The earth is burning, this is not a drill

Today we ran out of water which is just as well because it provided the first line to a piece I've been putting off since since the mercury overdosed on too many degrees. Call it procrastination, meltdown or depression, but the question remains the same: How to start when the conclusion is the end?

Before I worked outdoors I had the luxury to ignore it. As a city dweller I was plugged-in to the bad news cycle, but to slightly adapt the NIMBY acronym: there was Nothing happening In My Back Yard. I recycled, I donated. My Facebook has long been algorithm-ed away from friends' feeds since no one 'likes' ecological disaster and my wall has become an E-totem to it. But: normalisation. Business as usual. And anyway, places like The Amazon (burning), Siberia (burning), The Arctic (burning), seemed far away.

And then my backyard burning became my every day.

The Ardèche didn’t get blowtorched like the Hérault did, but as the earth blazes are we really going to split hairs? Those who don’t have ti…