After the Flood

         I was driving in the back entrance to my neighborhood this morning about 6:30 when I saw two lights along the side of the road bouncing toward me at the height of bicycle wheel reflectors. As I slowed down I saw that it was an animal – maybe that coyote that’s been wandering around at night. I turned off my own lights so that it wouldn’t be startled, and saw, as I coasted closer, that it was a cat. It was smaller than I’d guessed at first but was still Schnauzer-sized.

         Maybe the feral cats are going through a micro-evolution; an extra-large cat might encounter a small coyote and live to reproduce. My own cat, also from a feral litter, has inherited the skittish temperament of his wild predecessors; nothing will catch him off guard. Of course, it does make for borderline insanity, even in a cat.

         Those of us lucky enough to be up pre-dawn on these winter mornings can see things more wonderful than a pair of coyote eyes. Venus and Saturn are glowing in the southeastern sky like headlights, and next week the last sliver of the waning moon will hang beside them. If you’re not up before dawn, you can still see Mars just before it sets in the western sky at nightfall, if you can find a place without a lot of buildings on the horizon – tough where I live.

         Mars has been popping up a lot in my consciousness lately, like a small red ghost haunting me every few days. I’ve been thinking about the late Ray Bradbury;

Not this one!

I’m adding a few of his short stories to my reading list over the winter break to help remind myself of what a good story is. They’re dated, of course; characters in “The Veldt” bought their house of the future for $30,000! Mr. Bradbury was also famous for The Martian Chronicles, which were in turn inspired by Edgar Rice Burroughs, whose 1917 book The Princess of Mars has been currently interpreted by Disney in the disappointing movie John Carter.

         When Ray Edgar Rice Burroughs first wrote about Mars, the going theory, promoted by our own Percival Lowell of Flagstaff, was that observable lines on the surface of Mars were canals carrying water from the polar ice caps to the equatorial regions – evidence of an ancient civilization. Better telescopes and data from space probes negated that idea, but now, with long distance analysis and close-up sampling by the Mars rovers, we do know that there is a bit of water under the surface of the planet.

         The latest space probe, the NASA Rover Curiosity, whose landing and subsequent activities should restore every human’s faith in the intellectual power of our species, has just scooped up samples of Martian dirt, and is completing its analysis on Mars in its on-site lab. On December 4, Time published an article on our obsession with the planet: why, the author asked, do we react so much more strongly to news about Mars than say, about Jupiter? The answer is that Mars is our new world, our escape hatch. The idea that the dirt might contain organic compounds – indicating the possibility of long-ago life forms – may spark imagination, but what we really want to know is can Mars support life, us, in the future.

         The future, as in that time when rising temperatures and deeper, acidified oceans render more and more parts of the planet hostile enough to the massive human population that some of us would consider looking elsewhere.

         So hurrah for the real Martian polar ice caps and the signs of recently flowing water, and our ability to make oxygen. These are exciting news items in terms our chances of becoming Martian pilgrims. If the future colonists should find a way to become self-sustaining, they might outlive their ancestors on Earth. In a timeline curling in upon itself, the conquerors of the planet might subsequently become the seeds of its future inhabitants.

         Perhaps then the red planet may look to its blue neighbor, and before embarking on an exploratory mission to test for habitability, its residents will gather to sing an old postdiluvian hymn from unknown ancient times:

                  Thus in their change let frost and heat
                  And winds and dew be giv’n;
                  All fostering power, all influence sweet,
                  Breathe from the bounteous Heav’n.
                  Attemper fair with gentle air
                  The sunshine and the rain,
                  That kindly earth with timely birth
                  May yield her fruits again.¹

¹ “O Throned, O Crowned With all Renown.” Edward W. Benson, 1860.