And yet a lot is the same. The old clapboard creaks as the high desert wind whistles through it in winter. People go on walks by the river, the mountains display surprising verdure, thanks to above-average snow.
On the other side of the globe, a beatific bat hangs out in a fissure of the vent above Blue Mountain. It’s a newly formed island that is also a mountain. He has a nice office, trade-wind facing, and has done his work quite well—teaching us to learn and communicate locally, against (or with) the prevailing winds. He is currently involved in an interspecies communication project with his buddy, wolverine. Or, as they say, on vacation.
Blue Mountain is no ordinary mountain-island. Beyond giving bats mutative nutrition, which affects the potency of the guano, its plumes shape-shift into whatever form is necessary for survival. In this case, multiple Batmen have formed through plume magic and guard the sideline, waiting to see which way the ball punted over the goalpost will travel. A lot of them have been hitting the uprights this year, it’s unpredictable.
But I think the Batmen are doing their work capably. Protecting our only real endowment—the ecosystems to which we adapted over millennia. And that newly painted goalpost? It will also begin to rust and bleed color once the rah-rah faction departs. Wind up as patina, the natural state of high desert.
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