The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Contributor to the New York Times
Heraclitus Hikes the Andes // Global Warming Changes Everything
By ARIEL DORFMANFEB. 6, 2015
SANTIAGO, Chile — I HAVE recently been able to confirm, through sad and indisputable evidence, that Heraclitus was right when he wrote that we can never step into the same river twice. I doubt, of course, that that pre-Socratic philosopher, when coining the phrase two and a half millenniums ago about the implacable flux of time, had in mind the ecological destruction of the planet, the abyss toward which our greed and inability to courageously confront global warming are leading us.
I’ve been thinking about Heraclitus recently, in the throes of Chile’s hot summer. Of the many enchanting expanses near Santiago, I have always been especially attracted to the Cajón del Maipo, a narrow valley of spectacular cliffs that the Maipo River has been excavating for millions of years. One of the most fabulous places in that canyon is a waterfall, which the locals called “Cascada de las Ánimas,” the waterfall of the spirits. Arrieros — mule drivers — baptized it with that name over a century ago, when, after crossing the mountains with their livestock, they stopped there to gratefully drink, and claimed to have glimpsed two semitransparent maidens dancing behind that cataract, along with duendes (mischievous elves) gamboling nearby.
More than 40 years ago, in our youth, my wife, Angélica, and I would hike into the lower reaches of the Andes, and on one occasion we managed to scramble up hundreds of meters, all the way to the waterfall. Not discovering any humans, let alone legendary damsels or duendes, I once decided to freshen my body by plunging into those crystal, icy waters sent to us by the faraway snow of the mountains. Angélica, always more prudent, preferred to taste the waters with the cup of her hands.
A few days ago we returned to the Cajón del Maipo, and I wanted, from the nostalgia of 2015, to return to that magical cascade. Though Angélica decided not to join the expedition, I was accompanied this time by Pedro Sánchez, my brother-in-law, who had visited the falls a few years before and reported that it was still the same enchanting site. But it was no longer possible to venture into those mountains as freely as before. The cascade now streams inside an ecological sanctuary. The only way to see it was through a guided tour that we had to contract through an adjacent tourist resort.
Though the experience of ascending those paths with someone perpetually explaining the landscape, along with several families with noisy children, did not reproduce the solitary setting of my memories, the scenery was still magnificent, full of native trees and bushes, teeming with animal life. And there was always the expectation of the great cataract at the end of our upward trek.
Nothing of the sort. From the heights a trickle of water fell toward the same rocky cavernous basin of yesteryear, which now barely allowed anyone to wade in up to the knees. Swimming was forbidden anyway, as the tourists had all swabbed their skin with sunscreen and creams and might contaminate the purity of that fountain.
My brother-in-law was surprised that, in a few scant years, the water level could have dropped so drastically. Several other members of the group, who had been there a decade ago, expressed a similar alarm: Clearly the snow of the Andes was no longer as potent or plentiful, drying up before it had a chance to fully reach the cascades. My eyes were able to measure, right there in front of me, the incontrovertible effect that merciless global warming has on our environment.
That was not the worst news. Soon only a thin thread of water would be falling, drop by drop, from the stones above our head and, within a few years, the waterfall itself would probably no longer exist. It was haunted, not by duendes or the benevolent ghosts of maidens, but by a hydroelectric dam being built upriver to provide energy to the insatiable citizens and industries of Chile. The protests by activists and the inhabitants of the Cajón del Maipo had been unable to detain this menace to that natural habitat.
Helping to make that hydroelectric plant unstoppable is the fact that the consortium behind it is partly controlled by the Luksic Group, Chile’s largest corporation. The company prospered and expanded obscenely thanks to the savage neoliberal policies of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, which lasted from 1973 to 1990, and it has continued its tentacular growth under subsequent democratic governments.
Heraclitus of Ephesus had two nicknames. Some called him the Obscure, because his sayings were full of contradictions (indeed like the flow of rivers), and the Weeping Philosopher, because he apparently would sob uncontrollably as he meditated on the state of the world and incessant death.
As I stared at the besieged Cascada de las Ánimas, both nicknames came to mind. Pedro and I were enjoying a splendid day of summer sun that made the mountains and the lizards glow, but over that place hovered darkness, the obscure shadows of the future, presaging that not all was to be light and wonder for our species.
And Heraclitus, who never dreamed of a hydroelectric dam, or of avid and arid corporations, or of a planet heading toward a new extinction, would cry a cataract, an ocean, a deluge of tears if resurrected, forced to recognize that, in a way he could not have imagined, we will never again be able to bathe in the same river.
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Ariel Dorfman is the author of the play “Death and the Maiden” and, most recently, a memoir, “Feeding on Dreams: Confessions of an Unrepentant Exile.”
A version of this op-ed appears in print on February 6, 2015, on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: Heraclitus Hikes the Andes.
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Some of the Comments:
Alex
8 minutes ago
Thanks you, Mr. Dorfman, for helping us feel the loss of beauty that the steady adaptation of the planet to an ever-expanding human…
Stoofus
8 minutes ago
Eloquent, sad, chilling.
