Back when we were married, Darlene — bless her little heart — tried her best to get me to take off my shoes at the door, especially during ‘mud season’. Darlene was, herself, very good at taking off her shoes. She did it almost without thinking. It was ‘second nature’.
“It’s not that difficult,” she would often say. “Just imagine you’re in Japan. The Japanese have respect for their floors.”
“Yeah, and the Japanese also sit on the floor,” I would often respond. “When you get rid of all this furniture cluttering up the living room, maybe I will remember to take off my shoes.”
I would often say this with a cynical smile, because I knew Darlene would never get rid of the furniture.
Her intentions were good, of course. She didn’t like dirty floors… and removing my shoes at the door certainly would have helped the situation. But I had spent the previous 30 years conscientiously wearing my shoes inside the house, and breaking such an in-grown habit would have required me to actually care about the floors. And about Darlene.
I guess I just didn’t care enough…?
But now I have a much more serious footprint. A carbon footprint. Dirty floors can be a concern; extinction of the human species is a much bigger concern.
Science tells us that throughout the 4.6 billion years of Earth’s history — give or take a billion years, here or there — there have been five major mass extinction events, each with its own geologically-inspired name: the Ordovician Mass Extinction, Devonian Mass Extinction, Permian Mass Extinction, Triassic-Jurassic Mass Extinction, and Cretaceous-Tertiary Mass Extinction. Evidence for these theoretical events comes from certain fossilized remains that appear — or else, don’t appear — in various layers of sedimentary rock.
Some of the layers of sedimentary rock eventually become pulverized into dust, by various natural processes, and when mixed with water, turn into mud and get tracked into the kitchen. But we’re going to stay focused on “carbon footprints” in this essay.
We don’t know if the dinosaurs had carbon footprints. Very likely they did, because they suddenly vanished of the face of the earth. And so did most (but not all) of their footprints.
But that’s all in the past. We humans are now dealing with our own footprints, and it’s not a pretty picture. We are leaving our carbon footprints everywhere. But no one notices… because, in spite of the fact that carbon is usually as black as soot, for some reason carbon footprints are invisible. Doesn’t matter whether you wear shoes, or go barefoot; no one can see your carbon footprint. I don’t recall Darlene ever complaining about my carbon footprint, probably because of this same curious attribute: invisibility. Out of sight, out of mind.
If my carbon footprint had been black — as we would certainly expect it to be — my marriage probably wouldn’t have lasted nearly as long as it did.
But even though our carbon footprints are invisible, we can see their effects. The slow, overheated death of Planet Earth, for example, is one of the effects.
I understand that the scientists who study this subject can get pretty passionate about it. I will be first to admit, I don’t quite understand how you study something that’s invisible, but as I just mentioned, invisible things can still have effects, and carbon footprints seem to fall into that category. But the odd thing, for me, is that most of my carbon footprint seems to be related to driving my car. So maybe it would be more accurate if we called it “carbon tire tracks”? Those would also be invisible, but they would cover a lot more territory, like occasionally, to Durango or maybe even Santa Fe or Albuquerque. I can’t imagine walking all the way to Albuquerque, but I have driven there many times, to catch a plane at the airport.
Which suggests, of course, that I might also have the “carbon vapor trail”, whenever I catch a plane. (Not to be confused with my “carbon chem trail” which is another whole can of worms.)
Fact of the matter is, however, that I’ve pretty much stopped going out, except in dire emergencies when I run out of beer. I generally spend the day at home, alone, wearing my fuzzy slippers, which leave hardly any footprint at all, even on the shag carpet.
If only Darlene and I could have held it together until COVID came around. She would have loved me in my fuzzy slippers.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.