some oil and baking powder from the cupboard. Cupcake tins. I began making muffins. They were in the oven: 24 muffins, packed with GI raisins. I went upstairs to watch the news with Allen while they baked. Aroma began filling the house. I went down and put on the kettle. As the water boiled the muffins browned.
I took tea and freshly buttered hot raisin muffins upstairs. Allen, sitting in the chair, wasn’t interested in muffins or GI pork-and-beans. Maybe later? I sat back on the bed and cut into my muffin with a fork. Steam rose. The butter, yellow and melting, soaked into the soft cakey raisiny muffin.
I raised my gaze from the plate to watch images on the TV screen. A segment from Ethiopia, about starvation in the hot dry land. A man had walked eight hours today, this day in which I sat on Swans Ledge and went to the armory to get groceries. Because he had heard of food. Walked eight hours with his bony son cradled in his bony arms. A nun spoke of food stockpiled for them in a place set out of reach by brutal policies. A young woman with downcast eyes pawed listlessly through parched earth, sifting weakly with thin fingers . . . searching for seeds of grass to put in her empty bowl. A tear slipped from under her lash, tracked down her dusty cheek. The dust upon her cheek from the tortured earth of land too hot. Places in pain for lack of moisture and an excess of politics and heat.
I put down my plate to look intently at this televised streaked and stricken face. There it was, the most important face I’ve ever seen. Newly expressing the most important plea. About the most important act we do every day—if we are able.
Please, earth, said the mute face. Give me food.
Old Mainers
I sit on the porch with Henrietta while Allen and Harley go off to look for a man just up from Massachusetts, in Maine called MassCHUsits or just plain Mass. Harley thinks this man may be starting up something hereabouts, namely the installation of motor controls. He thinks Allen should give the man a résumé. Harley does more than all right for Henrietta, himself and homestead. His brainstorms produce benefits directly into his everyday life. But when applied to the lives of others, results—? . . . May vary.
Harley’s wife Henrietta is seventy. She has iron-gray hair, straight-cut across the back like a man’s, and eyes magnified large by her glasses. Sometimes they give her the look of a girl. Such wide-eyed appearances are appealing, especially today for some reason. Henrietta, though tough as any old Mainer, seems wistfully appealing—she seems a bit lonely. She says I should visit more often in “the boondocks.”
From her front porch I look straight up at the ledge above, its rock hidden in bright leafy trees. Here’s evidence that chlorophyll isn’t the only pigment in leaves: it would seem that the youth of leaves shows as much of other colors as does their old age. The carotenoids, anthocyanin, and xanthophyll are all visible in them this time of year, as in autumn. Some of the maples are particularly red, so much so that it seems a touch more anthocyanin will overpower the chlorophyll and make the leaf red all summer long.
The ledge is directly across the dusty lane, towering above the New-England-blue chicken house and fence Harley built next the chicken yard. The trees on the ledge hide a new house that peers down in winter. Harley says the neighbors from out-of-state are beginning to close in on him. A lottery winner built a log cabin near the entrance of Harley’s lane, Morse Road, which is named for Harley. There are other cabins and sale lots further along this lane, too.
Henrietta likes the new company, but I recall Harley complaining about this turn of events . . . before he retired, anyway. But people from away can be good neighbors for him these days. Allen and I are from away. With just a bit of prompting, the friendly Harley will funnel as much of his Maine cunning into ignorant out-of-staters as they can hold. In our case, there isn’t the capacity. We gain a little every year, but, with our middle-class suburban backgrounds, it would take a thousand years in Maine to come up to Harley-standard. We may throw away more potentially usable stuff in a year than he will in a lifetime. Harley mastered recycling long before it was called recycling. It’s called make-do.
Henrietta is recollecting the time I needed a zipper. That first winter in Maine she sewed one into my long wool coat. In my earlier incarnation, it had been fashionably adorned with white toggles but toggles allowed the wind to flap through and billow at will. The zipper ruined the look of the coat but it gained considerably in warmth.