“ERASMUS DARWIN, The Botanic Garden, 1791 IT WAS THE MIDDLE OF MAY 2004, AND I HAD FINISHED MY spring term of teaching in San Francisco. I packed up—the paltry amount of luggage I had brought with me from Massachusetts somehow having expanded alarmingly—then pointed my car northward to cross the Golden Gate Bridge. From there—no northbound toll, I was pleased to see—I drove briskly off homeward, though somewhat indirectly, since I was adding an extra 4,000 miles going by way of Alaska. I had lon...g cherished an ambition to drive through early-melting snowfields along the entire length of the Alaska Highway. But now there was more than a little geological resonance to making such a journey—not least because two of America’s largest-ever earthquakes occurred in the state in 1964 and in 2002, with the latter taking place on a fault system that has provable links with the San Andreas. The connection between the events of San Francisco and Alaska serves as a reminder—in just the way the Gaia theory likes to suppose—that everything that happens in the natural world is connected in one enormous and living global system.MoreLessRead More Read Less
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