I had a scary moment shortly after the New Year. I was with my family in Cancun, Mexico and got caught in a rip current in the Caribbean. My brother-in-law, an excellent swimmer (formerly in the Navy and a surfer in California) was with me. He was able to grab hold of my hand and we caught the next wave to shore. All things considered I probably wasn’t in that much danger.

But for a brief moment I felt strangely out of control. Before realizing the nature of the current I tried to swim to shore, and could not quite touch the bottom with my feet. It was only a few seconds later that I waved to my brother-in-law for help. I realized that I’d gotten myself into something for which I was utterly unprepared.

I had experienced the ferocity of Mother Nature in a way I had never done before. Sure, I’ve been near natural disasters like hurricanes and tornadoes – though I’ve never been in one. I remember nearly slipping off a gigantic waterfall as a child (I probably wasn’t that close but it felt like I was). I’ve seen lightning strike ground roughly 100 feet away.

But the rip current was, to put it one way, the closest experience I’ve ever had to that of being utterly overwhelmed by nature. For once, I did not feel that I could either control nature or manage my relationship with it. I felt subsumed by its awesome power and I found it…disconcerting.

Sure, I’ve always believed that we are one with nature and that if we alter the balance of natural forces too much we will pay the piper. But I’ve always maintained in the back of my mind that humanity will get us out of any logjam with Mother Nature.

I no longer feel those same assurances of control over nature that modernity has bequeathed to all of us.

Watching the videos of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico – essentially the same water that generated the rip current (though it was technically the Caribbean) – and reading about the utterly frustrating task of trying to cap it has conjured up those same eerie feelings I experienced in January. The feeling is helplessness. As if we pushed Mother Nature’s buttons too many times and now a volcano of oil is ours to inherit.

Surely the frustration is mounting everywhere. There are increasing calls for the Federal government to take over the spill response, though virtually nobody has outlined how exactly that would help.

Every “common sense” solution that people dream up runs against the shoal of pressure and depth: no human diver can go a mile under water and do the things necessary to cap that leak. As with Apollo 13 (the closest analogy) we must rely on robotics alone. But unlike Apollo 13, the damage to our own Gulf coast increases each and every day.

It is like standing idly by while a child is about to get run over by a car.

It is like coming upon a man suffering from a heart attack after a three day hike into the remote mountains and no way to communicate with EMT.

It is like watching cancer cells reappear after multiple rounds of chemo and radiation.

It is like the moments after the earthquake in Haiti or Katrina or the Tsumani when images of utter human despair could not be matched with an appropriate human response.

It is helplessness in the face of the mighty power of nature. And it is literally nauseating.

So, are we just exaggerating the problem? I sure hope so! Technology has gotten out of these sorts of messes before. The relief well will be finished in no time, right? And surely there is some useful political lesson in here about the evils of oil dependency and the cushy relationship between industry and government, etc. But that doesn’t feel quite so satisfying. This is a whole lot more real than some political scandal or gaffe.

The first time I heard Neko Case’s new song “Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth” I cringed. I LOVE Neko Case. But I don’t like explicitly political music and while Case has written environmental-ish songs before this one seemed so over the top. The lyrics are certainly unsubtle.

When she’s on her best behavior
Don’t be tempted by her favors

Never turn your back on Mother Earth

Towns are hurled from A to B
By arms that looked so smooth to me

Never turn your back on Mother Earth
Never turn your back on Mother Earth

Three days and two nights away from my friends
Amen to anything that brings a quick return
To my friends, to my friends

Never turn your back on Mother Earth

Well, I’ll admit I was unfaithful
But from now on I’ll be more faithful

Never turn your back on Mother
Never turn your back on Mother
Never turn your back on Mother Earth

But now I sense the betrayal at the heart of the song. Just as I tempted nature by ignoring the rip current and going ahead as usual into the surf, so did BP push the limits of drilling technology and go into water deeper than mankind has ever drilled before. And why was there no contingency plan in place when the blowout preventer failed? The same human reason as always: hubris.

Human nature will also never change.