The Fault of Time

Erica Berry takes us on a journey from predictability to uncertainty recalling a visit with her grandparents after horrific Montana wildfires and charred ponderosa pines. “To love the trees, to live among them, is to reconcile myself not only to my impermanence, but to theirs.” Then in a visit to Oregon, where a massive Cascadia earthquake eruption is overdue, she realized “how quickly loss could happen.” She craved a “predictable landscape.” “I saw the earth only through the timescale of my own days.” Erica attributed this to a “gap in collective listening.” After all, Indigenous people told stories of how “this land has never been predictable.” While it may be easier to register sudden change, “it is an illusion to imagine that a shaking earth is scarier than a slowly warming one.” She notes, “It is one thing to cede a belief in a predictable landscape and another to reckon with how to hold uncertainty in one’s body or one’s day.” When it comes to the future, “The ink is still in the pen; the pen is in our reach.”

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