Higher Ground: Zero Hour

When a pandemic hits, the world is slow to respond. But it quickly becomes apparent that billions will perish, and some are more prepared than others for the impact. It will either be the end or a new beginning. As mankind had continued to ravage the planet we call home, the Earth refused to become just another victim of our destructive nature. It is the Earth that gives us life, not us who gives life to the Earth. She will fight back with billions of years of experience on her side. She shows favor to those who live in harmony with her, and delivers devastating blows to those who mean her harm. She tries to warn us that her beauty will not always be evident, that danger lurks in her many facets, and that her ugliness, when it does appear, is not intentional. She was just born that way. She will warm us, feed us, clothe us and protect us if we are wise. Freeze us, starve us, strip us and destroy us if we are not. We are at her mercy for our survival. Yet, we expect her to bend to our will, as if it were the other way around. We had blindly been ignoring warnings that if our current global consumption and production patterns continued, by 2050 we'd need three planets to sustain our current lifestyles. We selfishly expected her to bear the burden on her own.

Now a new threat looms to challenge our claim at the top of the food chain. One of the smallest living organisms has come out of its hiding place to remind us that we have not conquered all. Man himself may be a virus on the earth, yet we are unable to kill her. No, she will not die because of us. She will remain long after we are gone. But, did she send one of her own to remind us of our place? Something so small it cannot even be seen, but could decimate the human race? She had done it before. Was it self-defense? Or, did man think he was smarter and could control Mother Nature? The world was about to find out and humankind would be given a chance to respond. Would we band together and find a way to survive? Would we find common, and perhaps, even higher ground? What was going to happen next would determine the kinds of stories future generations would hear, and who would be left to tell them.

T.M. Carpenter was born in 1962 in Minnesota, where he developed a love for the outdoors, growing up near Minnehaha Falls and the Mississippi River in south Minneapolis. After a visit to Colorado as a young boy, he vowed that one day he would move there, and he now lives with his wife and two children in Parker, Colorado.