While we may occupy the top of the food chain, we humans frequently are a little late to the party in terms of discerning the bigger picture.
Earlier this week my colleague Michelle Shaw reported portions of our little slice of Xanadu will soon officially be designated in a flood zone.
The homeowners in those areas that have had to pump water out of their basements a handful of times through the years let out a collective: “Ya think!”
But then seeing one’s washing machine afloat can get the best of us Sandy Springsteens a tad itchy and scratchy.
In another nature-related note, the local police have gotten multiple calls recently about bear sightings around town.
I’m not easily impressed, but I think if I saw a bear wandering the yard it would make anything else in my day seem jejune.
Wild weather and wildlife are two trenchant reminders that regardless of the name on one’s property deed we truly don’t own anything in this big world.
Not even our little bit of it.
On applications for this and that I check the box that affirms I’m a homeowner, but I don’t own this home.
I share it with a mortgage company and a bank. We’re a rather clubby trio but collectively we own a pile of papers and that’s about it.
A couple of falling pines or a tornado could make the house history. A minor-league flood could remap the whole neighborhood.
If a bear or coyote should show up one day on the doorstep I don’t think I can waive that thick sheaf of paperwork I have avowing ownership and expect them to beat a hasty retreat.
I don’t think they’re impressed with warranty deeds and liens.
We have a friend who has owned a beach house on a small island off the Gulf side on Florida. I’ve seen before-and-after pictures of the island around the time of a pestilential tropical storm.
One day you have a house on the beach, the next day you have one out on a sandbar. Or your house is making good time on the way to the Caribbean.
Homes built inland don’t fare much better.
Just ask anyone who has seen their luxury domicile in California get shaved off the landscape by a mudslide or consumed by a forest fire.
Such thinking might give one a strong case of cynicism, but there is a middling sense of comfort in recognizing the façade that we own anything so substantive as the earth beneath our feet.
And I don’t say that just to dodge yard work.
Floods and winds and fires do a right fine job of humbling us. However, I don’t believe Almighty God, Mother Nature, the fates or any other real-or-imagined power out there periodically disrupts our lives for the sport of it. Or to teach us a lesson.
Rather, I think in the grand scheme of things it’s just an exigent reminder that even the top of the food chain nudges against a glass ceiling.
Jim Osterman lives in Sandy Springs. Reach him at jimosterman@rocketmail.com.
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