Plot Spoiler: It Ends With a Bang

Volcanic eruptions such as this one can create...
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Maybe I’ve heard about too many eco-disaster movie plot lines, I dunno.

But I half-awoke this morning imagining it as a hole poked in a balloon–only a small hole, mind you, but given sufficient outlet, allowed  just one place through which to release its enormous pressure, the connected caldrons of oil and gas under the Gulf of Mexico would, with BP’s vaudevillian futzing around with mock-expertise simply burst across its entire thousand square mile expanse in one gigantic unctuous belch.

It would be sort of the Yucatan K-T Event meteorite impact in reverse, earth to sky, and would in turn set off a chain of reactive geologic events–a massive tsunami, of course, but also it would trigger a chain of volcanic eruptions along the ancient sea-bed fault line running through central America.

I have this waking-dream playing in my mind when I wake up the computer first thing this morning and read…

Thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes as two volcanos erupted in Guatemala and Ecuador.

I think I’ll have some more coffee, and go back to bed and see if I can jump back in where I left off, maybe catch the delta-waves tube as this story makes the Morning Show with a yawn. “Oh well. We have other gulfs” they’ll say with mock sadness.” Meanwhile, on American Idol…”

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fred
fred

Fred First holds masters degrees in Vertebrate Zoology and physical therapy, and has been a biology teacher and physical therapist by profession. He moved to southwest Virginia in 1975 and to Floyd County in 1997. He maintains a daily photo-blog, broadcasts essays on the Roanoke NPR station, and contributes regular columns for the Floyd Press and Roanoke's Star Sentinel. His two non-fiction books, Slow Road Home and his recent What We Hold in Our Hands, celebrate the riches that we possess in our families and communities, our natural bounty, social capital and Appalachian cultures old and new. He has served on the Jacksonville Center Board of Directors and is newly active in the Sustain Floyd organization. He lives in northeastern Floyd County on the headwaters of the Roanoke River.

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  1. In situations like these the only thing you can do to avoid to despair is take the long view: seas come and go, mountains rise and fall, and all will pass from memory. That’s how I used to console myself when I was young, but it no longer works since it ignores the suffering we inflict on other creatures.