WASHINGTON POST • August x, 2023
Maine, while 90 percent forest, is also one of our most logged states. If you’re wondering where a lot of America’s 2-by-4s and toilet paper come from, it’s here. Of Maine’s original species, sea minks, cougars, caribou and gray wolves are either extinct or extirpated from the state. Without this knowledge, it was easy to think I stood on the edge of primeval wilderness. Changes here unfolded over centuries. Each generation came to see the woods and rivers around them as normal even as the ecosystem degraded. There’s a name for this: shifting baselines. Today, a new normal is being rewritten in our own lifetimes amid climate-related disasters, from smoke-filled skies to lethal heat waves. Yet accepting these conditions as normal threatens to unravel what made the world capable of withstanding these shocks in the first place. To restore the rich relationships of species, and our place among them, we need to remember our “baselines,” whether that’s in Maine or your own backyard. One of the best ways to do this is telling stories. ~ Michael J. Coren