POISONED AIR

It was deeply and personally brought home to me how critical the state of the natural world has become through my afternoon walk on the streets of Havana. The city is a miraculous relic of a bygone era, one which is collapsing and decomposing as we walk through it. The buildings are delightful and precious, yet out of the current political and economic situation in Cuba, so many buildings, streets , neigbourhoods and towns are eroding and disappearing in slow motion.
Even more present was the simultaneous poisoning of the air in and around the city. Driving to the city was passing through waves of toxic black smoke – diesel, gas and plain old dirt. In the city itself the blend of oppressive heat, fouling vehicles and inefficient human and industrial waste removal made it impossible to catch a breath of clean air. The day after our visit, I was obliged to rest most of the day because I could not catch my breath and experienced a aching pressure in my chest unlike anything I’ve known before.
The next week-end, after I returned, I went out walking on a snowmobile trail near Calabogie. There the air was entirely different – until the next wave of noisy, fouling snow machines roared by.
I fear for how this slow and almost unnoticed erosion f our air space will confine us to pockets of usable air or force us to rely, as people are now doing in Japan and China, on wearing facemasks to filter out the poisons. Where will we walk when the air is poisoned?

yours, on the trail
Ray