Tag Archive | climate crisis

Just What We Need

Jan4

I was grateful this morning to see this flock of evening grosbeaks in the birch tree. A friend was distressed the other day because there aren’t as many birds as usual at her feeders. She thought maybe it was because of the sharp-shinned hawk that she’s seen hanging around. “I doubt it,” I told her, “I haven’t had as many birds the past couple of weeks either. I think maybe they’ve just moved on for winter, finally.” Despite the fact that this weather barely qualifies as winter, I thought. But then yesterday morning when Wren burst outside first thing, I saw a sharp-shinned hawk fly off the rose bush where the sparrows roost. And this afternoon, I saw it again… So maybe this is a good year for sharp-shinneds, and maybe not so great for songbirds.

Whatever. Inside, in my own little world, wildlife abounds in the Liberty puzzles this season. This ‘Cutout of Animals’ was more fun and harder than I thought it would be, and great for mindfulness practice. As usual these days I don’t use the box top for help: I look at it once and set it aside. There was a lot of detail in this that I missed in my glance, and my assumptions were challenged every which way. At first I put all the whimsey pieces right side up as I assembled them, and put most of them facing each other.

I had made a point to note the general order of the species stack but no more detail than that. The more pieces I fitted into place, the wider apart the camels got until they ended up in the corners facing opposite of how I’d set them. For the elephants, it was another twist: as I assembled them I failed to notice until they were all together that the images were upside down.

I noticed immediately that the entire puzzle was an imperfect mirror image in both the artwork and the whimsey pieces, and shortly afterward that there were two of every piece except for a stack that would tie down the middle, and a few surrounding the one-each human male and female whimsies.

So this puzzle invited itself to be built from the center outward, from the bottom upward, and from the corners inward.

The anchor at the bottom center was, logically, man’s best friend. (Though the image reminded me of an awful AI interpretation when I asked it a few years ago to make a picture of a dog licking a girl’s face) It made perfect sense to me that dogs would hold up the whole world, and delighted me that the artist had tucked the squirrels in between them.

An added layer of whimsy was revealed with the surprising discovery that the squirrel pieces fit into the dogs’ bodies; just one of the many layers of whimsical delights in this puzzle. Strategy also included matching speckles all around.

And one final twist was that I knew in advance that a piece was missing. A second piece in the bottom edge had been damaged beyond use prior to the puzzle’s arrival from the Florida branch of our puzzle club lending library, so I ceremoniously threw that one in the woodstove. But the missing piece… I had no idea which one that was. This actually loosened my attachment to finding and placing specific pieces, and kept me working on multiple sections and moving on more quickly rather than hunting, hunting, for the next piece in any one segment. So, you know, more like most people do puzzles. It was kind of liberating, but nothing I’m likely to get used to.

Doing this animal puzzle over Christmas was fun and relaxing. The wheels of justice were slowly grinding nationally in a hopeful direction with the Epstein files revelations and the unconstitutional National Guard mobilizations decision, when I started the New Years puzzle. My health seemed to be gradually improving. Despite the freaky climate signs, I was feeling pretty calm. I called my representatives on Friday to give them another piece of my mind about the illegal assaults on Venezuelan boats and the dock attack. Action is the antidote to anxiety.

But then I woke up yesterday. Not only to news of an unconstitutional war on Venezuela, exactly the concern I had expressed to congressman Un-Hurd and my beleaguered senators the day before. But to find a frog wide awake sitting on top of the pond. Which is unheard of in deep winter here. Absolutely apocalyptic.

With the (one, long ago) snow completely melted in the garden I ventured in to see more shocking evidence: carrot tops emerging, snapdragons that never died back, a bed of tiny lettuces, and a cluster of blooming violas. This is April weather.

So, just what we need. Another oil war. War does nobody any good except for the oil barons. Think of all the profits they make on the fuel for the machines of war alone! And now, they’ll get even greater profits as they steal all the oil from under Venezuela. Not only will many humans in Venezuela and in the US suffer from this illegal war, any war exerts devastating effects on the natural world, on all living beings in its path. And any further extraction and use of fossil fuels violates every law of climate science and common sense. With the evidence of staggering climate collapse all around us, the charlatans who run this government exemplify the three poisons of greed, hatred, and delusion in their pursuit of reckless, lawless distraction from the noose of dawning sanity slowly closing in on them.

I’m grateful to have sane, compassionate, smart, and wise people in my life to tether me to the basic goodness supposed to exist at the core of each of us. (That exploration is ongoing.) One of those is Ted Leach, who posts a short daily insight which always includes interesting source links, like the interview with Venezuelan journalist Quico Toro I link to above about charlatans; and these two articles by Toro offering an inside perspective, one from December 12 in which he essentially predicts this attack but misses the motivation, and another from yesterday in which he evaluates the likely outcome. Thanks, Ted!

Oh well. One silver lining to climate chaos is that it revealed my missing garden knife before it totally disintegrated under the snow. And you see, that all about me perspective is why we’re in this shitstorm in the first place. There’s not much I can do about other people’s poisons, but I can dedicate myself to the practice of trying to root out my own greed, hatred and delusion, gradually replacing them with loving kindness, compassion, and wisdom, so that the ripples my life makes in this big pond are more beneficial than harmful to all beings.

RX: Metamorphosis

Aug3

What a marvelous sight greeted me at the bottom of the stairs this morning! Topaz was watching a baby bull snake lying still on the floor. I only saw it when I took a step and it wiggled away. I fended off Wren and picked it up gently. It was so gentle and calm, and curled and crawled around my hand as I considered the best place to release it, but it never panicked or thrashed.

After I released it into the wood pile, where I hope it finds enough mice to remain there forever and live long and grow big, I came back inside and tried to put her collar on Topaz as she knelt at her food bowl, the way I often do. I reached around her neck with the bell and she jerked and flipped around wide-eyed. I tried again now that she knew it was just me, but she wrenched away; after I washed my hands she accepted the collar willingly as usual. I’m grateful for the little dose of wonder that started my day.

One reason I practice gratitude is because of my innate pessimism. Well, I can’t say innate in the sense that I was born with it, I’m not sure I was. But it came to me early through a series of prophetic dreams that started while I was still in single digits. So this article about likely societal collapse didn’t shock me as it might some of you, should you choose to read it. History shows that increasing wealth inequality consistently precedes collapse, contends economist and international relations expert Dr. Luke Kemp in his new book Goliath’s Curse, which analyzes 5000 years of human civilizations’ collapses.

“…as elites extract more wealth from the people and the land, they make societies more fragile, leading to infighting, corruption, immiseration of the masses, less healthy people, overexpansion, environmental degradation and poor decision making by a small oligarchy. The hollowed-out shell of a society is eventually cracked asunder by shocks such as disease, war or climate change.”

Last night was Zoom Cooking with Amy. We chose a simple pasta sauce made from sautéed zucchini, which we blended with some garlic, parmesan, salt&pepper of course, and a little pasta water. We spooned that into our bowls, topped with pasta and more parm, and I sautéed a handful of frozen snow peas from the spring garden in the hot zucchini pan.

Sound familiar? Kemp lays the imminent demise of our so-called civilization at the feet of “leaders who are ‘walking versions of the dark triad’ – narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism”; and while he says that a fundamental transformation of society on a global scale could save our species, “the large, psychopathic corporations and [world leaders] which produce global catastrophic risk” make self-destruction more likely.

This reflects, to one degree or another, my fundamental world view since I was a child. It’s less popular and less acceptable than believing in aliens, so I don’t articulate it often. It’s something of a relief to read it so clearly outlined by a scholar of human cultural history.

Kemp suggests that “even if you don’t have hope, it doesn’t really matter. This is about defiance. It’s about doing the right thing, fighting for democracy and for people to not be exploited. And even if we fail, at the very least, we didn’t contribute to the problem.”

Hope is a conundrum for me. It can mean a passive wish for good things, but I prefer the interpretation of Joanna Macy, who died last month at 94, that hope is a verb, that how we live matters, and that this time in history is one of great unraveling and also of the potential for a Great Turning.

My life’s trajectory continues to lean into celebrating this fragile, spinning globe and all the Life that supports our tiny existence. It’s really a question of perspective, of world view: Domination or collaboration? Each of us chooses how to live, every living moment of every day.

Though it’s taking a lot longer than from tadpole to frog, I’m grateful for my own metamorphosis through the years. And grateful to photograph a fully formed froglet flying through the water—next challenge: film it.

Microadventures

Jan26

I was flabbergasted to see this photograph of a new class of cruise ships, advertised as ‘better for the planet’ though this claim is roundly debunked in the article describing this behemoth, which carries 7000 people. I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing at first. Now that I’ve understood the photograph, this surrealistic ship entering the port of Miami whence it sets sail (ha! LNG-methane emissions motoring) tomorrow, I still don’t understand, I really cannot comprehend, the very idea of this as vacation.

But some people will love it, and who am I to judge. It just concerns me that as fragile as we know our planet is, and our atmosphere, so many humans still pursue such resource-indulgent recreation. Also crossing my screen this morning was this lovely article about paying attention to and discovering wonders in our own back yards, much more my speed. Alastair Humphreys has traveled the world exploring nature, but he’s beginning to reconsider his impact on the planet: “If I love wild places so much, I’ve begun to wonder, am I willing to not visit them in order to help protect them?”

He goes on, “Only a tiny minority of the people on the planet step onto a plane each year; just 1% of us take more than half of all flights. How can more of us enjoy wild landscapes and the mental and physical benefits of getting out into nature without it costing the Earth?” He suggests we do this with microadventures, taking bike rides and camping trips and other opportunities to experience wild nature close to home.

I’m grateful for the many microadventures I’ve had just this week, and I’ve barely left the house. I’m grateful that I live where I can step out my door into nature, but even if I couldn’t I know that I’d find beauty and wonder in whatever little patch of nature I could experience–even if it were just the spider making her web in the window.

Wonder: walking up the driveway I spy in the mud and ice this gorgeous butterfly; dead, of course, this time of year. I surmise it fell from the grill of the FedEx truck, or my personal shopper’s car, where it had been stuck since warmer weather. To be surprised by such a sight in deep winter was a microadventure. For little Wren, too.

I have microadventures with this aging body all the time. Monday it was a strained tendon, which with the right tool for the job and a sweet resting place is healing well. I’ve graduated to a lighter brace, and no longer have to sleep with it.

I’m grateful for microadventures in the kitchen. Opening this carton of eggs and being surprised by all the colors, shapes, and sizes! I’m grateful for my friend’s adventures raising the chickens, and grateful for her sharing the bounty. With a sudden abundance of eggs I was encouraged to plan some more eggy bakes, and celebrated by poaching two that very night for dinner. Another microadventure: I’ve seen so many ways to poach eggs without using cups, and the few I’ve tried before have been unsuccessful. But I tried again and this time they came out beautifully. With a pat of butter, a sprinkle of salt and pepper, they were perfect.

Using up leftovers is always a microadventure also. The last tortilla, the last of the chicken salad, half an avocado, some cheese on the bottom, and the last (again) of the sunroom tomatoes — but there are blossoms now, and more little green tomatoes growing! The microadventure of growing food in winter.

Driving to town, any of the three towns around, is always a microadventure if you choose to see it that way, which I do. Turning off the radio and turning my attention to the subtle colors and patterns of the sere rolling landscape, alert for wildlife along the roadside, and appreciative of the clouds.

Back home, walking again, appreciating the bright green moss thriving under the junipers, and the cat who walks like a dog, and also climbs trees. Knowing the names of some of the grasses and weeds, knowing the life cycle of the trees, knowing just the tip of the iceberg of the lives in this forest, knowing there’s so much more to know…

The best. loaf. of. sourdough. ever. Learning the alchemy of flour, salt, water, and microbes, each bake a unique microadventure.

Even simply waking up alive each morning is a microadventure. I never know what will be the first thing I see!

Uneventful Summer Day

Aug29
As I enjoy morning coffee on the calm, dry, sunny, warm patio, with hummingbirds sipping from the scarlet salvias, people I love and millions of people I don’t know are preparing for or in denial about an event that will bring upheaval to many of their lives. I’m grateful for every uneventful summer day here.
And this evening as Hurricane Idalia rapidly intensifies 1800 miles away, I’m grateful that the biggest event on this particular summer day here at Mirador is the harvest of a few more tomatoes and the first jalapeño peppers.

As climate chaos delivers yet another unprecedented disaster, this time to Florida with a cat 4 hurricane expected to land early morning, I find myself once again suffused with that strange mix of agitated fascination, helpless anxiety, and scattered compassion.

People have got to wake up and stop saying, “You just never think it will happen here,” or “Oh, I’ve been through hurricanes before, I’m not gonna leave.” As one newscaster said, “This area isn’t heavily populated, but for the folks who live here this will be a life-altering event.” There will be fatalities, including a lot of wild and domestic animals. Crystal River is predicted to receive historic storm surge; because of its unique geology and warm spring-fed waters it is manatee central on Florida’s gulf coast. I worry that some of these endangered, gentle creatures will get pushed inland and stranded. As I write, about 100 of the 700+ residents of Cedar Key, a town I hold nostalgia for, have chosen to ride it out: the entire town could be under water by noon tomorrow. Many of my beloveds live in the path or fringe of the storm, from south of Tampa through the Big Bend and on up through Charleston, SC. Of course I worry about them too, but I’m grateful that my friends and family are largely sensible people.

I feel the coming suffering on an energetic level, and I want to help: this is compassion, though it is challenging to feel like this is enough. But as I tell students, even if we can’t help in a given situation, there is always someone closer to home on whose behalf we can engage in compassionate action. And we can all, each and every one of us over the age of 18, vote for local, state, and national representatives who take climate chaos seriously and will commit to shifting the course of humanity’s hurricane of greed and stupidity into a less catastrophic trajectory.

I’m also grateful for the delicious pizza I picked up from Chef Brandt yesterday since I had to run to town anyway, the Mush-Love; and for leftover pizza today with a few extra toppings from the kitchen. I’m grateful for the efforts of Chef Brandt to make international cuisine affordable and convenient in his home valley after honing his culinary skills and winning awards in Seattle.

Perspective

Aug11

I’m grateful for rain overnight which left the high desert refreshed, and gave morning light an extra vibrant quality. As we headed for the gate, I was tickled to watch a gnat-nado; we saw a few more of these swirling columns of insects rising as we walked through the woods.

Coming home we spied a sleeping sunflower bee, genus Svastra, waiting to warm up before flying.

It was a big day. A fulfilling class in the afternoon followed by a rare outing planned with friends and their visiting family. So the morning involved baking little apricot cakes as my contribution to the snack spread. I adapted the recipe for high altitude, and also added an element from the next apricot bake, an upside down cake, with a dollop of brown sugar in an apricot half underneath the batter. Naturally, I had to test them before I could share, so I had one for dessert after my cheese sandwich! Today’s was open face cream cheese on toast, slathered with apricot jam. Yes it’s a sandwich!

Meanwhile, Wren and Biko ate a little more healthy fare with some chopped romaine.
Wren enjoyed cocktails at the rim of the Black Canyon with the rest of us, and wore just the right coat to match her new best friend Tatiana.

We could see smoke, we guessed from the Little Mesa Fire SSW of Delta, which fortunately has grown slowly to only 450 acres in a wild area. As I drove to the canyon, I listened to The Pen and the Sword on KVNF, which featured an interview with John Vaillant, author of Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World. The book is about the 2016 apocalyptic wildfire that consumed the Canadian city of Fort McMurray, the chief supplier of oil imports to the US. Ironically, the fire was unquestionably driven by fossil-fuel induced climate chaos, as Vaillant demonstrates, and “was not a unique event, but a shocking preview of what we must prepare for in a hotter, more flammable world.” It was chilling to listen to this interview after watching news of the catastrophic Maui fires this afternoon: precisely the scenario Vaillant cautioned about in his book that came out this summer. (I hope the interview will appear on KVNF archives shortly.)

I’m grateful for perspective, which reminds me that we humans and our follies are just a gnat-nado in the context of geological time, the kind of time that created these 1.8 billion-year-old metamorphic rocks, and the millions of years of uplift and erosion that formed this spectacular gorge.

After the drama and adventure of the evening, I was grateful to drive home in my energy-efficient little old car, through pastoral landscape, with a glimpse of sunset in the rearview mirror. I contend daily with the conundrum of how to live lightly on this fragile planet while also relying on the very source of its greatest threat.

I hope the clouds part overnight this weekend so I can rest in the reassuring perspective of the Perseid meteor shower. If pondering geology gives momentary respite, contemplating our place in the vast mystery of outer space provides an even deeper peace.

Scarlet Runner Beans

Sep4
I was grateful first thing this morning, and pretty much all the rest of the day. Stellar was excited to walk to the rim, barking his intention as he waited for me outside. Aprés walk, we enjoyed a chocolate croissant.

I’m grateful the scarlet runner bean vine is finally taking off. Hammered hard by deer outside the fence, they struggled to gain many blooms. Once the wild sunflowers grew up they provided a barrier to the voracious does, and the vine was able to blossom. I planted eight seeds: only one of them sprouted. Look at her now!

I planted it for the hummingbirds, and finally was in the right place at the right time today to catch a few enjoying the nectar. The first one checked me out before feeding on the flowers. Thereafter they ignored me. I am grateful for intrepid little hummingbirds.

I’m grateful for scarlet runner beans, and grateful I had some time today to sit with and appreciate them in their flourishing glory. I’m grateful for the gentleness of this day just passed, mild ambient temperature, flowers all around, abundant harvest of tomatoes and tomatillos, joyful energy expended in the kitchen canning and cleaning. I’m grateful for finding support this evening in being with the excruciating awareness of life’s vivid, finite beauty.

Outside

Aug12
I’m grateful that Stellar hasn’t fallen off the cliff! He gives me more and more thrills at the edge these days.

I hate to admit that I’ve been taking ‘outside’ for granted recently. Or at least, I haven’t been spending as much time in it as I ‘should.’ There is this sense of clinging to the natural world on this refuge, of imminent loss, exacerbated by smoky skies; a sense of foreboding. My spatial consciousness contracts and expands according to my capacity to hold all things in awareness: moments of tenderness and beauty, of brief connection with other souls human and non-human, of empathy and compassion, of color and life, and at the same time this clutching void of mortal uncertainty. I am perpetually aghast, with a thick sugar coating of delight. Holding it all together in desperate equanimity. Growing pains.

I’m grateful as always for these two faithful walking companions.
A carder bee on the mini zinnias. Grateful for color and light. Grateful to have been able to order a new bee lens, after receiving a generous credit at B&H for all my old photographic equipment. More better bee pics coming, if the lens arrives before the bees are gone.
There is so much in this simple image that I’m grateful for, including the camera that took it, and the implications for future photography. I’m grateful for the dark sky, for the moon that tethers us, for gravity. I’m grateful that the clouds parted and smoke cleared enough to see into space tonight, as the Perseids peak. I’m grateful I’m still awake at 1 am, and I’m heading outside now to see what I can see. I’m grateful to be able to go outside any time I want to, day or night, and participate instantly in the world of nature.

Gratitude

Jul16
Grateful for the desert willow’s resilience, for the doe’s tranquility browsing the yard, and for the fence that protects my garden investments from her.

Have I mentioned lately the point of this commitment? I chanced to have a conversation with a young conservationist the other day, and she mentioned grief. Grief is one of the most appropriate emotions for any of us to be holding, juggling, however we choose to acknowledge it. Gratitude is another. The two complement each other: they are antidotes and catalysts at the same time, grief and gratitude. Whichever one you start with can lead you to the other, particularly if you start with grief. From my particular world view, grief and gratitude are the most appropriate emotions for anyone aware of the climate crisis. [trigger alert: these links are not for the faint of heart.]

So I’m grateful for the mental fortitude I’ve cultivated this past year, and my whole life, really; grateful that I can put myself in perspective with the world at last, after decades of exploring the relationship. I am content to be a small pebble in a small pond, causing small ripples. I am sitting in the teepee, watching the giant blue planet approach. I am grateful for every moment of beauty and grace that I can be aware of, as the moments of this fleeting life flow through me.

I’m grateful for the second clutch of phoebes, chicks about a week old and just today visible above the rim of the new nest, on the right side of the platform.

Another Sunset

Jul10

Grateful for another sunset, another fulfilling, exhausting day in fellowship with the kindest, most mindful people I know. Two-thirds through our graduation retreat, twelve hours each day together virtually yet meaningfully, sharing lessons, learnings, creativity, and cultivating heartfelt connection with people across the country and a world away. Grateful for one of the most transformative experiences of my short life, this past Mindful Learning Year. Grateful for another day with dear Stellar still moving pretty well, and another precious day of relative safety here, while fires ravage the land elsewhere and paint the sun orange again.

Fun

Jun12

Fun is different for everyone, but I think everyone on the Canary Committee had some kind of fun today walking in the Pioneer Days Parade. I’m grateful for the strong women and two men who made our showing an effective message. As I returned to my car afterward, a porch sitter nearby said, “Y’all sure did a lot of chirping out there!”

“I think we got our message across, don’t you?” I replied. “Oh yeah!” he and his companions agreed. That was one of the more straightforward comments I heard after the parade. Others carried a tinge of drought denial that confused me. We are so clearly in dire straits here on the western slope, in an area that has already increased 4ºF in the past hundred years, the area in the continental US most affected by the global warming of climate chaos. Extraordinary drought is only one of the symptoms. So it felt antagonistic to me when a woman on the Republican float called out to us, “Then don’t take a bath tonight!”

And while it was kind of clever, it also seemed supremely ignorant when a Mennonite man came up to me and asked, “Are you a canary or Chicken Little?” I’m grateful for the equanimity that mindfulness practice has generated in me. I was able to smile and say, “Oh, but this is real.” He laughed and said, “I’m just kidding.” I hope so, but I wasn’t sure. I hope that the other canaries received more supportive comments, but I didn’t stick around to find out. After being out in the largest crowd I’ve seen in a couple of years, I headed for the serenity of home.

I’m grateful the tender seedlings I transplanted last evening survived the blistering dry heat of their first day in the ground. The worst is over for them, I hope. I’m grateful I can provide some dietary diversity in my yard for this gravid doe, though I did eventually shoo her away from the columbine blossoms she was happily plucking. She stepped off a couple of yards and ate a few honeysuckle buds before meandering back toward the pond.

I’m grateful for the fence around the food garden, or I wouldn’t have anything to harvest! I’m grateful for another handful of radishes and half today’s snap peas on their way to the fridge. The other half of today’s peas I tossed into a skillet with the last of the oyster mushrooms and some chopped scallions (those perennial onions) for my evening snack. So simple, so delicious! I’m grateful to be eating food I’ve grown at the end of a full Saturday that included connection with community and nature, a long talk with my soul sister, sweet time with my beloved animal companions, and a nice long nap: My kind of fun.