A couple of years ago I decided to leave Sydney and find refuge in a remote valley from what’s coming. This is the story of that failed escape and the refuge I find in gardening, still living in the city.
First, why did my escape fail?
Earth warned me off my escape plans, saying, “all bets are off for what’s coming.”
I could see that everywhere I looked on the east coast of Australia, with the valleys I looked at buying into still burnt from the last firestorms. I walked in creeks that had never run dry but now were, and later when they flooded the flooding of them was just as worrying as the drying up.
There’s nowhere to run from Earth’s collapsing climate. Not even to the island, Tasmania. There, too, forests that have never burnt, burned. Rainfall has forgotten its past habits on that island, too.
Second, what’s coming?