To create a moment in history like ours today, you need to ignore two things; deep history and the facts of the day. The facts are here for us to use and abuse. But history lies in the root system of life and one must actually work to excavate the patterns of the deep story. I say “work” because that is what it is. This project recommends the “newly ancient” practice called reading-a-whole-nonfiction-book. Reading could lead to such radical behavior as becoming more curious about the time you live in and the time that brought us here. 

An example would be a book my daughter gave me called: Twelve Trees; The Deep Roots of our Future by a fascinating author named Daniel Lewis. Regardless if you are grieving or celebrating this current moment in history, it helps to carry within you a perspective of time. The rings of the Bristlecone tell us of how long time and life have playing out a story leading to our time’s true responsibilities. Lewis points out the Bristlecone Pine is the oldest of all living trees that tells a detailed story of 5,000 years of living climate history in its rings and markings. That is fifty centuries. To limit one’s data to the last 50 or even 100 years is the equivalent in terms of climate change to studying the heart breaking drama of a camera flash.

The Vatman’s Tears however are small splotches and spots in the pages of ancient manuscripts. The Vatman was the person who stirred and strained the slurry that became the paper for the manuscript’s pages. The markings were probably simple drippings or sweat. Lewis compares the story of these ancient pages to the story of tree rings and the small subtle markings of climate evolution on earth those rings reveal. I was captured by the comparison because the tears we are shedding in this age over the conspiracy of ignorance regarding climate change may become just another Vatman’s tear in the relentless rings of history and future. We will only count and survive in our generations if we respond the the cautionary story our wise trees as well as nature herself are trying to tell us. The only route to ‘good’ in this context is for us to actually perform the sacrifice of working the critical changes the stories of deep history demand.