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Resilience

Jul29
A rare morning rainbow in the western sky last week.

With its apparent resilience, the monarch butterfly provides another apt metaphor. After a precipitous decline in population and a decades-long international collaboration to save the species, monarch numbers have increased in the past few years. They’ve followed more or less the same migratory pathways for 20 millennia, the science of tracking and protecting them has been going on for .0025% of that time by my calculation, and they could go extinct in the next fifty years.

I’m grateful that I got to visit Rosario in the late 80s as a guest of a research team under the direction of Dr. Lincoln Brower. The sanctuary had just been designated. During my week at the field camp, the weather was unseasonably cold and the last few days were blanketed in a rare snow. We drove down from the mountaintop to El Rosario and walked the dusty paths, but even there the monarchs were largely dormant. Nevertheless, I remember the miracle of being among their stunning multitude. I’m grateful they seem to be adapting to habitat loss.

But if we as a species don’t slam the brakes on climate chaos, those amazing butterflies don’t stand a chance. The world has “junked 45 climate pledges.” Under the current US regime, public lands including irreplaceable wilderness and cultural sites are being torn open to fossil fuel extraction. This is unconscionable. Killing two birds with one stone and the planet in the mix, destroying our public lands protected by our tax dollars for their value to our American lives, AND accelerating the climate catastrophe. We stand to lose not only the butterflies, but so many other natural wonders and cultural treasures. Call your representatives now.

As a society, we’re going to need all the resilience we can cultivate, given the insidious influences trying to shape the way we think, feel, and interact with our world. The Patriarchy may be in its death throes but it’s pulled out all the stops, as this insightful piece from The Atlantic illustrates. Can we support the men in our lives, young or old, in resisting this toxic masculinity scam? Can we help each other see reality clearly? Your wellbeing and happiness depend upon my wellbeing and happiness, as mine depend upon yours. We are interdependent. Can we hold on to this certainty in some way as nefarious forces continue trying to fracture us, both individually and collectively? Daily mindfulness practice helps me feel more resilient.

Doing my best most days to eat in a way that supports my health, I made a delicious golden mushroom soup last week, with portobellos, orzo, turmeric, and turkey stock. And a pat of butter, per the recipe.

And it’s not just the natural world this Republican regime is assaulting. Our health as individuals, communities, and a nation is at risk from the boneheads in charge of public health. This 23 minute talk Joyce Vance had with Dr. Vin Gupta lays out the threats pretty clearly, and offers us some resources since we can no longer count on the government websites to provide science.

The once bountiful garden is struggling with the heat, though it’s still providing about as many leafy greens as I can stomach. The ‘Mickey Maters’ started from Dog World seeds are not thriving. I don’t think they’re meant to be quite this small. I’m grateful for the few strawberries that have survived the chipmunks.

A friend brought me a nice organic zucchini a couple weeks ago, and the only thing I wanted to do with it was try again to make zucchini fries. This time I used a batter recipe Amy had sent, since the last time it was too thick and took so long to fry to golden that the zukes were just utter mush.

With this tempura-like batter they fried quickly and remained beautifully firm, almost crunchy. Maybe next time, with the oil a little hotter, they’ll do even better. It’s a great way to get a fried fix. For sauce this time, nothing fancy, just mayo, mustard, a squeeze of tomato paste because I had no ketchup, and a spoonful of sweet pickle relish.

Morning at the Bombay Wall. I did NOT empty all these bottles by myself, it was a community effort over two decades. They were just too pretty to throw away.

Speaking of blue beauty, the lazuli bunting has been a regular at the feeder and I was happy to get some good shots. I thought at first glance that he was wet from a rare rain, but on closer inspection recognized the tips of new feathers all over his head. He didn’t show up while he was molting—it might have alarmed me to see a bald-headed bunting, but I’d have remembered what I learned when Cousin Mel had a bald cardinal at her feeder. It’s not unusual to see bald songbirds occasionally during molting season.

This is my first ever journal, covering the last six weeks of freshman high school through the summer and the first few months of sophomore year. As part of my preparing-to-die work (no rush, don’t worry, just want to leave a little less stuff for others to deal with whenever it does happen) I’ve gathered all my old journals and am reading them in order, with several goals. One is to review my life with compassion for a change. Oh! The Drama! Also some good insights: I was more resilient then than I remember. And some perspective: Doodles and I pooled our money after a bike ride to town, and had to choose between buying a coke or a slurpee with our 16 cents!

Back then, I was only dimly aware of worldly concerns, but I do remember thinking that the grownups would save the ozone layer and solve global warming and tighten the growing income gap, so I ignored all those things for a few decades. Turns out, they all just kept getting worse.

Thanks to an infusion of new sourdough starter from the Bad Dogs, I got a proper rise to my boule last week.

Also in baking news, it was time for another birthday cake. I chose for Rosie a 7-Up cake, a retro Southern recipe which uses the lemon-lime pop as both liquid and leavening. The flavor is enhanced with lime zest and juice, but my limes were not organic and I won’t zest sprayed fruit. So I used lemons instead. It calls for a lemon glaze, but I knew she likes frosting so I made a lemon cream cheese buttercream—yum! I also tried to candy lemon slices for decoration, but I lost track of the process (twice!) resulting in a burnt mess. Oh well. I’ll try again some day.

Coffee at the pond this morning with a gentle doe.

Wren (like all my dogs) has always gotten last bite of everything I eat. I’ve found only a few things she won’t eat: raw celery, zucchini, and mushrooms. The other day I thought to offer her a spoonful of cinnamon foam after I finished my latté. She was so excited to try it! And she loved it, so now it’s another regular last bite treat.

Some Say the World Will End in Fire…

Jul18
Sunset beyond the Grand Mesa last week, as smoke began to decrease here.

I’m grateful today that wildfire smoke in my little corner of the world has diminished, but watch with compassion and horror as Canada’s boreal forests burn out of control again this summer in climate chaos exacerbated wildfires, and thick smoke blankets southeastern Canada and the northeastern and mid-Atlantic US. There’s a great graphic in this Guardian article. The good news is that it’s likely to improve by Sunday in time for the World Cup final in New Jersey. Even better, the president told Canada it has to stop!

Sunrise through wildfire smoke beyond the Iwo Jima memorial outside Washington, D.C. That bird! from The Atlantic, Finn Gomez / Getty

“A 2024 study published in Science found that carbon emissions from wildfires had increased by 60 percent in the prior two decades. Fires in boreal forests such as Canada’s were the main reason. Another study, published in Nature, found that Canadian wildfires in 2023, when more than 43 million acres burned, generated more emissions than the burning of fossil fuels in all but the three most-polluting countries.”

I could do tonglen all day long for just the wildlife alone killed and displaced by these mega-fires. And how do we cope with the grief of losing so much of the natural, wild world to greed-induced climate chaos? Not well, it turns out. In modern western culture, we don’t even know how to mourn the deaths of beloved individuals very well, but even so we do it better than we grieve the death of nature. Our nervous systems weren’t designed (read, ‘evolved’) for the constant stress, duress, and distress that persistent grief over the degradation of our planet stirs in many of us. One Buddhist offers the model of palliative care to help us be with our planetary grief.

A friend shared this creative, low-impact alternative to July 4th fireworks: the photographer and friends used bubble blasters to celebrate–or is this AI? credit@luckyclover.5280

… Some Say in Ice

Meanwhile, the Colorado Sun sheds light on the true consequences across the state of last April’s catastrophic freeze in the North Fork Valley. After some reports recanted original estimates, it turns out the initial impression of 100% fruit loss was accurate. Fruitgrowers and related businesses that rely on harvests and fruit tourism have had to get creative this summer to stay afloat and support just some of their employees. Vendors and distributors across the state who rely on North Fork fruit, roughly 10% of Colorado’s harvest and most of its organic fruit, have also been hard hit.

Most of the fruit trees in the North Fork Valley, like my apricot, survived the freeze and have leafed out beautifully this summer without producing any fruit.

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

Fire and Ice, Robert Frost

Some people’s worlds have already ended in ICE. Congress failed Americans again by authorizing another $70B last month for DHA, apparently giving ICE license to kill again. Speaking of corruption and perversion, Penzeys is having a great sale right now on all spices beginning with the letters E,P,S,T,E,I,N: the sale code for checkout is FILES. Whatever happened to those files, anyway? As always, action is the antidote to anxiety. If ICE horrifies you, or the Epstein Files upset you, find your local grassroots activists and join them in peaceful protests, get out the vote efforts, and the camaraderie of shared purpose.

I’m grateful for leftovers for lunch all this week, after a delightful fly-by visit last weekend from old dear friends Ed and Gabrielle, globe-trotting, super-computing astrophysicists from Wyoming. They picked up some fresh vegetables from the smoky Ridgway farmers’ market on their way here from New Mexico, and I made big batches of potato salad and three-bean salad. Smoke was light, and Wren gave them each kisses of approval.

Keeping cooking and baking to a minimum this week with continuing temperatures in the mid- to high nineties, I did use the skillet to cook up a mess of garden greens decorated with the second and final green pea harvest–what am I doing wrong? This morning I baked a loaf of sourdough early because I’ve missed having bread. I’m grateful for doing something right.

I’m grateful I can do some little things for some little people to make this hard life in a world in upheaval a little easier. This white-breasted nuthatch figured out a few weeks ago to drink from the ant moat above the hummingbird feeder. Soon I noticed other birds drinking from them as well, scrub jays, house finches, a Bullock’s oriole. Now I fill the ant guards with water more often than I fill the feeders with nectar.

Moments

Jul7

All the grey flames on the map are a gratifying indication that many of the fires of the past weeks are essentially out. Colorado remains the epicenter, and some are horrifically huge. A couple of friends have asked me, “Why don’t you move?” I told that to Garden Buddy, and she replied, “No—-! Where would we go????”My thoughts exactly. Fortunately, after dense smoke for days, the winds shifted late this afternoon and I was able spend a little time in the yarden, and to harvest my blueberry crop.

The yield was a satisfying 200% larger than last year’s. The half that I enjoyed was very sweet and perfectly ripe. Though reluctant at first because it was so tiny she didn’t recognize it as a blueberry, Wren ultimately enjoyed her half.

Kathleen shared this amazing photo she took while cleaning her outside windowsills in Florida. It’s a mama scorpion carrying its live-birthed babies with the adorable name of scorplings. I’ve bookmarked the word to use in Scrabble.

Speaking of adorable, this grebe family is a photo Audubon Society shared on Instagram, and I still can’t get over the faces of those little piggy-backed chicks. Their Pa is feeding one of them a feather, which helps with their digestion.

My digestion was helped over the holiday with a red, white, and blue French toast bowl, using up the heel of the latest sourdough boule.

Some flowers I’ve tried and failed to cultivate several times are enjoying some semblance of success, including these sweetpeas that the Bad Dog boss started from seed and shared with me. May they survive the summer, overwinter well, and climb the fence next year.

Zoom Cooking With Amy on the 4th resulted in one of the most delicious meals ever, a simple caramelized onion pasta. We both used thin spaghetti, and Vidalia onions, which were more teary than I expected, but also sweeter after half an hour simmering on medium heat in olive oil and butter. Once the onions were done, we tossed in chopped garlic for a minute, then the cooked pasta, and alternately stirred in pasta water and grated Parmesan until a glossy sauce came together. The flavor was amazing with an unexpected quality of juiciness. The last of the leftovers held this quality through lunch today.

Even after intense mindfulness practice for more than five years (or maybe because of it) I feel like I’m just now learning to really listen.

Still Breathing…

Jul3

A week ago wildfires started in Colorado. Off and on, the mountains to the east are entirely obscured by smoke from the convergence of wind currents blowing through the Gold Mountain fire to the south the Snyder fire northwest on the border with Utah. Grand Mesa to the north is also occasionally invisible, and the sun is a red disk setting.

At times the smoke is mild, reminiscent of a campfire at a site across the campground, only pervasive and persistent, not wafting and shifting. Other times it’s an acrid stench that stuns my lungs. I’m grateful the fires aren’t closer, grateful I’m still safe at home, still breathing.

The Air Quality Index has been fluctuating between the 50s on the best nights to as high as 185. During the day it’s been hovering around 90 give or take a dozen, depending on how the winds have been blowing the previous hour. I wear a dampened mask to go outside and fill bird feeders, shift hoses in the yarden. The poor little birds! Especially the hummingbirds with their tiny lungs and extravagant heartrates.

Unretouched photo of a sagebrush glowing at sunset.
Smoke billows a few days ago from the Gold Mountain fire roughly 60 crow miles south of us.

This evening the West Elk mountains are under deep chiarascuro. It changes hour by hour, more or less dense, wind dependent. The good news is that the Snyder fire seems to have stalled at 30,000 acres and is now 95% contained per Watch Duty.

Last night’s moonrise

The bad news is, the Gold Mountain fire just north of Ouray has grown to 25,000 acres in six days. The 2500-acre Willow fire in the mountains above Aspen forced evacuation of an Outward Bound base camp where a friend’s son lives. He remains up in the mountains on an extended backpack with a group of teens and may not even know of the fire. Friends of a friend lost everything the other day in the explosive Aspen Acres fire southwest of Pueblo including their pets, and barely escaped alive. More than 11,000 humans have been displaced from that fire alone as of tonight. Hundreds of structures have burned. Fairgrounds around the state are open to house large animals evacuated from the paths of various wildfires.

Current Watch Duty map, at 9:21 pm MT July 3.

And there are a few more wildfires in Colorado. A week ago, there were none. Multiply every human that’s affected by these fires by pick-a-number, and guess how many other sentient beings have been killed or displaced. Most of these fires will be found to have been started by human activity, whether accidental or malicious. All of them are raging as wildly as they are because of human-caused climate chaos. Tomorrow will likely bring more fires across the region from idiots shooting off fireworks despite fire bans. Climate ignorance pervading the political sphere has only and will only exacerbate the threats to all beings.

And even in the midst of smoke and rage I’m doing my best to calm down and eat well. Here’s a creamy potato-cheddar soup I had for lunch the other day.

I’m furious about human stupidity. I’m grateful for the courageous individuals and teams who do their best to mitigate these disastrous consequences, from the local, state, and federal firefighters on the ground to the fired federal employees who got together to resurrect the Strump-shuttered climate.gov with a new website, climate.us, and everyone in between.

I’m gratified to see the desert willow in full gorgeous bloom just a few years after a freeze so hard I thought it was dead.

I’m grateful once again for Alexandra Petri, who writes about MAHA day at the Great American State Fair, an event which I’ve been only peripherally aware of with my limited intake of current events and what passes for news. I giggled all the way through, from her description of the Screamin’ Freedom energy drink to her interaction with a featured ‘legacy’ speaker who urged her to go topless. If you don’t laugh sometimes you’ll just cry.

Even though Amy and I swore off Instagram recipes, we both can’t stop. The other day I tried the rice-waffle with some leftover rice, mixed with a little rice vinegar and sesame oil. I used too much liquid since I fudged the recipe with only enough rice for one cake. It took forever to crisp up and didn’t hold together well, but it was tasty and fun enough that I’ll try it again with proper proportions. They topped theirs with sushi elements, but I just made an Asian tunafish salad based on this recipe with what I had on hand.

Also doing my best to savor the moments I’m able to be outside. The temperature this fiery week has been lovely, it’s just been too smoky to enjoy it except in small sweet snatches.

And when we can’t be outside, we make the most of being inside.

May Day

May1

Despite the crazy spring weather, the yuccas promise to bloom this summer. These stalks grow at an amazing rate, it will be fun to watch them climb and open.

I found myself with some extra buttermilk, which I bought for maybe the second time ever, for a recipe, and used only a little. So I searched “buttermilk waffles,” and saw there was such a thing, but ended up using a different recipe with sourdough discard, but subbed buttermilk for the milk in the recipe. As usual I made the whole recipe and now have some in the freezer for later. So simple, so delicious! Dipping in cinnamon sugar seemed over the top, but I tried it anyway–and it was over the top, but what a great idea if you don’t have all the other trimmings: organic maple syrup, blueberries, and Greek yogurt.

The May Day rallies appear to have gone pretty well today, though as usual there’s not much coverage from mainstream US media. I did work, but I work from home helping people cultivate equanimity and prosocial emotions, so that was my protest action. No spending money for me! A dear friend did though (I’m not naming names!) but she had not known about the economic blackout. She promised to pay cash when I scolded her, rather than support big banks with a credit card, and she was supporting a local small business.

As I was baking these marvelous cookies I listened to Joyce Vance, Norm Eisen, and April Ryan, recorded on Substack yesterday. A lingering moment of delight, swapping out half the chocolate chips for dark chocolate M&Ms, basking in sweet color and also in the camaraderie, dedication to justice, and joie de vivre of three of our most influential resistance leaders. If you watch this you cannot help but feel uplifted by their energy, and breathe in a little of their hope.

Between morning leading meditation and afternoon editing my podcast, we took a lovely windy walk to the canyon. The milk vetch (Astragalus) is blooming, the wind was blowing, and a storm thundered over the mountains. I’m grateful for this life, for this wild place, and for meaningful conversations the past few days with old and new friends.

Savoring Small Things

Apr29

I’m enjoying the new NYT game Crossplay. I was never a Scrabble fan for a few reasons, which playing at my own pace with a perfectly matched computer resolves. I love playing with words, and I usually beat it on the medium level. However, I have to consider the impact of playing with AI on the environment, and that makes me sad. I’m grateful I could persuade my Connections buddy, who had a similar aversion to Scrabble, to play me online. It’s a slow game, we each make roughly one play a day, but we’re well matched, and I don’t feel aggressively competitive with her as I do with the computer.

A forgotten cheese sandwich from last week: that gift bacon, and gift calamondin jam, plus mayo, mustard, garden lettuce, Bad Dog fried egg, and havarti on the last square of homemade focaccia.

May Day! May Day! May Day has historically been a day of union and immigrant support, at least in recent US history, and this Friday will be the Mother of All May Days: ‘No school, no work, no shopping.’ We can hope an economic blackout will wake up another layer of complacent Americans to the urgent threat to our country, indeed to the entire planet. Stay home or join a community action to resist the regime, and whatever you do don’t spend any money.

I thought this was funny in the window at intake admin at the hospital when I went for a routine mammogram last week, but in this moment I can’t help but relate it to the lunatic in the White House. Whatever the motivation for the shooting at the Correspondents’ Dinner, no matter; I was deeply disappointed not to get insight from the Great OZ into the mind of the madman, and I hoped that the mentalist might deliver a message that scared some iota of sense or perspective into him. “He’s tainted so much,” a friend said yesterday, but I heard “He’s taken so much.” Either way. When you look back at the relentless string of assaults on the constitution, the rule of law, the American people in general and marginalized people in particular, other sovereign nations, and the life blood of the planet, it becomes more unfathomable every day that Congress, the governors, somebody, doesn’t just MAKE IT STOP FFS! I saw that phrase on an ex-boyfriend’s Facebook post the other day, and marveled at how decades and miles apart we are of the exact same mind. We the people have got to be the ones to make it stop.

I stopped in at Afton’s on the way home from the mammogram to pick up a few more plants, and stepped into the rose tent simply to breathe the heavenly air for a few minutes, and to feast my eyes on beauty.

Afternoon at the pond, the frogs are softly singing… please play the recording below

After the Freeze

Apr18

The lilacs out the window on Friday morning. Note the decals on the kitchen window, iridescent through birds’ eyes, to curb or hopefully prevent window strikes. Overnight it went down to 15℉. As anticipated, this morning the cherry blossoms and nascent fruits look finished for the year. Oh well. The magnificent yellow columbine at the cherry tree base took a hard hit but will likely come back from the center. Everything else in the garden looks stressed or wounded but I’m optimistic that all will survive. I covered them again tonight.

Yesterday was a perfect day for a grilled cheese sandwich: cloudy with blowing snow all morning and bitter wind even after the snow stopped. The high was barely above freezing. Melted dill havarti on rosemary-garlic focaccia with thinly sliced red onion, lettuce, mayo, and a splash of raspberry jam offered tasty comfort at lunchtime. And it was a perfect day to finally bake the orange marmalade brownies I’d been considering for a long time.

I’ve never really liked orange marmalade, and I thought maybe this recipe would make it palatable for me. It was simple to make, and I must say, delicious. But I doubt I’ll be spreading marmalade on toast any time soon.

This day dawned sunny and crisp and then warmed up into the 50s. The brownie went beautifully with my ritual maple-vanilla latté and morning fiction. It felt good to share the bake with my neighbors, so Wren and I made a quick run up the driveway and then around the corner to make deliveries. Not only did I feel good about sharing, but I got to return home with surprise bonus bacon! Which went right into today’s cheese sandwich: lettuce, cheddar, and bacon with mayo, mustard and raspberry jam.

Of all the articles I read online this week, by far the best was this hilarious article on The Best Free Restaurant Bread in America. It provided a wonderful balance to the majority of the other headlines. I’ve been working with Discernment this month, and considering deeply what media I ingest. Why, I wonder, is 90% of the news and entertainment about horrors, when in actual fact, most humans spend most of their time–maybe as much as 90%–doing good, kind, generous things, and simply aspiring to be good, kind, happy people? Media coverage of the species is terribly skewed toward bad behavior, and by over-representing violence, betrayal, destruction, hatred, rage, etc., is invariably influencing the zeitgeist. Too bad. One more good reason to focus on gratitude and living mindfully.

The Week in Flowers

Apr12

I’m grateful that the little cherry tree is doing so well in its second year, filling up with blossoms like a grownup tree. This was taken early in the week. (Where’s Wren?) And grateful that the tulips are opening all over the yarden. Though I’m a little disappointed to realize, as I’ve noticed over time, that tulips don’t actually do much for native pollinators. So I’m not going to buy any more, but I will nurture these that grow here now. Next fall maybe I’ll look into native bulbs that might actually nourish our regional bees.

It’s been a joy to plant the little perennials I bought last week, in a couple of south-facing borders, and in some patio pots. This creeping hummingbird mint will grow low and spread, and should be more successful in this climate than the various others I’ve tried over the years, which just don’t tolerate our cold winters.

More of the native wildflowers are blooming in the woods this week.

Here’s the cherry tree today, with a little bit of iPhone “cleanup” to remove the distraction of the stabilizing posts and cords. If you don’t look too closely you hardly know it’s been altered.

It’s hard to capture the full effect since the tree is so small, but it’s magical to see in real life, its delicate blossoms like sunlit lace, and tiny native bees darting among them. And I’m grateful for my little kitchen light stand with succulents, and bonsai rosemary, lavender, geranium, and bitter orange, with a sprig of lilac in an ancestral bud vase. I’m grateful for flowers.

And I’m grateful for some contributions from friends after my post about the wild cost of war, including this from the NYT which should be available without a paywall: A ‘Silent Victim’: How Nature Becomes a Casualty of War; and this incredible video of an Iranian spider-tailed horned viper, unique among snakes with its astonishing adaptation to lure prey. Virginia shared the photo below of 168 Pairs of Shoes in their current rainbow configuration at the Grand Mesa Arts and Events Center in Cedaredge.

It hurt to hear from my dear accountant that I need to pay the feds something by next Wednesday, but fortunately not a lot. At least I can share my displeasure later by participating in May Day Strong, “Workers Over Billionaires,” by not working, not spending, and joining in some kind of resistance action. You’re all invited to the party!

The Wild Cost

Apr5

I continue to follow developments in the disastrous illegal war that the Liar in Chief chose as a multi-purpose ruse to distract from the Epstein files and other corruptions while also enriching himself and his sycophant cronies through weapons investments and market manipulation. The costs are glossed over by the government and complicit legacy media so I’m grateful there are some people keeping track. Twenty hours and twenty minutes into it, as I write this, the US government has spent 42 billion of our tax dollars, and adding $5000 every second on this real-time clock. What a bitter, bitter pill it was to deliver paperwork to my accountant last week.

“168 Pairs of Shoes” video from No Kings Day 3, Paonia, Colorado. 15 minutes

The human cost rises daily as well. It started dramatically with the slaughter of innocents represented above in Virginia Unseld’s moving tribute 168 Pairs of Shoes. Her next installation last Friday at a Methodist church presented the shoes lining the sidewalks to the steps, where they formed the shape of a heart.

photo courtesy of Virginia Unseld

The human cost is grave, the financial cost is staggering, but what about the wild world? Who is talking about the environmental cost? I’ve only noticed one person on my social and news networks making noise about it, environmentalist drag queen Pattie Gonia.

So, I’ll talk about it. It’s taken hours of searching online to learn that there’s a paucity of research on the subject; however, what research there is concurs: War is bad not just for children but for the whole wild world. I also looked into the wildlife of Iran. One of the first hits was an article called “Conservation Policies in Iran: Protecting Biodiversity and Endangered Species” from November 2024.

We savored a long ramble through the woods this Easter Sunday, playing with the infrared Bucktown Pack on my imaginary camera.

It states that Iran’s unique geographical position at the intersection of three major zoogeographical regions—Palaearctic, Oriental, and Ethiopian—contributes to its rich biodiversity. There are many endemic plants and animals, which means they occur nowhere else. “The Caspian Hyrcanian mixed forests are UNESCO World Heritage sites, recognized for their exceptional biological diversity and ancient lineage…. Additionally, Iran is home to many threatened and endangered species, such as the Persian leopard, the Asiatic cheetah, and the Caspian seal. These species are crucial for maintaining ecological balance and health within their respective habitats. However, the rich biodiversity of Iran faces numerous challenges, primarily from habitat loss due to urbanization, agricultural expansion, and industrial development. Climate change exacerbates these issues, affecting water availability and altering habitats, which further threatens the survival of many species.” This article doesn’t mention war, because that wasn’t a factor when it was written.

For pictures of Iran’s endangered species, see this list in Animalia. Many of them are aquatic, including several species each of whales, sea turtles, sharks, rays, shorebirds, and the Indian Ocean humpback dolphin. The list also includes the mammals named above, as well as the Siberian crane, Steppe eagle, Kurdistan newt, Latifi’s viper, and the Persian onegar, a subspecies of Asiatic wild ass endemic to Iran with a population of around 700. A full list of Iran’s 156 endangered species including corals, fishes, insects, and at least one plant, is here.

I did find a few articles that touch on the environmental impacts of war, like this from the US Army War College, and this from The Revelator, but most of them come back to focus on the harm that war does to the environment from a human perspective. All agree, though, that war, particularly bombing, wreak havoc on the wild world as well. From a table in a waste management site, bombs release toxic chemicals into the soil, reducing fertility, harming plant growth, and contaminating groundwater; explosions contaminate water bodies, affecting aquatic ecosystems and drinking water sources; they clear large areas of vegetation, displace soil, destroy habitats, and disrupt ecosystems, leading to biodiversity loss; they generate intense noise, causing stress and injury to wildlife, disrupting animal communication, navigation, migration patterns and food chains. They force animals to flee their habitats, removing or destroying key species. The list goes on.

A Brown University article states that The U.S. Department of Defense is the world’s single largest institutional consumer of oil – and as a result, one of the world’s top greenhouse gas emitters. War is destroying the planet faster than any other single factor in climate collapse. That’s my own claim, but it has an air of truthiness to it.

This article from Action on Armed Violence is one of many that highlight our interdependence with animals. “Though animals may be directly killed or injured by the use of explosive weapons, the impact to their environment appears to typically be the more concerning factor, particularly through habitat loss and human displacement. In Syria, for example, it was recently reported that water buffalo in Hama countryside have been highly impacted by the continued use of explosive violence in the region in recent years. Not only have water buffalo become direct casualties of the bombardment, but much of the land has become unusable, and farmers and their buffalo have been displaced by the shelling…. The total number of water buffalo in the area has decreased by two-thirds compared to the pre-conflict level by 2017.”

It continues, “Landmines and other explosive remnants also have a long history of environmental impact. They have directly killed many animals, including for example elephants in Sri Lanka, snow leopards in Afghanistan, tigers in Cambodia, gazelles in Libya, camels in China, and water buffalo Vietnam. While these have been documented in the past, there is little current research on this issue and the scale of the impact.”

The most comprehensive article I’ve encountered is this Canadian review on the effects of modern war and military activities on biodiversity and the environment, which posits, “Dramatic habitat alteration, environmental pollution, and disturbance contributed to population declines and biodiversity losses arising from both acute and chronic effects in both terrestrial and aquatic systems.” It details devastating effects of aerial assault, naval operations, terrestrial war, nuclear tests, military bases and training, chemical warfare, and more.

Toes-up time under the Ancient One, Wren reclining against my legs.

Among other findings, “The numerous explosive techniques and tools at the disposal of army forces during ground warfare have left a legacy on landscapes across the globe by leaving large craters, shrapnel, and contamination, thus devastating many ecosystems across the biosphere. Landmines applied during active ground warfare have left a lasting legacy on the environment and still remain a major threat to biodiversity, even decades after being deployed.”

After offering a paean to the benefits that military technology has contributed to environmental and conservation science, the article concludes, “…it is evident that warfare’s impacts on ecosystem functioning are indeed overwhelmingly deleterious. The impacts of conflict, nuclear weapons, training operations, and chemical contaminations all contribute to both reductions in the populations of local flora and fauna as well as reducing species diversity in the affected ecosystems. Impacts were demonstrated in a number of environments with a diversity of taxonomic groups represented with war resulting in both acute and chronic impacts on the ecosystem.” It illustrates the impact categories in this figure.

“Creations are numberless, I vow to free them.” This is the first line of the Zen vows that I repeat any time I participate in a Upaya teaching. Just imagine the numberless creations, from spiders to rodents, domestic cats and dogs, chickens, lizards, snakes, common or rare and unique life forms who are getting obliterated with every bomb of every war.

Yesterday I finished reading Against the Machine by Paul Kingsnorth. It was a difficult and challenging read. Though I disagree with some of his assertions, notably those regarding introspection, and those on human sexuality and gender, his thesis that “techno-industrial culture has choked Western civilisation and is destroying the Earth itself” resonates brutally with my observations. “From the First Industrial Revolution to the rise of artificial intelligence, this book shows how the hollowing out of humanity has been a long game—and how our very soul is now at stake.” I will be pondering this book for a long time. Trump’s frivolous war on Iran is a consummate example of Machine culture from every angle at which you examine it.

If you’re still with me, you might want an antidote to this post. If so, check out Jessica Craven’s Extra! Extra! good news post today.

No Kings! 3 and Sad Shoes

Mar28

Among the millions of American patriots at thousands of rallies across the country, there were about five hundred of us in Paonia Town Park today.

I arrived early to film the installation of a powerful art piece, ‘168 Pairs of Shoes.’ Local artist Virginia Unseld honored the Iranian schoolgirls slaughtered a month ago by US bombs. Throughout the afternoon, I spoke with people who walked the spiral and came out stunned, shaken, or in tears. (Video link coming soon)

Virginia acquired 168 pairs of little girls’ shoes from regional thrift stores. They cost more than she expected to pay, but when they heard about her project, store managers were generous; and friends also rallied to contribute shoes.

It was Wren’s first time at a public event like this, and I couldn’t get over what a good girl she was! She engaged with the many people who spoke to her, and honored some of them with extra attention. She slipped her collar a few times when I was conversing with someone and she wanted to keep investigating, but came right back with a gentle request when we both noticed. It was a true joy to have her companionship at this event, and she delighted lots of other people too.

There were many of her tribe there and she got along with all of them, even getting a little off-leash play with another rescue dog about her age, Cowboy. And she was happy to see some of her regular human friends there as well.

One of her compatriots had his own sign, which said ‘Crown Clown.’

The tiny red hats weren’t as popular as I’d hoped they would be, but the North Fork Immigrant Protection Team was grateful to have them and raised a little money. I left them with them to sell at the farmers’ market or wherever they can.

The day included inspiring songs and presentations from North Fork Indivisible members, including a singalong with Ellen Stapenhorst to ‘This Land is Your Land,’ and a tribute to our eldest matriarch, 94 year old Mary Smith.

Other protest art included these provocative television pieces by Karen Floyd, and Mary’s popular sign-making table. It brought home the importance of the arts as free speech, and also as a force in our little valley.

At the end of the rally, the crowd ambled past the shoe memorial to march downtown.

Just like last time, I lingered at the park awhile and my escape from town was curtailed when a city cop pulled up to block the road for the march. As I pulled over, grateful for the opportunity to film them, he tried to stop my car, thinking I was trying to drive around him. When I explained I was with the group and thanked him for helping he was all smiles. I thanked him again as I returned to my car. “Of course,” he said. I drove home with my broken heart soaring for a little while, humming This land is your land, this land is my land…, while savoring the sensation of community and the sweet spring air.