I was grateful for a gorgeous day today, and for the help of Good Tim in the garden. Here he’s cutting suckers from the wild plum with Wren’s help. She adores him and follows him around when he’s here like a—well, like a puppy dog.
I learned a new technique for bread scoring, where you do the decorative scoring only (wheatstalks, here) and bake for seven minutes, then you take the lid off and do the expansion score (straight lines) so the loaf can rise to its full potential, replace the lid and bake the rest of the covered time, then remove the lid as usual until done. Pretty pleased with my first attempt.
The shades are coming along, I spent hours this weekend on several panels in varying stages, and I’m happily absorbed in completing the appliqués. (I’ll iron out the wrinkles before assembly.) I’m grateful I’ve rediscovered the joy of sewing. I heard just this evening on Forrest Hanson’s ‘Being Well’ podcast that when you don’t find joy in things you used to it indicates depression.
While I was designing a trumpet flower on the lower section, little miss Topaz did her cat thing. These are impressionistic shades, not ecologically or geographically accurate, so I anchored this panel with a bunch of cypress knees, checking my memory of them against photos from an Ecosia search online. Yes, they really do look that strange and otherworldly.
I had a couple of errands to run, including swinging by the lumber yard to buy the 1×2 strips for mounting the shades, so I saved them for Farmers Market day. Paonia is an interesting town, with the strongest Blue streak in a Red county. As US politics gets ever more bizarre and divisive, I found this interesting piece on the right’s attacks on Jon Ossoff somewhat enlightening.
Wren came to town with me, and her day got very interesting. She met Huckleberry at the lumber yard. Then she heard fire engine sirens up close and personal at our next stop. Then she met Huckle at the Farmers Market, and she was so excited to see him that I think she must have spent some time with him before, at the Bad Dog Ranch where he’s a neighbor.
Today was an extra bright day for me after the rough week the world just finished. Losing Dolly Parton was the first blow. I know there are a lot of ‘good millionaires’ out there just living their lives and not being greedy; but it does seem that the wealthiest people on the planet are the hungriest ghosts. There are some notable exceptions, among them Dolly, who spent her wealth freely for humanitarian causes.
Thankfully many of the worst fires in the US West are under control or out, though fires in Washington State continue to create unhealthy air, new fires burn in California, and some fires remain in Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico. Colorado, which kicked off the season well ahead of other states, now, blessedly, remains almost fire-free. The Guardian published this article last week about Josephine County, Oregon, which has the highest rate of deaths from wildfire smoke of any place in the country. It’s a sad testament to the obvious effects of climate chaos, and at the same time it validates my experience of our smoky days here and their effect on my breathing.
I’m thankful that the COPD that afflicts me does so only moderately, not severely, but I understand that it’s an irreversible illness that, without adequate precautions, will worsen and could eventually kill me. Oh well! This is how it is. I’m taking the precautions I know of, and always open to more helpful measures. In so many ways, I’m more fortunate than most people on the planet.
Certainly my good fortune far exceeds that of those poor people living along the Trishuli River on the border of Tibet and Nepal. A dear friend has lived in Nepal, has friends there, and has been watching developments in this climate-fueled mega-disaster closely. She shared this link to a fascinating in-depth analysis of the geological and climatological conditions that factored into the seismic ‘debris flow’ or, as some are calling it, ‘inland tsunami’, the effects of which will be felt for a long time to come. A lot of survivors I’ve seen interviewed said there’s no reason left to live: they’ve lost so much that life has no meaning anymore. Many expressed survivors’ guilt. The grief and trauma the entire remaining population of those demolished communities are suffering is almost as unfathomable as the mind-boggling catastrophe itself.
Holding tragedy and grief in my heart, holding the world and all beings in compassion, how else can I live but by appreciating all the small joys as they arise? And every day they arise one after another after another, though some days I notice only a few, and for awhile there I couldn’t see any. Today overflowed with lovely moments.
I spent more money than I should have at the market, including $20 on a pizza to support The Learning Council, a community advocacy group who offers wood-fired pizza and an organic full meal each week for any donation. I enjoyed a couple of slices at a picnic table, listening to the lovely music, before heading home.
I also bought a couple of tomatoes, some pickling cucumbers, and three skeins of yarn. I only intended to buy two. I was entranced by the colors of these hand-dyed wools last time, but I can’t wear wool, it itches. So I pondered what I could do with some, and realized that Wren can wear wool! And I call her Wrenbow, so I planned to get some rainbow wool to knit her a new sweater.
I was grateful to snag the last two skeins of the most rainbow yarn. Then I had a lovely chat with Tonya of Wooly Colorado as I perused the rest of her wares, and she pointed out “Those two are cotton, I spun them. Dyed with indigo.” Something happened. I picked one up and teared up. Emotion overcame common sense, rationalization reared its lovely head, I can wear cotton, and I bought one. Just holding it, carrying it to the car, telling someone about it on the phone later, tears and tingles kept coming. My heart is open again.
Today’s post is a little different. It’s the transcript, essentially, of my final podcast, “Suffer Less with Mindfulness,” which aired last week. You can listen to all episodes for a few more weeks wherever you get your podcasts or on my website, before I cancel my subscription to the Captivate platform at which point it disappears forever from everywhere, except possibly Apple Podcasts, and maybe Insight Timer.
What’s your understanding of equanimity? Mine includes the idea that we can find balance under any conditions, and we aren’t constantly being jerked by our emotions or external circumstances or our own thoughts or other people’s actions from one extreme of joy and excitement and positivity to the other extreme of despair or rage or negativity; maintaining an even keel. It includes the idea of seeing all humans as having equal value, not judging people until we know them, and then using discernment, not snap judging. It includes the idea of not labeling, of being open to seeing, to understanding that each person is who they are, and they bring to each encounter all the causes and conditions of their life up to that moment, just like we do. It’s embodied in the idea that I’ve mentioned before, and we’ll swap out mindfulness for equanimity: “Equanimity is not about feeling better, it’s about getting better at not making things worse.” And it’s so much more than all these things.
One rich ground for equanimity practice is the fact that Death is certain, time of death uncertain. In some ways my whole life, my whole mindfulness practice since I began it 20 years ago, has been about learning to die. I’ve been afraid of death, afraid of dying, since I was a child and first learned of death. For the past year, I’ve been preparing to die. This last month, as part of that, I’ve been doing a life review, reading my old journals starting from the first one in high school. Partly so that I can burn them or send them to the dump so that they’re out of my house when I die; and partly to shift my perspective. I’m getting some resolution, some equanimity with who I was in the past. Who I am right now is not who I was even yesterday. I’m making peace with the process of growing and changing, and remembering that every moment I’m choosing ‘how do I wanna be?’ Equanimity can really help us make those choices with wisdom and compassion.
I’ve dipped into some of these journals through the years. Occasionally I’ve looked back at a certain event or a certain timeframe, and I’ve read it and been disgusted with myself, judging harshly: Same old patterns, same old complaints, same old, same old. This time I’m looking back on my life systematically with a different lens: the lens of compassion, which I’ve never used before.
‘How was it for younger Rita?’ Can I offer her kindness instead of judgment? Can I bring curiosity to reading these journals, to see what she might have been going through, get a healthier perspective on the conditions around her, and bring a sense of acceptance, equanimity, even gratitude, to the life I’ve lived so far?
I’ve found some tragically silly little love poems. I’ve read of my aspiration to be loving and kind repeatedly, yet also how I remained in vicious and constant judgement of others. I’ve recognized my tendencies of projection, labeling, exaggeration, and many more afflictions that mindfulness practice diminishes with awareness. I’ve seen myself back then from morning to night, bouncing from absolute giddiness to utter despair, from feeling really good about myself because some boy thought I was cute, to feeling worthless, to feeling high as a kite because of some fun party I went to or ice skating or a kiss, to feeling total confusion and contempt. External influences, mostly boys, swung me from one extreme to another emotionally with zero equanimity, though there were occasional insightful moments of awareness. I now recognize this as the condition of adolescence, puberty, being a hormone-addled teenager; I see my past self with tenderness instead of scorn, and see all teenagers now with compassion.
I’ve come across a few striking instances that illustrate the malleable nature of memory. I was stunned to read that I got the part of the pregnant girl in the local TV station PSA in sophomore year. All I’ve remembered for as long as I can remember was the humiliation of the audition. I sat in an empty classroom with my head on my arms pretending to cry. The scout team wanted actual tears. I went to great lengths to generate tears, pinching myself, recalling my cat’s death, even asking for a slice of raw onion from the cafeteria and breaking that up under my face. I didn’t get the part. Shame. Yet in my journal, I read that I got the part! I got my current crush to play my boyfriend, kids in the halls called me ‘movie star’ for weeks afterward, and I felt respected by the cool kids for awhile. Why did I take away, or reconstruct, a memory of failure?
I’ve been surprised also that through those years I found three instances where I describe almost verbatim a terrible pit in my stomach, a gnawing emptiness, a burning hole in my gut, clearly physical. What was that about?
One thing that helps us cultivate equanimity and also feeds equanimity is this idea of perspective, and the more we can exercise a flexible open mind, the more we gain a broader, more open-hearted perspective. Now, as I’m learning about the influences of being raised by immature parents, of growing up in a home with constant bickering, a father who was power hungry and a broken-hearted mother, and nervous system development, I have a lot more perspective. I’ve already found some closure, some resolution, some equanimity and compassion with who I was then. I just wanted to be seen and loved.
There are those whose opinions differ, but it seems painfully clear that the human species over the past 400 years or perhaps our entire evolution has set in motion the collapse of our planetary systems. Climate collapse is a no-brainer. I live in the US west where for the past decade average temperatures have been rising in all seasons, and concurrently wildfire season has grown from a few months in late summer to encompass more than half the year. There is really no time of year, where I live, that a random lightning strike couldn’t provoke a cataclysmic fire, except a few months in deep winter if there is adequate snow cover, which is no longer guaranteed.
The Gold Mountain fire 60 miles south of here that burned 38,000 acres, now they’re having flash floods as a result of the monsoon storms coming through and washing down the burnt bare hillsides, carrying rocks and mud and wiping away houses at the bottom that survived the fire. The Elk fire just a few miles east of that continues to grow, making it unhealthy or impossible to spend time outside. Spokane, Canada, Oregon, France, Spain, whoever is next… The planet is burning.
The planet is burning because of people’s choices. It’s largely been the choices of people in power in corporations and in certain countries. It’s systemic. We can’t solve this individually. They led us to believe that recycling would fix it, that solar panels would fix it. None of those things ever worked because they were intentionally deluding us all along, and we were letting ourselves be deluded. Meanwhile, they can’t quit blowing shit up.
Seeing reality clearly, can we acknowledge that this is a really hard time? The planet is burning. Cultural collapse seems imminent as evidenced in the decline in reading, the inability of younger generations to write in cursive, and measurably shorter attention spans in students. Loss of human contact is prevalent in the ascendance of AI, in the proliferation of self-checkout, in the tacit permission to be cruel in online trolling, in person now, and in our institutions. Loneliness is pandemic. Societal collapse is underway and all you need do to see it is look around you. These days I experience more and more moments where I feel compassion for the tragedy of the human condition rather than anger and resistance to the way we are as a species. What a seething mass of parasites we are on this planet, and the sad part is — we simply couldn’t help it.
Yes, it’s true that at other times in human history, in other parts of the world, there have been civilization collapses and ecological collapses, and it’s also true that there are many good people around the globe working hard in many ways to stem the tide, to improve conditions in very many ways. But this current poly-crisis planetary collapse is different in scale and in momentum.
How do we live in such a world? How do we bring equanimity, compassion, and kindness out into the world? It doesn’t hurt to start with a healthy comparison of myself with those suffering worse than I, like climate refugees, brutalized immigrants, all manner of oppressed people from BIPOC to trans and queer people to people living in poverty or without homes. This leads to a healthy appreciation of the current conditions of my life, despite its challenges. Next, remember to be kind. “It’s so easy to be nice,” said my friend Kathleen as we discussed this the other day. Why expend the energy to be hateful?
It is hard to have equanimity in this time that we find ourselves. It takes conscious effort. It takes intention, and it takes choosing where we place our attention. And this is why these four heart qualities, the Four Boundless Attitudes of Equanimity, Compassion, Kindness, and Appreciative Joy, are so important: because life on earth is just gonna get harder. The more we can find peace, equanimity, compassion, and wisdom in ourselves, the more we can be islands of strength and resilience in our lives and for the people around us. And then we can turn our strengths into actions in our groups and our communities, and make our voices heard, and vote right.
We can do all those things and more; but can we also practice equanimity in this very dicey time? Well, what are our options? We can suffer and be miserable and be scared, and every emotion is contagious. So if we are going around angry and scared, we’re gonna make other people angry and scared. If we can have even moments of peace in any situation, we can share that peace. We can calm and soothe others.
We find this capacity in ourselves through our mindfulness practice, and in whatever spiritual grounding we each have. We find equanimity not only internally, but also in the groups of people where we can share in this ‘seeing reality clearly,’ share our broken hearts, share the anger and fear, and share the commitment and the intention to keep practicing. Keep practicing.
I don’t expect to die any time soon, but … death is certain, time of death uncertain. In the past year I’ve experienced an unusual number of health challenges, some of which can be managed with medications or lifestyle adjustments, and the rest I can adapt to. These actually started piling on after I set the intention to prepare to die, and for awhile they eclipsed that aspiration. Now as I’ve tamed some of them, they serve as motivation to accelerate my preparation.
There are so many things I’ve left undone in my life, and it’s winding down. At best I’ll have another twenty or so productive years. At worst, I could go tomorrow. If I only get a few good years before my lungs are too compromised to remain at this elevation, I’d like to at least finish some of the domestic projects here at Mirador, like the series of five quilted, tropical-themed warm-window drapes begun twenty years ago to keep the sunroom warmer in winter, and now more essential to keep it cooler in climate-intensified summer heat.
That’s just one of dozens of undone creative projects. Not to mention PG&D: personal growth and development. I’m finally acknowledging that being raised by parents with narrow, rigid minds, functional alcoholics who were exemplary products of the military-industrial colonization culture, wasn’t just a mismatch for my sensitive temperament, it was a constant low-grade trauma to my nervous system. As a result, there’s a lot of healing to do before I die, so that I can live more fully in alignment with my values, bring more meaning to this fleeting existence, in the time left to me. I’m on the right track. In some ways I’ve always been on the right track. Because it’s always been the path that has opened before me, each remarkable step of the way. Now, navigating that path involves withdrawing some of my externally-oriented energies and turning inward even more deeply.
So, this is the last episode of this podcast for the foreseeable future. Mirador Eco-retreat is essentially a single-person business without much capital, and I can no longer afford to produce a podcast. The cost isn’t sustainable either financially or energetically. Thank you for listening, and I hope that you have derived some benefit from the lessons and meditations I’ve shared over the past four years. You can support my ongoing mindfulness work or join the Suffer Less with Mindfulness virtual sangha at this membership page: miradorecoretreat.org.
I don’t know if that’s how you say “with aphids” in French, but it feels like it should be (except for the accent over the a, but it was all my keyboard offered). My kale was looking bushy but small, growing again after a summer lapse, and I thought it was insufficient water stunting it. I cut it all this morning down to an inch, and as I gathered it into the basket I realized it was completely infested with aphids. So I put it through four soaks and rinses, and cooked it down tonight. I got most of the aphids off, but I’m sure I ate a little extra protein for dinner.
The onions are coming in, smaller than I’d anticipated but every set I planted grew at least a little. The yellow onions are smallest, red next in size, and some of the white onions look almost as good as store-bought–and I know they’re clean. I sautéed the last grocery store onion half, and one small yellow from the garden, a homegrown shallot and garlic, with some dried herbs I’d harvested, and then threw in a little curry powder.
I almost forgot the ends of the sandwich tomatoes from the farm store, splashed in some red wine I chose to indulge in while cooking, and then added and tasted til I had it just right: salt, lemon, a dollop of maple syrup to counter the excess salt, a little more lemon juice, more curry powder, but it was still bland. So, a pinch of garam masala, a swipe of cumin, and because I have it and hadn’t tried it, a generous pinch of galangal, which I think perfected the dish, though it was hotter than I expected. As I played with my food, I kept muttering salt, fat, acid, heat, salt, fat, acid, heat. Samin would have appreciated my open-handed light-hearted approach.
My beautiful garlic harvest, probably the most successful crop of the season.
I’m so grateful for the cool, smoke-free evening that enabled me to eat outside as it cooled down with a clear breeze. I opened the house up before taking supper out, and when I came in after sunset it’s a very comfortable 80℉ and cooling. I could not have cooked this evening if it hadn’t been clear outside. The Elk fire got a little rain which tamed some of the blazes, and the wind is coming from the opposite direction, and our forecast for the next couple of weeks is cooler with a chance of precipitation, so I’m hopeful for a breather.
It’s the first morning in awhile that I’ve been able to enjoy coffee at the pond, and appreciate Wren’s concentration meditation. I don’t know how long she stared at the frog hidden in the rushes. I could breathe freely for the first time in over a month, between the clean air and an inhaler I’ve been using for a week. I could smell the moisture in the air as I sat by the pond, enjoying breathing deeply. I’m grateful for this especially easy day, wrapped up before dinner with our Grateful Gathering, seven of us from around the country, talking vulnerably and honestly about aging, discussing the wonderful resources provided by grateful.org, including this provocative video on staying young at heart.
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.
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.
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.
I’m grateful that the California poppies self-sowed this year and bloom with more vigor than those I bought last year. I’m savoring their remarkably velvet-looking petals, and how much the pollinators love them.
These are the pink snapdragons mentioned in the previous post. Just look at those colors!
I baked the sourdough a little differently yesterday after watching Paul Hollywood demonstrate plaiting dough. I started with the simplest variant, just twisting two strands together. This meant that the loaf wouldn’t fit the round dutch oven, so I baked it on parchment paper on a cookie sheet, and covered with another parchment paper. This allowed the dough to dry out a bit much making a thick dark crust, just a little overdone. Next time I’ll find a lid that fits, or use foil, for the first half of baking.
These two screenshots are from the app Watch Duty, which now covers flood conditions as well as fires. This is a great app! The image above is from yesterday morning around 8 am; below is from this afternoon around 2:30. The pink areas denote Red Flag warnings: high fire danger. The fire icons indicate various sizes and stages of wildfires. The lower house with the blue dot is mine; the one above is my friend Barb’s, and the one in northern Utah is my cousin Robin’s.
The Bee Hive fire southwest of Montrose, roughly 75 miles from here, started yesterday and was holding steady at around 180 acres this afternoon, with lots of air support. See the little purple planes? But note the difference in the maps in just over 24 hours. So many more active fires! I’m grateful for the folks who invented this app, and for the many people who provide information and reports to keep it up to date. I’m grateful to anyone who is willing to call out the drivers of climate chaos, like the fossil fuel industry and the banks that finance these greedy, immoral corporations. Check out this graph from Rainforest Action Network, and this article in The Guardian about the ‘unfathomable’ increase in banks’ support for the industry last year.
Where’s Wren? And, how many pollinators? I was grateful to catch this western tiger swallowtail on the native thistle right outside the front gate, and didn’t notice the native bees until I looked at the pictures tonight. It’s amazing they all came out so clear given how windy it was at the time.
The wind got stronger through the afternoon. I spent as much time as possible outside today, until it was just too hot and windy. Then I came in for a meditation, some work time, and wrapped up the day with our monthly Grateful Gathering. Keeping with the month’s theme, Live Fully Alive, we talked about connections with nature, with people we love, meaningful interactions with strangers (or friends we hadn’t met yet); we heard about a nonagenarian who said life is a blink in cosmic time and a grandmother who said it’s a glance out the window. We held the truth of the phrase “Death is certain, time of death uncertain” as we shared gratitude that one of us had survived surgery after a life-threatening emergency; and we savored Mary Oliver’s poem “The Summer Day.”
Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean — the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down — who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
~ Mary Oliver
Biko, Wren and I hung out together in the shade under the deck for awhile this afternoon. Later, after the gathering, when it was cool enough, Wren and Topaz and I strolled the Sunset Loop and the Breakfast Loop. The wind was so strong I had to strap my hat, and the atmosphere was hazy. Before we returned home the smoke rolled in. I hurried the last hundred yards, gathered the sheets off the line, closed up the house, and turned the air purifier on high. At bedtime, it’s still smoky out, and I’m grateful it’s cool enough inside to leave the house closed.
By the time we got home from the walk, most of the California poppy petals had blown off, but I got this shot earlier just as they started to fall. The penstemon blossoms are starting to fall also, and were blowing like cherry blossoms as we came inside. Life is a single bloom.
A female oriole showed up at the hummingbird feeder so I quickly pulled out the oriole feeder and hung it.
Apologies for the cryptic post the other day! Thanks to those who were paying attention and inquired about it. It took awhile to figure out what happened. The day before my most recent post, I had tried to post some photos from the WordPress app on my phone, with the title ‘Attention.’ No text, just some pictures. The next day I saw that it had not gone through, so I added a few more pictures and posted ‘Surrounded by Life.’ Somehow, a few days later, the empty ‘Attention’ post showed up out of the ethers.
The sad finale to the robin nest, found on the patio later the very day I reached into the nest to find it empty.
The oriole came to its special feeder after a couple of days, and the male flew by, but then they were gone.
Where’s Wren?
The little dog alerted me to a mouse in the pantry the other night. I couldn’t bear to kill it, so I brought in and baited the live-trap with a pinch of havarti stuck on with a peanut butter smear. In the morning an adorable big-eyed deer mouse fluttered around when Wren woke it. I was pretty sure where it came from and how it got in the house, so I released it back home. Then I made sure the screen door was latched or the glass door closed so it couldn’t sneak back in through the gap that occasionally opens with a breeze. Old doors.
The Palmer’s penstemon is wild this year. I was happy to hear from a friend to whom I’d given seeds a few years ago: “THANK YOU SO MUCH for the Palmer’s penstemon seeds! They’ve exploded this year!! And the pollinators love them.”
The next night the mouse was back. This time I released it up at the woodshed, hoping it would find enough distraction there. The next night it was back again. Again I released it up the hill, and then watched all doors like a cat all day. Wren fixated in the pantry again, so I guessed it was back. I have no qualms about killing mice but it’s getting harder to do it.
I don’t even mind the mice themselves, it’s their… residue. Especially in light of recent hantavirus news. (And, shades of the nightmare I went through after the Housesitter from Hell.) One little mouse doesn’t pose much risk of the virus, but does leave unfortunate traces, everywhere. So I set the snap trap.
That night when I went up to bed, Wren pointed to the curtain rod over the French door onto the deck. There was a mouse on top of the drape! I opened the door and tried to shoo it out, but it escaped into the stairs.
The next morning, there was our little mouse friend, dead in the trap, his bright big eyes wide open. I set him atop a fence post for a bird to carry off. Apologies.
I’m grateful for so many bumblebees, all over the penstemon. This is the biggest one I’ve ever seen.
Imagine my surprise the next night when once again there was a mouse atop the upstairs drape! Where are they coming from? How many more?
This morning at the pond was rich with wild life. A garter snake cruised the edge, an ash-throated flycatcher hunted from above.
The pond floor is covered with tiny tadpoles, and last year’s frogs are growing. I spotted this one before Wren did. I’m not sure she even saw it until it jumped while she drank.
May all beings be well, and happy. May all beings be safe and free from harm. May all beings awaken and be free.
Thanks to my friend Ted Leach for sharing this quote. See his blog for what Wilson meant by these three observations.
Today in the garden. I was unable to tear myself away from my safe place this morning to brunch with friends. I hope they can understand and forgive me some need that I don’t fully understand myself. But I made the most of a quiet day at home — I almost wrote ‘alone’ except that I’m not alone here. Just look. Surrounded by Life.
Same tree above and below, different times of day, different angles. We spent a good hour yesterday morning wandering the woods with our infrared phone camera. I’m grateful for technology and terrified of it at the same time. I heard today from a reliable source that bots sicced on Reddit users were six times more persuasive in changing humans’ minds as other humans. This is how it is right now. So I turn back to what’s real. The forest. The garden.
Meet the Trees, the second in a series of Meditations with Nature, will be a half-day retreat here on Saturday, June 13 from 9 am through noon. Some meditation experience is helpful but not necessary. If you’re in the vicinity and the weather holds, come enjoy the garden and the forest with me. Registration closes June 9.
After that thought-provoking soul-nourishing walk communing with ancient junipers in the morning, I baked margarita cupcakes in the afternoon. In the latest installment of the Birthday Cake Challenge, I took these treats to some margarita-loving friends, an amazing couple who share the same birthday. We sat on their deck enjoying gin-and-tonics looking out across the West Elk Mountains. I didn’t tell them what flavor the cupcakes were, intending for them to guess. I was tickled pink when I saw him take the tiny lime slice and squeeze it over the frosting as though it were a cocktail, before he even knew it was one!
There was tequila in the buttercream frosting as well as lime juice, and a lot of lime zest and juice in the cakes, which I brushed with tequila as soon as they came out of the oven. Highly recommend. And lots of leftover frosting! What to put it on next?
As always, I am ever so grateful for morning coffee with a sweet treat. It’s especially sweet these days, on the patio with the fragrant jasmine on one side, and busy hummingbirds on the other, the mountain vista beyond the blooming garden. Just this past couple of days all the June flowers are starting to open. In the woods, the claret cups have been blooming for weeks. They are so early I almost missed them. Grateful I took a couple of long walks last week, before plantar fasciitis curtailed our strolls.
Last week I noticed the robin did not fly when I opened the door. Then I noticed there was no robin at the nest all day. I waited a couple of days then used a stepladder to hold my camera over the nest. I feel very sad that they abandoned their eggs. I’ve seen one of them back at the bird bath a few times, and hope they have a spare nest going somewhere else.
“When we see someone suffering, whether they are physically injured or suffering a significant loss, we instantly have compassion regardless of how we felt about them just moments before. Imagine how you would treat others if you knew, not only that they may not be here tomorrow, but also of the suffering and hardship they have had to endure in their lifetime.”
MLP Daily Guidance May 26, 2026
I wondered why this butterfly was motionless as I took its picture. I moved it with a light touch to get a better angle, and didn’t realize what was happening til I saw the picture. I couldn’t save this butterfly, nor would I have even tried: The spider deserves her hard-won meal. I did feel a rush of compassion for her.
Wren stalking a bumblebee
I saved a frog from a snake today. Not something I’d normally interfere with but I couldn’t not this time. I’d been sitting by the pond enjoying a glass of cool tap water and reading on Kindle while Wren wandered around sniffing and looking for frogs. A movement caught both our eyes and I asked her to leave it. We watched a scene under a slab rock on the rim that neither of us — well, I can’t speak for her, with her keen senses she probably knew what was going on long before I did — but I couldn’t quite see well enough through the screen of curly rush and in the dark under the rock to be sure what was happening. The motion had been sudden, and I heard a frog. As I watched, I could see the frog move incrementally toward the light, and it was calling. But not a regular call, it sounded urgent.
Not the drama scene of today, but an update on the eggs. They’ve all released their tiny tadpoles but I’m not seeing them in the water like I did last year.
I wondered if a snake had it, but I could see most of the frog. It hopped forward a couple of times incrementally. Then it seemed to retreat. Then it hopped forward and flopped over onto its back, legs splayed. Maybe its foot was caught between rocks? I stepped around the pond and reached down to take gentle hold of the frog; only then could I see the snake holding onto the frog’s foot. It was a smallish garter snake; the frog was good-sized. Yes, the snake deserves its meal also, but given the size discrepancy and starting with the foot, it would have been a long, slow, agonizing death for the frog. Holding her in my right hand, I touched a left fingertip to the back of the snake’s jaw and pried ever so gently. In a second it let go and the frog flipped out of my hand and flew two feet to plop into the water. In that moment I felt more alive than I have in weeks.
I invested in some food-producing shrubs last week, including two honeyberries, a Saskatoon serviceberry, and a Chicago hardy fig. I misheard on the radio that Lance was growing one outdoors that survived that hard freeze last month, so I planted mine in a raised bed yesterday morning, carefully relocating the tulip bulbs I displaced. Then I called into the show last night realized my mistake: around here people grow them in greenhouses. Oh well! I did read that they should be able to survive winter in this zone by wrapping in blankets after they shed their leaves in the fall. Maybe I’ll decide to dig her up and pot her to bring in. We’ll know more later! I snipped off the four little figs she had so she could send all her energy to growing roots.
I’m grateful for the feral chamomile blooming among the flagstones, and its light scent in the evening.
