Passion is Optional

 Passion is Optional 

June, 2026

I remember the day I visited my grandpa with a Daisy BB gun in hand. Grandpa was a farmer when he wasn’t pursuing wild game, and I was a lad wanting to test my sharpshooting skills.

I told him I wanted to shoot a mouse. His eyes narrowed. “Go to the granary and sit quiet. You’ll find your mouse.”

I did as directed and within seconds was surrounded by a flurry of rodents, poking their heads from between grain-filled bags, scurrying up the walls, darting across the floor. I was ecstatic. I don’t think a single BB ever connected with its intended target, but I had a great time and declared grandpa a master hunting guide. From that day I wanted to live in his shadow. 

There are people born with a fervor for the natural world and people passionate about music, math, baseball, or nothing in particular.

And so it’s always been. Indigenous tribes lived close to the land.  Some were dedicated hunters and trackers and others, no doubt, went along because participation was expected. Had food and clothing been readily available without hunting, their culture would likely have evolved differently. They may have developed a written language to replace generational storytelling as a way of passing on customs and history. Or maybe they would’ve developed technologies guided by the Iroquois principle that decision-making be based on the impact to the next seven generations.

Not everyone has an inherent interest in wildlife and wild places or is driven to understand ecological systems and our role in them. Aldo Leopold recognized this when he said “There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech.”

Few of us are introduced to the concepts of sustainability and carrying capacity in our formal education. We aren’t taught to hold in reverence a planet with finite resources, a thin, balanced atmosphere, and critical ecological interactions refined over eons.  Understanding that everything is intricately connected and in need of wise stewardship is not something we’re born with, and too often  it’s not given more than a passing thought. 

But it should. 

Today, with more than eight billion of us swarming the planet demanding more comforts and conveniences, living without an uncompromising understanding of our environmental impact is leading us down a perilous path. 

I was recently invited to a local book fair to promote my book of nature essays. I sold a few copies, but the experience reinforced what I knew to be true: The majority of attendees were not especially interested in essays about environmental challenges, even when they included reasons for hope. Other genres—mysteries, history, the paranormal—seemed to have more appeal.  

And that’s okay. We’re all different. If we were all consumed by wildlife, conservation, and natural history, many of our scientific and societal advancements would stall. We need people passionate about medicine, engineering, transportation, and politics. 

But every ambition, project, and decision needs to be weighed against its earthly impact. If it’s wasteful or unsustainable, it needs scrapping. Now that we’re fully aware of threats linked to ancient fuels, we need to wean ourselves of them. Now that we recognize the environmental risks associated with toxic chemicals in manufacturing and food production, we need to use our collective consumer influence to force change. We can’t ignore or justify ongoing destructive practices based on historical precedent.

We don’t have to be nature lovers to understand the imperative. But we do need to be aware and make enough noise to interrupt business as usual before the systems that sustain us collapse.

My grandpa loved the outdoors. He understood the habits of wild animals, including mice. But the concepts of ecological overshoot, sustainability, and planetary limits were rarely part of the conversation in his generation. 

They need to be a part of ours. 

There are growing pressures on this beautiful blue sphere. Reverence for the natural world and ecological literacy is not a niche hobby—it’s a survival skill for a crowded planet.

 

 

  

What Coyotes Can Teach a People

What Coyotes Can Teach a People

June, 2026

A new study by the University of Vermont found 58 percent of people worldwide favor protecting the environment over the economy.  In the US, the number dropped from 65 percent in 2020 to 50 percent today. A Gallup survey in 2023 showed 78 percent of Democrats believe the country should prioritize the environment over economic growth, compared with 20 percent of Republicans. 

Those numbers perfectly explain policy decisions coming out of Washington:

—Repeal of the Clean Power Plan

—Weakening Emissions Standards

—Elimination of the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program 

—Reconsideration of Mercury and Air Toxic Standards 

—Dismantling the Endangerment Finding

—Withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement 

—Delays in Methane Emissions Regulation 

And sadly, there’s much more. 

A deep ocean monitoring system which, among other things, measures the impact of ocean warming, is being junked because our commander in chief denies the planet is warming despite overwhelming evidence. The monitors have been in place for more than 10 years and provide crucial data on physical, chemical, geological, and biological conditions in the ocean—information essential to understanding climate change, marine ecosystems, and ocean circulation patterns. 

It has me thinking. Before crossing the desert on a desolate highway, I should first disconnect the gas gauge on my Chevy lest I worry about getting stranded and cooked to death. Or maybe if radar shows a storm with embedded tornadoes closing in, I should throw the weather alert radio out the window and go to bed. No monitor, no worries.

Another policy of equal absurdity is the administration’s decision to bring back the use of M-44 “cyanide bombs” to control coyotes on BLM land.  The devices are spring loaded and baited, so an investigating coyote, dog, fox, child—anything attracted to the bait— gets a lethal dose of cyanide in the face and mouth and dies immediately or within a few agonizing hours. 

I first heard about M-44’s more than 50 years ago while an undergrad at Purdue. Even then the method was known to be ineffective. Yes, it killed coyotes along with non-targeted species, but did nothing to control actual coyote numbers. The survivors simply had larger litters to compensate for losses.

Coyotes are highly adaptable. They drink from swimming pools in Beverly Hills. They thrive in urban areas, utilizing green space and traveling roadways. Their diet is diverse and includes small mammals, fruits, insects, even garbage. Over the decades, despite being exposed to control measures effectively used against wolves, grizzlies, and cougars, coyotes have expanded their range to include every state but Hawaii, and in many areas have become commonplace.  

Resurrecting a method that is outdated, non-selective, and ineffective is just another action by an administration willing to defy science to pacify a handful of plutocrats. 

Then there’s the aggressive disassembling of the US Forest Service and its 121-year history of managing 193 million acres of public lands. Policymakers have determined that portions of the Service, including its world-renowned research branch, are expendable, along with the dedicated professionals and labs holding decades of irreplaceable long-term findings. Fifty-seven research facilities spread across 31 states will be shuttered.

But back to the coyotes. Since 2000, a long-term study of the wily canids in the Chicago area has been overseen by Stan Gehrt, wildlife ecologist with Ohio State University. Among his many findings, Gehrt learned that coyotes are staunchly monogamous and form life-long bonds. Only three to five percent of mammals practice monogamy, and DNA studies prove most include infidelities. Not so with coyotes in the Chicago study. The pair bond is absolute. The males never leave the female’s side during estrous and the females show no interest in other males. The result is a paternal investment where offspring carry the genes of a single male, giving him an evolutionary stake in keeping them alive. It’s an expenditure of parental energy rarely observed.

The study also found that if either of the pair were killed, the survivor would howl mournfully, show signs of lethargy, lose its appetite, and return often to the last known location of its mate.

There’s a lesson here—about persistence when faced with insurmountable odds, about mourning losses while never losing focus, about winning while staying true to what’s right—and it applies to our response to environmental threats. 

We’re on a perilous trajectory in dire need of a correction.  Only 50 percent of us want it changed. 

Suspended Between Extremes

May, 2026

I took a swim in the pond, the first of the year. It was good to stretch the joints and muscles, to feel the resistance, to dip below the surface and hear the distorted and muffled sounds of a watery world.

On my final lap I switched from freestyle to back stroke. The clouds had broken so the sky was a  patchwork of gray and blue. I focused on the blue, remembering a video that took a tour of the cosmos at the speed of light.

If we had the ability to move at light speed, we would leave our solar system in one earthly second. In four seconds we’d reach Proxima Centauri, our nearest star system. After eight seconds we’d approach Sirius, the brightest star in our night sky. In ten minutes we’d pass Kepler 226b, a distant world with a rocky core, covered by oceans.

For perspective, the Moon is about 1.3 light-seconds from Earth. It takes modern astronauts three days to get there. Using existing technology, reaching Kepler would take over 11 million years.

In two hours we’d pass the pillars of creation, one of the most iconic structures ever photographed—enormous towers of interstellar gas and dust inside the Eagle Nebula. In five hours we’d reach Stephenson 2-18, a star so enormous it makes our sun nearly invisible. Another 24 hours and we’d leave the Milky Way galaxy.  After 29 days we’d reach the Andromeda galaxy, which is on a collision course with our own galaxy a few billion years from now.

We’d travel on, and realize our local group of galaxies is but a tiny part of a much larger super cluster, and by the 16th year of travel the Milky Way would be a faint point in the darkness. One hundred years into our journey we’d reach Ton 618, one of the most massive black holes ever discovered, with a mass tens of billions of times that of our sun.

And after 1000 years of cruising one light year per second, we’d reach the edge of the observable universe, 46.5 billion light years from earth. It’s not the true edge, just the limit of what we can see.

With the aid of advanced telescopes, satellites, and physics modeling, we’ve detected galaxies billions of light years away, estimated the age of the universe, observed black holes, and measured the afterglow of the Big Bang. Yet, more than 80 percent of our oceans have not been mapped or explored. Oceans present unique challenges. The study area lies in a highly corrosive environment under a veil of perpetual darkness, with pressures a thousand times greater than found at sea level.

In all probability, those deep recesses of the unknown harbor life and functioning ecosystems. Scientists believe we’re familiar with less than a third of the highly specialized animals inhabiting the depths. Sixty percent of DNA sequences taken from marine sediments are not associated with known taxonomic records. Our understanding of deep sea biodiversity has major gaps, and it’s fair to say the ocean depths are less explored, observed, and mapped than the known universe. We have a better understanding of the surfaces of stars and planets multiple light years away than we do of the seafloor a few miles below the surface.

We know a lot about oceans—tides, currents, salinity, their role in thermodynamics and climate systems. It’s not accurate to say we know less about the oceans than the universe, but we know surprisingly little about the deep, dark, depths.

These thoughts drift through my head as I swim in a pond suspended between extremes. I lose track of laps. A cloud passes and I feel the penetrating warmth of a May sun on my face. A chimney swift twitters overhead, a green heron perches on a log near shore, a breeze sways the cattail leaves. The air smells of life in abundance.

What a privilege to draw breath and experience it all. To have curiosity, to consider the known and unknown, to learn. What a responsibility to care for the only known planet allowing us to live freely, without specialized gear or domes or engineered atmospheres. 

We’ve looked around the visible universe. There is no place better. We are charged with preserving what we have. There is an urgency here we’re dismissing, a mountain of scientific evidence we’re disregarding. In cosmic terms, we have a fraction of a heartbeat to respond. 

Dilly-Dallying

May, 2026

Spring has settled in the heartland. The peach tree has set fruit, the seed potatoes have leafy sprouts, asparagus shoots are simmering in a skillet of melted butter.  By the first of May daffodils are an afterthought—their showy flowers withered, their lingering foliage pushed aside by rambunctious hostas, bleeding hearts, and iris. In the woodland the thrushes sing and Dutchman’s britches bloom. The pawpaw blossom smells of rotting flesh, and the flies and beetles required for its pollination take notice. The season peaks. It’s beautiful. And what unfolds quietly here is tied to forces far beyond northern Indiana. 

In the equatorial Pacific the heat is building. It happens on occasion and often results in an El Niño, affecting wind patterns, ocean currents, weather systems, and global temperatures. This year the surface waters are particularly high. Meteorologists say we could see a super El Niño and the hottest planetary temperatures recorded in human history.

On the opposite coast, there is growing concern that warming arctic waters and an influx of fresh water from melting ice caps threatens to collapse the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), with worldwide implications.  Europe would become substantially cooler. Sea levels would rise swiftly along the US east coast, the rainy and dry seasons in the Amazon could flip, storms would be more severe. The south would warm and the north would cool, much like an ice age. The probability of a total AMOC shutdown in the near future is anticipated by some and challenged by others, but all agree the currents are weakening.

It’s the nature of our capitalistic society to not take such warnings too seriously. Modern civilization is built on extraction industries with skant regard for sustainability. We view resources as commodities, ours for the taking, and after building a world with untold comforts and conveniences derived from ancient fuels, we are loath to change.

It’s well established that energy from fossil fuels comes with a long list of health, social, economic, and environmental concerns. We can all agree the supply is not limitless, and that a warming planet will intensify the effects of El Niño and hasten the collapse of AMOC.  We know a day of reckoning will come, yet we dilly-dally, as foolish people are prone to do.

Maybe an unjustified, unconstitutional, and unpopular war—one that released over five million tons of CO2 in its first 14 days and caused major disruptions in global oil supplies—has a bright side. Maybe it’s the incentive foolish people need to get in the game and fully commit to clean, renewable energy.

Or maybe it will make no difference at all, and we’ll continue to be swayed by oil companies and their political puppets to support deadly antiquated fuels even as calamity spreads across the globe.

We took a walk in the spring woods today, shortly after a passing shower left a glossy sheen on the motherwort and raspberry leaves. My wife’s keen eye spotted a pair of mating box turtles under a tangle of wild roses. Box turtles are of special concern in Indiana due to population declines, but even with reduced numbers these two found each other.  How does that happen with a reptile that moves like a sloth, has poor eyesight, and can scarcely vocalize? Pheromones play a role, but maybe there’s more.

Maybe there’s a level of consciousness among turtles and plants and inanimate objects, as a growing number of scholars and scientists suspect. 

In a recent interview with Joe Rogan, author/activist Michael Pollan points out that plants have 20 senses compared to our five. They pick up magnetic fields and sense pH and nitrogen levels. Their roots will grow towards the sound of water flowing through a pipe. The anesthetics used to knock us out will also put plants out. When a plant is taught a behavior, it remembers the lesson for 28 days, and if played a recording of a caterpillar’s munching, some plants will send toxins to their leaves to ward off perceived pests. Pollan proposes that plants have two modes of being: conscious and unconscious. 

Plato believed that consciousness could extend to all living things. Animism teaches a spiritual essence in all objects. Buddhism and panpsychism finds consciousness in all existence. Many indigenous cultures believe there is agency in rock and rivers and trees. Jesus told the Pharisees that if his disciples fell quiet, the stones would cry out.

We’re dilly-dallying when there is so much we don’t understand or refuse to consider. We’ve stripped the agency from the natural world with our noise and ambition. We can measure the literal collapse of ocean currents but struggle to respond to an eminent global threat. 

It could be that a box turtle has a grasp on persistence and connection that we don’t begin to comprehend. If we tap into all it can sense, maybe one day we’ll hear the stones crying out, and maybe we’ll find our way against long odds. 

 

Idiots and the Coming of Spring

It was drizzling rain the morning of March 5. We’d hoped for more than a drizzle, considering the pond is 20 inches low and we’re in a severe drought. But the heaviest precipitation stayed south and we were left with clouds and a few sprinkles. We took what we could get.

With the teasing rain came southern winds and unseasonable warmth. Honeybees stirred from their hives, the first snowdrops opened, and sandhill cranes caught a tailwind as they winged north. It was a solid promise of spring. Too early, but nobody was complaining because spring is the season of hope, new life, another chance to get things right. And in 2026 there is so much to get right. 

—A man in the White House who claims to be the president of peace just started a war without congressional approval and without an endgame. The conflict is costing lives and upwards of two billion dollars a day.

—Artificial Intelligence, used wisely, promises massive benefits for humanity, but it seems to be advancing helter-skelter as world powers vie to use it as their ticket to dominance. 

—Data centers, which demand massive amounts of energy and water, are springing up as if those resources are limitless. 

—Government policy to support renewable green fuels has abruptly stopped. Oil and coal are king again and pollution control mandates have been retracted. 

—Immigrants, following every legal requirement to become US citizens, are finding the goal posts moved and are living with the very real threat of being sent to detention centers or places unknown.

I try to imagine living in a war-torn country, where air-raid sirens are routine, where power and water are knocked out, where uncertainty shadows every minute of the day. I saw photos of the sky over Tehran blackened by toxic fumes from bombed oil refineries. Rain passing through the thick layer is acidic enough to burn human skin. A film of oil covers windows, cars, even floors. 

I think about Iranians, how they loathed the perpetrators before the conflict, how their contempt is amplified by the confusion they see in the eyes of kids too young and innocent to comprehend what’s going on.

The people of Iran are divided like we are, and some welcomed a disruption that might remove existing leadership. But it’s evident that a few strategic missiles didn’t end the regime and the war continues with worldwide implications, none of them good.  

It’s spring in Iran. The doves are singing courtship songs. The ruddy shell ducks have returned to nest. Persian gardens, tended and celebrated over thousands of years, are trying to come to life in spite of the chaos around them. Iranians have seed potatoes and onion sets in hand, tomato seeds have sprouted under grow lights. In the north, fields of wheat and barley are greening, the buds of pomegranates and figs are swelling, the season for planting rice is fast approaching. 

But there’s a war, with all the usual objectives of killing and spreading misery with no regard for traditions or traumatized children or, least of all, ecological damage.  According to a report on NPR, we’re targeting health facilities, taking out buildings and the medical professionals in them. At least 175 kids were killed when a missile struck a primary school. The internet in Iran is sporadic at best and carefully monitored. Residents are in the dark.  Our Secretary of Defense said, “We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.” The man in the Oval Office announced we may continue to bomb oil facilities on the island of Khard “just for fun.”

In 2023 Illinois Governor JB Pritzker gave a commencement speech at Northwestern University. The topic was recognizing idiots. He warned that idiots can be intelligent and dazzle us with words and misdirection, but what defines them is their cruelty. 

He said if someone doesn’t look like us or act, think, and love like us, we have a primal instinct to fear or judge them. It’s a reaction that had value in our evolution. But giving in to acts of cruelty is failing the test of an advanced society.  Empathy and compassion are evolved states of being that require us to look beyond our animal instincts and see that the smartest people in the room are often the kindest.

And a kind idiot is as rare as a snowman in the desert.

John Mearsheimer, international relations scholar at the University of Chicago, referencing a 2025 article in the scientific journal Lancet, said that US sanctions on mideastern countries resulted in the deaths of 38 million people between 1971 and 2022. The intent was to inflict massive punishment so the people would rise up against their government. It didn’t work, but the cruelty was stunning. 

The world spins, seasons change, bombs drop. Idiots stroke their egos while the compassionate show how an advanced society behaves. It’s my tendency, given our history of warring and social and environmental woes, to give in to  pessimism, but it’s an attitude that gets in the way of goodness. Empathy and calling out cruelty are behaviors befitting spring—a fresh start, and another chance to get things right.