THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT

 

I recently bought THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT; A book written by various authors that takes place during the aftermath of the world pandemic in Stephen King’s THE STAND.

 After the first couple of short stories, I decided to go back and reread THE STAND before completing THE END OF THE WORLD…

It has been years since I first read THE STAND, and I am so much older.  The story is still graphic, and grabs you from the start, but the under story, the story not written, the story that comes to my mind is how beautiful and natural this world would be without humans. 

In Alaska they kill the wolves to protect the moose so people can kill the moose. 

 

When I arrived in Maine in 1962 the state was not a major tourist attraction.   There was a Maine culture that was unique.   One third of the state was unpopulated – wilderness.   I ran the Allagash River, and for ten days never saw another human being. 

The population of Maine is growing.  Today, Maine is a popular tourist attraction and a cheap and safe place for retirement.   The old ‘Maine culture’ is pretty much gone. 

There are fifteen-hundred miles of snowmobile trails crisscrossing the most remote and once pristine regions of the state. 

 

The days are gone when you would walk silently through the newly fallen snow on wooden snowshoes, hear the chickadees in the trees, see a porcupine eating tree bark, and surprise deer out of its bed.

 

Now people, wearing crash helmets, ride snowmobiles at breakneck speed, screaming through the wilderness trails like Hell’s Angels on a cross-country run, seeing nothing on their way to the next lodge with steaks and a hot tub and a bar.   

The Allagash River now has guides and trips and tourists experiencing the wilderness that is no longer there. 

Earth's human population is increasing exponentially.   Resources are becoming scarce… 

 

Picture a world without humans.  Clean water.  Clean air…

  

the Ol'Buzzard