La Niña Melting Mountains

Rescue workers search for victims after heavy rains caused mudslides in a low-income neighbourhood in Teresopolis, some 100 kilometres from Rio de Janeiro. Photo: AFP

There is a spellbinding live drama on view
as horror-struck bystanders watch, transfixed,
helpless, eyes fastened on the catastrophic play
being strung out before them. This is a heartless,
gut-wrenching script that nature has mounted,
calling on her undiplomatic ambassadors to do
their part in the unfolding of their mastery over the
Earth's geography for they are themselves the
elements we have so long learned to view with awe
in the powers of their mighty destructiveness.

There she is, clad in the glory of the ineffable
manipulator, conducting imperiously at the podium
of Force Majeur. The melody heard throughout is
that of ferociously clashing cymbals, thunderous
crashes, thuddering, shuddering paroxysms of
the placidly orderly and beneficent nature we have
known and depended upon trustingly as we
reaped her harvests, giving impassioned thanks.

This is the dreaded Janus face of the mercilessly
indifferent creator of all that exists in the only
world we know. A world turned suddenly
sinister, threatening existence. Where volatility
has replaced order, where the skies have loosed
oceans of tears to wash away entire landscapes
as mountains slide into valleys and rivers and
villages disappear; crops, animals and people
melt into the abyss of surprised extinction.

Torrential rains, mud-filled floods inundating
civic infrastructure and homes carrying away
their utility and their inhabitants; hopeless havoc
in their stench-filled leavings. Disease-masked
rescue teams brave those elements in displays of
courage, challenging nature to halt their missions
of rescue where they are jubilant to secure the
life of one child, grief-stricken with the knowledge
of the lost masses they could not lead to survival.

When nature and her servants wear out their
fury and retreat to a steady state of familiarity,
the long slow efforts of dazed humankind to restore
normalcy will proceed; the lost and the losses will
be mourned, and memories intact, will be set
aside as aspirations to negate the anguish and
intolerable pain and loss will not be expunged though
night visions of unspeakable horrors, of swollen
rivers inundating and drowning the land prey on
the helpless sleeping minds of the survivors.