Aliens, and Bears, Lurking In the Woods

FEW ACTIVITIES surpass for pleasure and health benefit a nice long hike along a wooded trail deep into a forested area. I am fortunate to live in a part of the country where access to such areas is easy.I learned that fully fifty six percent of the land area of the state in which I live is indeed forested, although none of it, I am told, is virgin timber. No matter.It stands as a living monument to the possibility of reforestation, which, I also read in the book "Not the End of the World", by Hanna Ritchie, that deforestation world wide reached its peak in the nineteen eighties, and that now, refreshingly, the world has begun to replant its trees. May this trend continue, unabashedly. The world once had about seven trillion trees; that number has gone down to about half that amount since the advent of neolithic homo sapien sapiens. Even if we replace the missing three trillion, climate change will continue; we cannot plant and grow our way out of global warming. One alarming trend I seem to notice is that many of the trees in my area appear to be less than wholly healthy. Twisted, scraggly branches attest to years of repeated droughts and ice storms. The forest floors here are mostly littered heavily with dead branches. Fodder for future forest fires, brought on by severe droughts and climate change. Our hike that day was especially pleasant. Our resident scientist led the way, and did most of the talking. He finally, mercifully disengaged from micro biological narratives, and turned his attention to one of my favorite topics; UFOs. He went on a bit, but I followed along and listened intently, staying a few yards behind him to avoid any possibility of a mid stride rear end collision. I cannot recall the specific details of his remarks. The usual material, as I recall,reams of anecdotal evidence, not good enough for me. He had borrowed a large, juicy looking paperbook book on the subject, and was enager to share, but not to loan me the actual book. I began to get the impression that my empirical science friend was fast becoming a true believer. I remain a skeptical agnostic, despite his ostensibly persuasive recitation of evidence, still, entirely anecdotal. "Extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence", spoke the late great Carl Sagan". "I am willing to believe anything, no matter how seemingly unlikely", echoed Isaac Asimov, "but it must be accompanied by convincing evidence". "Amen", to borrow a quote. The guy walking behind me, an early colonial American history savant, had had enough, and exploded. He hadn't come all the way out here into the wilderness, where hibernating black bears sleep lightly, to listen to a lecture about the fascination of unidentified flying objects, of alien origin or not. And yes, he made the pedestrian point that anyting aloft which we cannot identify is an "unidentified flying object". Ho hum. Why risk waking up the black bears? And why bother to discuss something which is purely speculative, without tangible, demonstrated value? Shouldn't we be discussing world hunger, or something of equally pressing,immediate importance? He was virtually yelling, and I began, reluctantly, to accede. I considered pointing out that there seems to me nothing inherently flawed about engaging in speculation, idle or otherwise, but I held my tongue. The bears might be listening. All UfO talk stopped. My potential annoyance at his rudeness was partially assauged by the reality that by the time I was in high scool, I had already covered this ground, and, in any event, there seems to have been little added to it in the past five decades. The hike had become for me a little less pleasant. My consolation was that the trees and trial were still beautiful,the bears were still asleep,and, as a bonus, I learned a bit more about Jonathan Ewdards, preaching to the choir, and the state of modern American politics.