It's Always Something

My brother is 15 years older than I am; he moved away when I was young. I knew the name of the town he lived in, and the state, but not much else about his home. I was in 8th grade when Mt. St. Helens erupted. The next time my brother came to visit, he brought me a jar of ash that looked and felt like gray flour.

"Were you close to the eruption?" I worried. "It's in a whole different state," he told me. "I was a long ways away."

When I got older, I found out that he'd fudged that answer a bit; while truthful, it was sugar coated. That other state was just across the river, and while he was out of the line of sight for Mt. St. Helens, he was close enough that ash fell like rain over his home, his car, his town. Plus, the day before the eruption, he'd been inside the blast zone. Almost as distressing, from his home - from pretty much his whole town - he was in sight of two more dormant volcanoes.

"Doesn't that make you nervous? How do you sleep at night?" I fretted. I adore my brother, and wondered why he chose to live somewhere so "dangerous."

At that point, he hit me with some significant wisdom. He shrugged, and said, "It's always something." And do you know what? It is.

Recently, Kilauea, on the Big Island of Hawaii, went from a picturesque, photogenic window into an active volcano to a destructive one, with huge lava flows ruining houses and roads, causing evacuations, emitting toxic gasses. In the online news coverage, there were comments from people saying things like, "Why do they even allow anyone to live there?" The implication was that the government should stop people from living anywhere that there might be danger, to themselves or to their property.

I can't believe that anyone would think that people should be controlled that tightly. Think about it; if people can't live anywhere that there might be a disaster, we have to abandon vast areas. Can't live near volcanoes; they might erupt. So, pretty much any island is now off limits, as is the Pacific Northwest portion of the United States, where my brother lives. A significant portion of the world's mountains are dormant or extinct volcanoes. Yellowstone National Park is part of a "super volcano" - let's empty out Montana, Idaho, Wyoming.

And speaking of the Pacific, you can't live withing 30 miles or so of the ocean, if you're being careful. Tsunamis can come almost without warning, and wipe out whole cities. You can't live near the Atlantic, or the Gulf of Mexico, either - hurricanes!

You can't live in the Midwest - Tornado Alley! You can't live in most of the American Southwest - drought could kill you, as can creatures that bite and sting. Don't go near the Sierras - earthquakes! The San Andreas Fault! And how many of the huge cities of the Southwest can exist without air conditioning and imported water?

And floods - man, you can hardly get away from flood zones, if the right circumstances arise. Here where I am, in the high mountain desert, even a sprinkling rain can cause devastating flash floods.

We don't have a monopoly on floods. Right now, there's severe flooding a couple thousand miles away from me, in Maryland.

Gracious, I live in a place where earthquakes, floods and drought are frequent occourrences. Every summer, someone dies of exposure in the desert; every winter, someone freezes to death on the mountains. How do I manage?

Of course, I can't go many other places, either. Between insect borne illness, carnivorous animals, sandstorms, monsoons, extreme cold, extreme heat, scarcity of water, scarcity of crops, viruses, bacteria, fungus, and the crime and homicide rate of large cities, it's hard to find a risk free spot anywhere on the planet. We'd all be crowded into a few square miles, even if we could avoid those obvious risks, and that brings risks of another kind.

That's the point, of course. Even if we try to eliminate the obvious risks, something else will get us. And none of us will live forever, anyway.

It truly is always something.

Don't let it get to you.