I got home today from Quaker business meeting and did a
quick clean up as everything seemed to need tidying. So I washed dishes, swept
the floor, put a new tablecloth on the kitchen table, moved piles of items to bedrooms,
wiped counter tops and moved laundry around. Order restored. If only it were always so easy.
It’s windy again. The peaty hanging basket with the begonias
blew off the hook yet another time, scattering dirt and limp little begonias
all over the porch. I decided, finally, to give up on the lightweight hanging
baskets—Anything without heft is sure to go helter-skelter on this hilltop.
Since I live on one, I like the idea someone put forth that
hilltops are sacred places.
Place, however, is colliding with petroleum, as fracking
comes ever closer. “Comes” is the
wrong word. Fracking is here. The pipelines are going in as we speak. People have signed their contracts for cash upfront with royalties, every half-acre lot getting its seemingly huge payout. Given the way
the money is moving, there must be the proverbial gold mine underground. Looking
back—but who could have known? (we own no land and so are unaffected by the
dizzying offers)—it might have been better for the townspeople and other locals
to bind together and negotiate as a group with one just one gas company—it would
probably have made for a better deal upfront and an easier class action lawsuit
if needed on the other end. But we are a country sold on individualism.
Stillwater Meeting is preparing to sign a contract—fracking and
all its by-products will be all around us whether we sign or not--and the Meeting
could use the money. The refrain that fracking will surround us no matter what
we do sounds over and over as does the argument we are all already complicit as
part of an oil-addicted society. I understand the logic of getting the
money for what is essentially a done deal. The social pressure in this area to
sign is intense. But I think fracking money is a lottery "win" (of sorts), not the answer for the
Meeting’s financial needs. It’s no more sustainable than powering a world by
pumping all the oil out of the ground.
I’m trying to envision the world that is coming when the
last shard of coal and teaspoon of gas is pumped out of the earth. Already we’re
at peak oil, though we keep finding ways to extract more and more. But
eventually it will be gone, like that last tree chopped down on Easter Island.
I like to picture the end of oil ushering in a harmonious, sustainable way of
life—goods floating to market down rivers and canals, pushed by wind and water,
people traveling by trolley and train—these fueled by
renewable energy—or biking from place to place. I see more ocean liners in this
vision and fewer airplanes. A slower pace of life. Time literally to cultivate one’s garden.
One of the best uses of the fracking money coming to
Stillwater will be to invest in alternative, sustainable energy—in the
future we can have if we want it and plan for it. The more we do now to prepare,
the less the shock will be when the oil ends.
When we moved here five years ago, we certainly didn’t dream we’d
be living in the midst of what essentially is becoming a huge oil field. This
is a lovely, lovely place, with hills and orchards, ponds and hay fields, Amish
farms and wild turkeys, woods and streams and wildflowers, two lane roads and
breathtaking views. It will be damaged;
the question is how much and how hard it will be to repair. Except for the
temporary boom that resource extraction brings, I don’t see much upside to this—except
too, that we still live in a stable country. Arguably, it’s better to pump the
gas out now than in more desperate times. Further, being at ground zero of the
oil and gas industry has already
sensitized our Meeting to the need for more and better regulation of this wild
West type of industry—how such a mindset will go over in a Republican-dominated
state will be hard to say.
Since we’re caught up in events we can’t control, but
perhaps can influence, it will be interesting to see what happens. Where is God in all this? I don't know, but a sense a peace seems to pervade the Meeting that is difficult to understand outside of the spiritual realm.
