The huge, white half-moon dominating the southwestern sky Tuesday night got me pondering, as prominent moons often do. This one to me suggested a mouth agape, half opened in astonishment at what has transpired over the past month. First Irene, then this surreal winter snowstorm that visited us last weekend, two months before winter. What gives? That’s what I keep asking myself.

The remnants of the flood and storm scream at me as I travel the Franklin/Hampshire highways and byways, often nowadays, since pheasant season opened, driving me into my most active six weeks of the year. It feels great to be out and about, gathering it all in as I traipse through marshes and bull through thorny tangles behind gung-ho gun dogs. I see where WMass Electric called the snowstorm its worst on record, and who could doubt it after viewing the roadside devastation? But the salient question in my mind is: Why? I can’t say I believe it’s just one of those things that occurs naturally from time to time. Not when the frequency increases like it has. I see it as Mother Earth’s violent reaction to abuse the industrial world has subjected her to, the sinful pollution of the planet. The signs are everywhere, if you care to look. Most would rather bury their heads in the sand and check their 401Ks.

Let’s start with the beech tree that captured my fancy this past summer, the one I passed daily and observed carefully as its nuts formed and grew to maturity. I walked past that tree early during the fateful Saturday snowstorm, then again on Monday, when I discovered it had suffered significant damage. It’s most important leader from my perspective was snapped off and lying lifeless on the ground. Occurrences like that sometimes get me wondering where we all fit into the big picture. Was it just a coincidence that the massive low branch sagging down and reaching out with hundreds of accessible thorny nuts was taken? Who knows? But it’s a fact that I will not in the future be able to study the nuts before they hit the ground, by then too late because many are hollow. After finally discovering a bottomland beech perfect for field study, the single most important element is suddenly ripped from my little world by the same force that created it. The hefty branch, one that had reinvigorated my longtime interest in beechnuts, especially the many hollow nuts I have typically found on the ground, just disappeared overnight. I felt like nature had intentionally introduced me to that tree, given me a quick, insightful glimpse and — Bingo! — it was removed from that close, convenient location, a peaceful place off the beaten path. Why that tree? That’s what troubled me.

I am surprised by the damage to healthy trees like that, massive trees which, still bearing leaves, couldn’t support the weight of wet snow. I lost similar large limbs in my own yard; one the thickest, lowest surviving leader on a naked sugar maple; the other a thick lower limb on what some have called the largest tulip magnolia in Greenfield, still to this day sporting its green leaves with eight or 10 fewer branches. Nature pruned it. Blue Sky will stop by with his chipper for cleanup. By the time of buds and bloom, I expect both trees will be just fine. But how about all those perfectly healthy oaks on the side of the road, tall and straight and strong, yet snapped in half? Also others, even bigger, often double oaks, uprooted and lying prostrate. One such tree on a steep side hill opposite a favorite pheasant covert of mine fell across the road and totally covered a small earthen parking space that takes two vehicles. Someone cleared the road and pulled the logs aside, allowing cars the pass, but the tangled mess in the makeshift parking space is not inviting, dangerous wires pinned to the ground between telephone poles. You would think a big, sturdy twin oak like that could survive a heavy storm. Not so, and it may be some time before that mess is gone. Low priority. The people living near it, and others bordering a larger covert I hunted on the other side of the Connecticut River were still without power Tuesday afternoon, out in their yards to soak up the sun, likely not an uncommon sight in the valley. Nature’s fury brought them out, and it has plenty to be furious about.

Think of our maples, which displayed muted fall colors at best, and no brilliant orange before prematurely shedding their leaves. Suppose they had enjoyed a typical year and still wore their leaves for the storm. How many of them would be lying flat, badly broken or split in half? But, no, the Irene rain seemed to drown them, causing their leaves to dry up and fall early, in the long run saving them. Again, nature’s way. Yet those same rains saturated the landscape, flooded the streams and ultimately contributed to the uprooted oaks and apples. What a strange couple of months it’s been, and I must say I’m suspicious.

Yes, I can’t help but think about that Gulf of Mexico, deep-water-oil-spill disaster — you know, the one the mainstream media assures us left little or no long-term damage; and I can’t get that hideous Fukushima catastrophe out of my mind, either, volumes of harmful radiation belched and vomited into the sea and sky. Could it be that those events contributed to the weird weather events we’ve experienced since the end of August? Tell me I’m crazy, but it makes perfect sense to me, no matter what the spinmeisters paid by Exxon Mobile, BP and the pro-Nuclear-power crowd tell you on the nightly news. When I think of those dreadful poisons that polluted our planet on top of the industrial and transportation pollution released daily worldwide, I consider the disruptions that would typically occur in a human body exposed to similar poisoning. It wouldn’t be pretty. Then I see the tsunamis, the hurricanes, the wild fires, and the two-foot snowstorms two months before winter, and it makes me wonder if Mother Earth’s digestive system isn’t erupting from human-contamination overload. Which reminds me: there must be people monitoring the post-Fukushima radiation levels in our rains and snows. Why aren’t they being published? Must be they’re not pretty. Those in the know must figure people are better off in the dark.

Yeah, I know, I must sound to some as in need of a comfy couch in a sterile office where I can speak to a compassionate man in a bright white suit. Yup, that’s what the apologists will tell you: that I’m loony. Then again, maybe I’m just using common sense to understand weather events that make no sense at all. The naked truth is that humanity can be linked to natural disasters. Well, that is unless you believe in Adam and Eve, Noah’s ark, immaculate conceptions and resurrections. Then, I suppose, you can be convinced of just about anything thrown your way by well-paid propagandists employed by the greedy “One Percenters,” who pollute the earth and pay handsomely to pollute the minds of the masses. When trained scientists study the problems and propose solutions, they’re harangued on Fox-News as effete, intellectual snobs and elitists. Sadly, people listen.

There are signs that the tide could be changing. I sure hope so, before it’s too late.