This blog hasn’t always had prescience. In fact I’ve never noticed any signs it could predict the future until a few days ago. And it is only one post out of hundreds that is prescient. But the prescience in the post is undeniable.
In “Hug an Oak Tree Today”, I used my awesome powers of pattern recognition to say that first elm trees, then ash trees were wiped out in my part of North America. There was only one type of tree left that was three letters long and started with a vowel. The mighty oak tree was next, or so I figured.
Oak wilt has spread across much of the eastern United States. It has now been spotted near Detroit. Then the Detroit river is all that is stopping Southern Ontario from getting this tree fungus. It is expected to get to my area in only a couple of years.
After a tree is infected it usually dies in less than a year. I gather that all oak species are affected but some get infected more easily than others. Some oaks may be preserved for years by making sure never to prune them in the spring or making sure that infected trees don’t touch roots with uninfected trees. But I gather that all are going to die eventually.
I’m sorry that I brought this on. Me and my ) @ ^^ ^ pattern recognition powers that led to this prescience. I apologize. Perhaps I will in the future try to use my pattern recognition skills for only things that might have a positive outcome. That way prescience won’t sneak up and bite me in the @$$ like it has this time.
Maybe some good will come out of this. Well, obviously not for the environment, but for me. I am writing science fiction that I will eventually publish or have published. It wouldn’t hurt to let the fans know that I predicted the future correctly in the past. Most science fiction writers are lousy at predicting the future so this little bit of prescience will seem impressive to many science fiction fans.
Perhaps there is hope for me. Too bad I couldn’t share this hope with the trees.
