The Collapse LXXII: Walking

03 March 20XX +1

My Dear Lucilius:

I have been trying to get out of The Cabin a bit more, independent of the weather. Part of this, of course, is the fact that I have responsibilities to the community and that I need to get in the habit of preparing for; the other is simply that I need to be out and about a bit more. Spring is coming, even if the in and out of it being too cold (and then not as cold) makes it hard to believe right now.

And, of course, given the fact that we will more than likely have visitors soon of the potentially unwelcome variety, it behooves me to come to know the path better.

The walk now is always the same: I come out the door, turn, and walk the 100 yards or so to the end our small road, then make a hard left. This is the main road in and out of town. There are no snowplows operating anymore, but the blacktop will heat up quickest in the sun and as the road is slightly offset to allow runoff, will be some of the first areas to clear off. Down the blacktop I walk.

I walk past the Camping Area that I saw the first group of refugees in – was it a hundred years ago, or just last July? It is closed, of course, the store long stripped of any goods useful or not, the camping spaces all unoccupied and covered with dwindling snow and frost or exposed in mud– to camp outside here, in the Winter, is most likely just a quick way to expire. The Owners left at the height of the post-shopping craze, from what Xerxes has told me, to move where their children were. Now it sits empty and forlorn, a monument to a time when travel and entertainment were a leisure and expectation rather than the risk and rarity they have been over the last year.

I continue the walk and pass the turn-out for the local dump drop. I remember coming here 50 years ago to drop off bags of trash with my father and grandfather. It has sat unused for a long time now; the trash was piled high until people realized that trash represented potential materials to use for other things, burnable fuel, or materials for composting. Trash has largely dwindled; I doubt if we continue in this era we will use the word “trash” again, only “unreclaimed materials”.

We have so little from earlier civilizations, partially because they used all natural materials, partly because they used everything until it wore out. One suspects that someday in the far future, if there are such things as archaeologists, they will find a break in the record and wonder: What happened? 19^th Century Industrial Revolution, 20^th and early 21^st Century Technological Revolution...then 10^th Century England again.

The trees are still bare, blowing in the wind that still bites through my coat and scarf and hat and gloves and every other warm thing I could cover myself with. The small birds that stay the year are out enjoying the little sun that there is, chirp plaintively at me as if they somehow hope I bring either food or more sun.

Sorry fellows, I whistle back. We are all having a tough go of it now.

Along the side of the road where the snow and mud remain, one can see the tracks of deer and smaller creatures – apparently without traffic and the presence of man, this has become a veritable thoroughfare of activity. To the East, I can see cattle clustered near the far side of a fence, undoubtedly because I can see hay being dumped off an ATV. The person doing the dumping waves to me. I wave back.

People have always waved here. More so now, I suspect, as there are little enough of us to wave back and forth to.

I make it to the appointed edge of my walk, the place where the Creek flows under the road twice about two miles from where I live. It is a decent perimeter to walk, and far enough in advance to warn of any sort of issues. The creek is running high from snow and cold from Winter; the trout should be happy.

There will be few fisher folk this Spring and Summer. The trout should be all the happier.

The road carries on from where I stand, curving around until it reaches the next very small town, lost in leafless trees and mud and remaining snow. I stand and watch it all for a moment – even in the normal times, there would not be a lot of traffic now.

The silence, except for the trees rustling and birds chirping and the occasional lowing of cattle happy in their meal, is overwhelming.

I start the walk back, seeing the same set of landmarks but in reverse. The town now begins to come into my view, a small cluster of buildings with small wisps of smoke rising hither and yon. Wood is not the most abundant here. I have made do with a rather expensive stove and small sticks and twigs; I have no idea what others have done but there are not sufficient trees nearby to really support that sort of use. At some point other sources of wood – buildings, old fence posts, old wood – may start coming down as well.

A sign, Lucilius, and a most unfortunate one.

Growing civilizations do not cannibalize themselves. It is only the failing ones that do. For a while they perhaps can continue to exist and live surrounded by the former functions and forms of the civilization, but eventually to survive they must use what they have at hand, especially if they no longer have the knowledge or tools to create things. Buildings become repurposed as stones and bricks are pulled down or the building itself is reused for a lesser purpose: school houses becoming corn cribs or farmer’s homes becoming animal shelters, as had happened in the Midwest when land was worth more than people making a living off of it. Next to go are the bits and pieces, consumed in a need for heat or food or traded as valuables and modified in form: texts become fuel, works of art becomes bits of precious metals to be melted down or broken apart and sold. In all cases to date, people have survived, although the civilizations they were part of have not necessarily done so except as memories and stories.

They say that by the time Constantinople fell in 1453, 50,000 people lived in a city that once had a population of 800,000. It is said that at the time of the fall, people dwelt in small communities behind the walls, communities separated by wild areas that had been parks and open spaces.

All that is past is prelude.

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca