Earth Abides

Now, as so often before, he looked around him, and the mere pageant of the years seized his interest, and took his mind away from his grief. This particular section had suffered badly in the earthquake. There was a gully all the way across the old concrete pavement; some crack of the earthquake had made the break; rain and running water had widened and deepened it, and now trees and bushes were standing up from the line of the gully all the way across the wide street. Swinging the hammer to give him momentum, he jumped the four-foot gap from one edge of the pavement to the other, and was pleased that his legs, in spite of his illness, were not too weak.

As he walked along, he saw the houses on both sides of the street, fallen into ruin now, what with the earthquake and the mere passage of time. Vines climbed high upon them. Encroaching trees had thrown porches out of line.

Everywhere he observed the struggle between the native plants which were moving back into the gardens, and the exotics which once had been planted there and carefully tended.

He looked closely at these overgrown gardens, thus to take his mind off worse things. He tried to discover what plants were no longer in existence. He saw no wisteria or camellia or coprosma though they had once been common. But the tall climbing rose-vines were still vigorous. A large and handsome evergreen tree he recognized as a deodar, native to the Himalayas. It was still growing vigorously, but looking beneath it, he found no seedlings. Apparently it could live there, but would not reproduce. On the other hand beneath a eucalyptus tree, a species native to Australia, he found seedlings which had sprouted up through the litter of leaves in which nothing else would grow.

Coming to the campus, he passed first through a grove of Italian stone-pines. Here, everything looked less confused than it had in the gardens along the street, because the pines had spread and formed a canopy beneath which little grass grew. The effect was still park-like.

Near one of the trees he saw a large rattlesnake lying in the sunshine. It seemed torpid, not yet quite revived from the chill of the night. He could easily kill it. He hesitated a moment, but went on.

No—he had once been bitten and still remembered something of that horror. But he held no enmity to the whole tribe of rattlesnakes. In fact, that bite had possibly saved his life. Perhaps, rather than being hostile, he should be grateful, and form a rattlesnake clan around that totem. No, not that either. He would be neutral.

Then he realized that this attitude of his applied to more than just rattlesnakes. He had noticed it in the younger people also. In the times of civilization men had really felt themselves as the masters of creation. Everything had been good or bad in relation to man. So you killed rattlesnakes. But now nature had become so overwhelming that any attempt at its control was merely outside anyone’s circle of thought. You lived as part of it, not as its dominating power. To bother with killing one rattlesnake was foolish, because you had no chance of exterritinating them or even of appreciably changing their number. If one of them came near the houses, you killed it of course, to protect the children. But you did not go crusading against rattlesnakes, any more than you did against mountain-lions.

He passed on, went down an almost overgrown stone stairway, and crossed a wooden bridge. He felt it shaky with rot beneath his feet. It had been an old bridge, he remembered, even when he was a boy. Along the stream the thicket was dense, and he had to push his way through, although underfoot he felt that he was still on an asphalt walk.

He heard a rustle somewhere in the thicket, and for a moment was nervous to be without a weapon. It might be a mountain lion. Wolves or wild dogs also were likely to haunt these thickety stream-courses.

But as he burst through into the open again, he saw only some deer loping off through the trees.

High on his left, now, rose up one of the University buildings. He could not remember what department had been housed there. The shrubbery, which once had been kept neatly trimmed, had now grown up high and shaggy, masking the lower windows.

He went on toward his goal. It was only a little way ahead, now. He burst through another thicket, and saw the great Library building.