Friday’s first thunder yanks Kitley from her creek bed. Around her the ravine is silent, the red squirrels and blue jays hidden from the heat. She waits for another thunderclap, a sign of the storm for today, a booming council called by he who gathers the clouds. Nothing. He only had one thing to say.
Kitley’s creek trickles along a paved footpath, canopied by thinning green oaks and bony willow branches. Shafts of sunlight blast through the canopy, a dozen blinding hot arrows loosed by the far-aiming lord during his of the two seasons. He wields summer as punishment. His dog days waste nymphs like Kitley away with a fever; his summer is a scorched half-year that dries up her creek until the polar winter freezes whatever water-home she has left, because ever since Phoebus Apollo steered the sun closer to earth, mortals and their friends only live in extremes. Nowadays the air wraps around her like a wet, steaming towel, its added weight draining her energy together with her creek.
She hoists the skirt of her tattered white dress to her knees, and with bare feet crouches on the sun-dried stones that line the ravine. She fills her shaky hands with the thin stream and splashes her face, running the water through her mossy, disheveled hair. The Vaughan Willard bell rang not too long ago. The schoolchildren should start down the path any moment now. She no longer has anything to offer the kids except her protection, no favours or riches or health, so she’s spent the past ten years guiding them safely past her creek — and that’s why the gods punish lesser deities like her too, now: for offering humankind anything at all.
They’re children. Kitley faces the south entrance, where the students file in after the school bell. They have nothing to do with the cities whose lights block out the gods’ constellations of heroes and beasts, the factories that take advantage of Earth’s gifts and send black smoke spiralling to Olympus, or the waste that clogs the rivers and streams and springs of her sisters. They’re a new generation.
Yet Apollo drew the sun closer to all humankind. Glaciers melted, sea levels rose, and with his domain threatened, dark-haired Poseidon gripped the edges of the sea with tenfold strength to prove his punishments worse. Now some places flood and chill as others overheat. The world’s a victim to the competition between uncle and nephew; though mighty Zeus intervenes every now and then — a thunderstorm here, another clap there — he ultimately approves of this judgment for humanity, as the Atoner would.
A laugh from the south. The first of the children file onto the path above, prompting Kitley to wobble into the nearest shadow cast by an oak. They’re only children, and she’ll see to their homecoming. Let the gods drown her with the humans in another flood. Her creek could use the water, anyway.
Analysis
Two sources from Ovid’s Metamorphoses heavily influenced my aetiological myth for climate change: the myth of the Flood and the myth of Phaethon. The myth of the Flood is an apocalyptic narrative wherein Zeus punishes humankind for their greed and impiety that induced the worst of the Four Ages, the Iron Age:
Not only did men ask of earth its wealth,
its harvest crops and foods that nourish us,
they also delved into the bowels of the earth:
there they began to dig for what was hid deep underground (Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.127-50).
Humans’ exploitation of the earth and overconsumption of its resources during the mythological Iron Age echoes the real-life conditions that have instigated rapid climate change, such as strip mining and the burning of fossil fuels. In Ovid’s myth, Zeus decides he “must excise / that malady which can’t be cured: mankind” and “drown / the race of men beneath the waves” for the same actions that humanity performs today (Ibid., 1.173-98; 253-75). The similarities between Ovid’s mythological Flood and contemporary climate change prompted me to write climate change as a punishment from the gods for humankind’s exploitation of the earth. However, I did not want to simply copy the myth of the Flood. Instead, I shifted the role of punisher from Zeus onto Apollo and Poseidon.
Both Homer and Ovid interpret Apollo as a sun god. Therefore, as a god of the sun, Apollo possesses both the resources and ability to cause global warming, heat waves, and droughts, all of which are associated with climate change. Homer’s Iliad opens with a depiction of Apollo’s capacity for such divine judgment, exemplified when he sends a “foul pestilence along the host” as punishment for the Achaians’ disrespect of one of his priests (Homer, Iliad 1.10). In addition, Apollo harnesses the sun as a weapon against a monster in Homeric Hymn 3: “the sacred strength of the sun did waste [the monster] quite away” (Homeric Hymn 3, 277-374). Alongside Apollo’s primary antagonistic role in the Iliad, the myth of Phaethon further informs the extent to which Apollo could weaponize his powers — particularly over the sun, as seen in Homeric Hymn 3 — to incite climate change as a form of divine punishment. In Ovid’s version of the myth, Apollo instructs his son Phaethon not to steer his fiery chariot “too low” in the sky, or else the “earth will meet its flaming end;” despite his father’s advice, Phaethon loses control of the chariot, pulls the sun closer to earth, and “Earth’s highest parts catch fire” as a consequence (Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.134-58; 184-212). I used Ovid’s image of the sun drawn near the earth as an aetion for global warming. In my myth, Apollo steers the sun closer to earth, much like Phaethon, and thus encroaches upon Poseidon’s domain of influence when glaciers melt and cause sea levels to rise. Ultimately, Apollo and Poseidon quarrel over domains and attempt to prove themselves more powerful than the other through increasingly extreme punishments for humankind.
Due to his influence over weather and the sea, Poseidon could reasonably trigger the devastating natural disasters brought about by climate change. Much like Apollo, Poseidon’s actions in various texts suggest his capability for such divine judgment. For example, Poseidon delays Odysseus’ homecoming in the Odyssey because Zeus, the god of justice, authorizes him his acts of revenge. Zeus asserts that “if there is any man who [...] slights [Poseidon], it will be [Poseidon’s] to punish him,” and with Zeus’ permission Poseidon enacts divine punishment against Odysseus (Homer, Odyssey 13.143-5.). When I realized Apollo’s actions in my myth would bleed effects into Poseidon’s domain, I considered Poseidon’s ability to summon natural disasters — hence his epithet “Earthshaker” — together with his vengeful, antagonistic role in the Odyssey to inform both his competition with Apollo and his potential part in climate change. Moreover, Poseidon assisted Zeus with the mythological Flood in Ovid’s Metamorphoses because of his power over the sea; therefore, I also considered Poseidon’s punishment of classical mortals with the Flood in his potential desire to punish contemporary mortals with climate change.
Although I chose not to portray Zeus as the main punisher of humanity in my myth, he still has a presence as a thunder god and the god of justice throughout the narrative. I reasoned that the dry thunderstorms associated with intense summer weather could be interjections from Zeus on the competition between Apollo and Poseidon. The mortal world can hear Zeus act as referee in his brother and son’s dispute, in the form of the occasional thunderclap or a longer thunderstorm sent down from Olympus.
Since climate change inherently concerns the natural world as it exists in the present, I wanted my aetiological myth to focus on the effects of climate change on an ancient Greek personification of nature in the 21st century. Accordingly, the myth is framed from the perspective of a freshwater nymph — or naiad — named Kitley, who embodies a creek that runs through Kitley Ravine in Pickering, Ontario. By writing Kitley as the personification of an actual creek near where I live, I situated her concretely in the modern day and could begin to blend the contemporary phenomenon of climate change with the classical figure of the naiad. As a general invocation of nymphs, Orphic Hymn 50 informs most of Kitley’s character as a friend to mortals:
[T]o mankind abundant favour bear;
Propitious listen to your suppliants voice,
Come, and benignant in these rites rejoice;
Give plenteous Seasons, and sufficient wealth,
And pour; in lasting streams, continued Health (Orphic Hymn 50, 22-6).
The speaker of Orphic Hymn 50 calls on the nymphs to grant various favours to mortals, such as riches and good health, and in the process suggests nymphs act as benefactors to humanity. Homer similarly depicts nymphs as helpers of humankind in the Odyssey, when a servant entreats the nymphs to “grant [him] this favor [he] ask[s] for, namely / that [Odysseus] himself will come home” (Homer, Odyssey 17.242-3). According to Homer, nymphs are not only capable of granting favours, but they can also see to heroes’ homecoming and thus function as guides for mortals. Since Kitley shepherds young children safely home past her stream, she reflects Orphic and Homeric portrayals of nymphs who grant favours of guidance and protection. However, Kitley has little else to offer mortals, which I changed from classical myth to emphasize how much climate change has damaged a spirit of nature like Kitley. In Ovid’s rendition of the myth of Phaethon, nymphs with severed connections to nature deviate from the typical image of a beautiful, carefree spirit: “nymphs, their hair disheveled, mourn[] the loss / of springs and lakes” that dry up with the heat from Phaethon’s mistake (Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.237-65). Therefore, a nymph’s body and health are connected to the nature around her. Damage to the natural world manifests as damage to the nymph herself, hence Kitley’s tangled green hair, tattered white dress — nymphs are often “rob’d in white” — and weak, feverish movements as effects of climate change (Orphic Hymn 50, 13). Overall, Kitley functions in my aetiological myth as both a narrative frame for the aetion itself and a personification of climate change’s effects on nature.
Works Cited
Homeric Hymn 3, “To Apollo.”
Homer, Iliad.
Homer, Odyssey.
Orphic Hymn 50, “To the Nymphs.”
Ovid, Metamorphoses.
Comments