Myth & Mycelium

2023 Earth Day Keynote for Saint John's College

This the transcript of the talk I delivered for Earth Day 2023 on the Saint John’s College Santa Fe Campus.

You have been on the water since the third tremor shook the island in early morning. The gods are walking across the land. Their footsteps unsettle the ocean. They have been in dispute since before your grandfather’s time and the local seer long predicted they would soon come to battle. Soon, for the gods, could be hundreds of years. But when the dogs began to howl this morning after the third tremor, you knew the day had arrived.

Again, the ocean roils, buckles. Your flimsy fishing boat wobbles beneath you. Against your throat, a knifepoint of sorrow reminds you of the girl who would not come. She called you a dreamer. Tossed her auburn hair as she headed past you, to care for the sheep in the field her family shares with yours. You could convince almost no one to come with you but your younger brother Klumenos, who clings to the side of the boat. And the dogs. Threadbare animals with eyes like embers. Three of them barked until you let them aboard. Now they press against you like a skin of fur. True, there have been tremors felt on the island before. But no one else in your village on Akrotiri believes these are more than the passing pad of a god’s foot, on his way to woo an unsuspecting mortal.

Then it happens. The sea convulses with sound. The thrum of a thousand mountain-sized lyres all plucking the same chthonic note. The sky combusts. Or is it the ocean that explodes? The force arrives from above and below. One set of gods collides with another. A vasculature of flame fractals out through violet ash, and thunder bolts pierce the sea again and again, setting it to a boil. The dogs are howling alongside you, and your brother is screaming. Where your home island used to be, in the distance, a solid sheet of fire. The water beneath you begins to steam.