Thursday, July 05, 2007

This morning I got up at seven and went running. Near the end of my route, the route around the lake where I get off the path and run through the grassy area where the Canada Geese like to congregate and eat/poop, a man pulls up next to me in his van, driving slowly and shouts, do you agree with all those environmentalists? At first I thought maybe there was some mistake and continued to run but after he shouted his question a couple more times I asked him (still running) to clarify his question, which environmentalists did he mean exactly, and he rephrased it: do you agree with all those environmentalists claiming that the sky is falling. I took this to mean the climate change business and I said yes, but it depends. I said (still running, at this point, maybe a hundred yards he'd been driving along side me), I think they're right about climate change coming but we're not really going to feel the effects for another fifty years, that maybe he didn't have anything to worry about (he was older, maybe in his fifties) but I might, and ran behind his van across the street to make the final half block home. He shouted out his window, "You don't know how long I'm going to live, and you could die tomorrow. Only god knows that." I made a gesture of acknowledgment (hands together in a kind of prayer raised slightly over my head) and ran across the street.