Unravel un·rav·el | \ ˌənˈravəl \
verb
gerund or present participle: unraveling
Unravel un·rav·el | \ ˌənˈravəl \
verb
gerund or present participle: unraveling
1. undo (twisted, knitted, or woven
threads) Similar: untangle disentangle straighten out separate out unsnarl unknot unwind untwist undo untie unkink unjumble 2. (of an intricate process, system,
or arrangement) disintegrate or be destroyed Similar: fall apart come apart (at the seams) fail collapse go wrong 3. investigate and solve or explain
(something complicated or puzzling) Similar: solve resolve work out clear up puzzle out find an answer to get to the bottom of explain elucidate fathom decipher decode crack penetrate untangle unfold settle reveal clarify sort out make head or tail of figure out suss (out)
I am unraveling. I am unraveling like a rattlesnake in the desert tightly coiled, my tail issuing a warning I cannot yet decipher. My mind is unraveling as I move to free my thoughts from being held captive for too long in such a tensely wound space. For months, I have been in a defensive stance visible only to surrounding ghosts. Fear brought me here. Uncertainty brought me here. Two hundred and fifty thousand dead from the coronavirus brought me here. My capacity to strike, from one emotion to the next, frightens me. After isolating myself in a landscape of arid beauty for the past nine months during a global pandemic, why do I find myself in the process of unraveling now? What is waiting and wanting to come forth?
When I don’t know what something means, I do three things: consult a dictionary; ask someone I respect and listen; go for a walk.
The dictionary gave me definitions, but what caught my attention was the word “reveal” in the list of synonyms. To unravel is to reveal what has been hidden. And when I asked my father (now eighty-seven years old and weathering the pandemic at home with his partner and a borrowed dog named Sparky) what he thought it meant to “unravel,” he simply said, “I’m too bored to think about it.”
I understand.
An hour later, Brooke and I went for a walk. We found a small, unexpected pioneer cemetery, adorned with plastic red and blue roses, on a bluff overlooking the Dolores River. We stopped to watch a great blue heron fish the shallows. The long-legged bird was not unraveling; she was paying attention, focused on her task. Within minutes, she speared a trout, most likely a rainbow. We watched her slowly, deliberately walk back to the mudflats, toss her head back, releasing the fish into the air, and on its way down gulp the trout whole. The narrow body of the trout, now a bulge, was moving down her neck in a series of muscular swallows. The heron stood still for some time along the riverbank, then waded back into the depths of her perfect concentration.
What interested me in this particular moment was how the heron could live her life, as her species was meant to live, with an integrity of purpose in place—even as the ecosystem to which she belongs is unraveling around her. Climate change is affecting the flow of the Colorado River, with incoming tributaries like the Dolores waning. We are now in what climate scientists are calling “a megadrought.” Moab’s average annual rainfall is 10 inches. In 2020, we have received 4.9 inches, less than half the norm. Monitoring the health of the Dolores River, the nonprofit group Conservation Colorado gave the Dolores River a grade of D− in terms of its water quality. Why? Dams and reservoirs disrupt the natural flows and displace sediments, deeply altering the character of the river. Abandoned mines and uranium tailings continue to leach into the headwaters, carrying on a toxic history familiar to the Four Corners region of the American Southwest. Increased fossil fuel development, including fracked gas, is affecting water tables and aquifers, all contributing to its failing grade.
Could we read the health of the great blue heron fishing along the Dolores River through this poisonous narrative now alive in her bloodstream? Like us, each species large and small—feathered, furred, or finned—carries the larger story of planetary health in their cells. The difference between our species and other species is that we are responsible for much of the demise of all the others.
As life on the planet is unraveling, in ways seen and unseen, we are also unraveling the natural consequences that these larger narratives of unconscious behavior are inflicting on populations, both human and wild. For example, the heinous, illegal wildlife trafficking infiltrating “wet markets” (where fresh meat, fish, and produce are sold) from Asia to Africa and across the globe is responsible for 75 percent of zoonotic viruses. COVID-19, the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, is a zoonotic disease. That means it came from an animal or animals. SARS-CoV-2 is not the first novel coronavirus to infect humans—it’s the seventh.
A report from the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) found “that the United States imported almost 23 million whole animals, parts, samples and products made from bats, primates and rodents over a recent five-year period. These animals harbor 75 percent of known zoonotic viruses—pathogens that spread from animals to people.”