HASSO HERING

Thursday was a cloudless but very windy day on the central Oregon coast, as the noise on this video proves. Hardly anybody was on the beaches, which is not surprising for a weekday in early April.

Every time I walk across the sand left dry by the low tide, I’m reminded of the increasing agitation in the media and among politicians about climate change and our supposed obligation to prevent it by various means. But on a day like Thursday, climate change does not seem worth worrying about overly much.

The sun was shining and it was pleasantly mild, even in the coastal breeze. What more could anyone ask?

You may have read the reports of minor earthquakes in western Oregon and near Mount Hood recently. I just learned that very tiny quakes also were recorded under the south rim of the caldera at Crater Lake. Nobody says these little tremors are anything to worry about. But they do tell us that deep under out feet, things are moving around.

This reminds us that the Earth is not some static system. The very crust on which we stand is shifting, very slowly most of the time — until  on rare occasions it lets loose with a big jolt. Even the rocky outcroppings on the coast look like the kind of igneous material stemming from eruptions long, long ago

From Hood in the north to Jefferson to our east and Mazama (Crater Lake) and Shasta to the south, we are living near volcanoes, the result of one plate of the planet’s crust being shoved underneath the continent. Maybe we ought to think about that a little more and about climate change a little less. (hh)