Spiritual and Ecological Sucession

Lee Berman · 11 Jan 2011, 20:22 · from 2011-January.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2011 15:22:34 -0500
Subject: (urth) Spiritual and Ecological Sucession
Message-ID: <SNT123-W7D94AFD8F7A4A37128AF0CF0F0 at phx.gbl>

Feeling at a loss of plain textual (plowman's) explanation of why Urth was flooded to Ushas
I've long thought the Bible was the place to find the answer- that being that here on
Earth, we had a time period when our planet was over-run with demonic beings/pagan gods too 
powerful for humanity to control/resist. The Flood did not eliminate all evil/false gods but 
reduced them to levels at least manageable by human judgement and willpower. Same for Urth/Ushas.

>From the beginning I had the sense in reading Short Sun that Blue, Green (and Whorl) represented
an ecosystem. And so somehow the mystery/big picture had to be ecologically related. There is
a principle in ecology called "succession". The basic idea is that when a virgin patch of land
appears, the first living things to colonize it will be the mobile-seed fast growing plant types
(weeds). Later, slower growing but more competitive shrubbery growth will crowd out the weeds.
Later still, small trees, then mature "climax" or "old growth" larger trees will complete the 
succession. And so it will remain.

That is until some natural disaster occurs which is so great as to completely decimate the 
old growth forest, leaving a virgin patch of land and allowing the process to start anew.
Such disasters might be earthquakes, extended drought and, of course, a major flood.

I am wondering if perhaps Wolfe intended to intertwine the principles of spiritual and
ecological succession with Urth/Ushas and Blue/Green.

Many have discussed the Megatherians on Urth as simply, "in the ocean". I find this to be
a bit simplistic, along the lines of "God is in heaven". There is evidence that these
great beasts can be found elsewhere. Beneath the man-ape cave, in Lake Diuturna, in a volcano
in the antarctic, in the Amazon River ("Ouroboros" sometimes refers to the great river in the north 
and sometimes is described as a snake-type giant than can swallow people alive).

What I'm thinking is that these great creatures have gotten so big and so intertwined with the 
planet that they may be considered almost as much geological as biological entities. Perhaps
with The Mother on Blue and maybe the Giant Trees on Green there is something similar going on there.
It is for this reason that a planetary upheaval (with "waves of gravity") is necessary to enact both
a spiritual and ecological succession on all these planets. 

I know this isn't what Marc is looking for but perhaps when Wolfe says "Urth is Green" (implying Ushas 
is Blue) it is like comparing Africa and Asia and saying "Sahara is Gobi" and "Congo is Sumatra". Perhaps
Wolfe is comparing these as places which are in similar stages of ecological and spiritual succession.

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