Exhaling

There were record floods in Germany.  A good month’s worth of rain fell in two days and water swept away roadways and buildings and people.  In India, 23 inches of rain fell in 24 hours.  China, likewise, experienced the worst flooding in a thousand years, threatening millions. In the American west record heat continues and reservoirs are drying up and fires dot the map with a frequency approaching scenic views.  Another heat dome is predicted to spread over most of the country. It’s all happening right on cue, and we’re just getting started.

After decades of avoiding the term, “climate change” is now being used routinely on the news. “Fires fueled by climate change.”  “Devastating floods brought on by global warming.”  The world is taking notice with decrees to reach carbon neutrality by 2035 or 2050.  Achieving these objectives will be fraught with challenges and require untold billions of dollars and yet to be discovered technologies.  It’s crunch time.  Yet, as surely as there are anti vaccers there are resistors and carbon emissions will continue longer than necessary, fueling a freight train of devastation headed our way.  This is not fear mongering; it’s acknowledging a reality long predicted and expected.  

So here we are with eyes wide open and each of us having a role.  Nothing will move us toward necessary changes faster than governmental policy so we need to make some good noise.  And as overwhelming as the problem is, it is not so big that personal choices can’t have an influence.  In daily life, the decisions we make can collectively lower carbon emissions and soften the worst of climate impacts for everyone.  It’s an all hands on deck moment that starts now and will necessarily become ingrained in the human psyche if our species is to survive.  Humanity has yet to fully embrace the concept that we are an integral part of an ecological community, not separate from it, and our actions are connected to every other living thing.  We can come to appreciate and value ecological services too long ignored or assumed.  We can learn that making the right environmental decisions is essential and benefit everything.

The smoke from western fires has reached the Midwest so we are privy to air that can be unhealthy to breathe.  The particulate provides striking sunrises and sunsets and we look and snap pictures but the beauty portends something destructive and horrific.  And when the floodwaters recede and the fires burn out we will not be back to normal but in a calm before the next event.  Normality is lost.  It may feel as if nothing has changed and we may be tempted to exhale with relief and return to our old ways but old rules no longer apply.

We listened to a segment on NPR’s Science Friday concerning the massive role batteries will play in our future, the race to design a better one, the incredible challenges in securing raw materials and building new facilities and bringing it all to scale in record time because time is of essence.  One of those interviewed was an engineer with a firm grasp on a dire situation but his confidence was unscathed.  Finding solutions to the perceived impossible is an engineer’s elixir.  It gets them out of bed and puts spring in their step.  We are in desperate need of their services right now.

 

After a period of wet weather we midwesterners are drying out and the heat and humidity of late July is settling in.  It’s wild blackberry season, and the garden is in overdrive with more fresh produce than we can eat.  Our pickling cucumbers have gone ballistic, surplus fresh tomatoes are lining up to be preserved and sweetcorn is just days from harvest.  The pond’s water temp is hovering around 80 degrees, perfect for daily swims. The beavers are building new dams, flooding new areas.  

We downloaded a couple of apps to our phones.  One allows us to take photos of any plant and in a few seconds we have an ID complete with botanical and common names, its site preference, its similarity to other plants.  I think of all the time and frustration spent with plant keys and field guides, all the required terminology, the seasonal changes sometimes necessary before an accurate identification could be made.  This app requires less time and botanical knowledge to find answers, which is not all good, but I love it so.

The second app allows us to record a birdsong and immediately know the bird behind it.  I’ve never been a wiz at birdsongs, so this app both thrills and shames me.  We haven’t seen a scarlet tanager all year but now know there’s one here.  We rarely see indigo buntings but now realize we hear them every day.  And that bird that seems to follow us while berry picking but is always just out of sight is a white eyed vireo.  I spend less time trying to accommodate an arthritic neck while peering through binoculars in poor light to see a bird that refuses to sit still.  I just push a button on my phone and the answer is there.

The garden, the birds, the beavers, the apps, all provide exhale moments, a time of calm, to recognize and appreciate the incredible beauty and bounty that still surrounds us and the remarkable technology that helps us live and learn.  We won’t give up our gadgetry, our vehicles, our comforts and conveniences, so we won’t navigate through the climate crisis without new and better technologies.  But it can’t be gadgetry alone.  There has to be a shift in our thinking so we show reverence to this incredible blue sphere and have zero tolerance for anything that wastes, poisons, or fouls it.  And everything we manufacture, build, or use has to be designed to be totally recycled and used again.  What else can possibly work?  What else can stand the test of time?

We can exhale between storms and droughts and fires, exhale and see the good in technology, our role in nature, the impacts of our living.  We can look through clear eyes and see what needs to be done, see what makes sense, and go for it.

A Wrench in the Works

 Around here, it doesn’t take a big event to make living worthwhile.  Today we pulled carrots, and our lives were shown purpose.  We sat on a bench and washed and scrubbed each one and they glistened with an orange glow and the air smelled sweet of carrot.  About every fifth one had damage from carrot maggot so a slight surgical procedure was required to render them perfect.  An occasional blemish from insect activity comes with the program when using organic methods and is proof positive that our efforts incorporate the greater ecological community.  If the crop is not totally destroyed by competitors and the harvest adequate for our needs, all is well.

There is safety in numbers, so a good gardening strategy is to plant more than needed, anticipating some loss.  It’s a good practice but since the space allotted to growing vegetables has limits, other measures are sometimes necessary, like physical barriers or spray deterrents to keep the likes of cottontails and deer from munching into our personal ration.

We have developed a strong craving for sweet corn year round, so we eat fresh when in season then bag up plenty of frozen kernels to last the year. The goal is to produce around 600 ears, and for years it was a pretty simple objective: plant seeds, mulch for weed control, harvest.  Simple.  A few earworms, but generally clean, full and scrumptious.  Then one year the raccoons found us and when it was clear they intended to claim the entire crop we set up an electric fence.  They apparently found the sensation of excited electrons unattractive because the problem was immediately resolved, and thereafter I made a practice of installing the fence just as the ears were silking.  It was highly effective, and the raccoons left the patch alone.

For the past couple years we have experienced problems with vermin eating our corn seed within a day or two of planting.  Replanting proved futile so we now have to start the plants in flats and transplant them individually to the garden.  It’s a bit of a pain and no longer a simple process, but still worth the effort.

The stalks were just beginning to tassel this year and the fence was not yet in place when a malicious band of masked bandits paid a visit.  The ears were mere nubbins but the vandals were undeterred, knocking over plants, chewing the stalks, removing the embryonic origins of what one day would have been plump rows of sweetness.

There’s a scene in the movie A Christmas Story where the Bumpuses dogs have stolen the Christmas turkey from the kitchen table and when Mr. Parker recognizes the deed he runs to the back door and squeaks out an obscenity through a throat tightened with rage.  As I surveyed the damaged sweet corn, I found that obscenity fit perfectly and it flowed freely.  The electric fence was up in short order.

Human-wildlife conflicts have been around since the dawn of man.  Those that make the news and stir up the most emotion involve predators who view humans as prey. Next in line are conflicts involving domestic livestock.  But damage to cropland is by far the most common, sometimes occurring in the most unlikely of places.  A yoga studio downtown has a small raised bed garden that has been nipped off by deer on more than one occasion.  The garden is tucked away behind a seven foot brick wall, next to a building, and is surrounded on all sides by asphalt and roadways, but the deer still like to visit.

It is our inclination to wield dominion over everything, to force our sense of stewardship on the land, to bring order to a perceived chaos found in nature.  We don’t deal well with competition.  

Far more people are killed every year by domestic livestock than by wild animals but a killer cow seldom makes the news.  Almost all livestock deaths (prior to slaughter) are by means other than predation, but there are plenty of ranchers who would pull the trigger on the last breeding pair of wolves.  Maybe if we had more predators I’d have fewer vermin in my sweetcorn.  

Natural processes assure a healthy balance, but we have a tendency to throw a wrench in the works. We are good at damaging habitats, disrupting timeless checks and balances, then crying about the outcomes.  We encroach on woodland areas to build our dream homes then curse woodpeckers that drill holes in the siding.  We love our farm ponds but loathe the otters that periodically drop by.  We spend millions for toxic chemicals to apply to our monocultures of turfgrass, destroying a natural blend of grass and weeds which actually make our lawns more resistant to disease while benefiting everything from insects to songbirds to predators.  We’re programmed to deem almost any bug or weed residing within our declared space a bad thing.

It’s a challenging road to navigate, especially when the concept has not been culturally engrained. I didn’t agree to a bowling tournament in our kitchen ceiling organized by local pine squirrels and I won’t plant an acre of sweet corn in the hopes of harvesting 600 ears.  There has to be limits and controls, but the best solutions are found in working with natural processes that have been billions of years in the making.   Any other approach spawns larger and more complex problems. The evidence is everywhere.  We can all do better.

A Birdsong in Every Bite

We had a rainy spell in late June.  It was unusual.  Near constant cloud cover and daily rains for a week.  The mercury hovered around 90 every day and the humidity hung like a wet blanket so the air seemed to have literal weight.  Tropical rainforests had nothing on the Midwest. 

The wild raspberries loved it.  They fattened and ripened and drew us into the brambles under conditions that were less than ideal but the rewards were handsome.  Thirty pounds of berries, and counting.

We had visitors from the great state of Colorado.  They live outside Boulder where the canyons sing with snowmelt and magpies flit among pines and the Rocky Mountains arch their bare jagged spines through forests that seem endless. It's a fine place to visit and probably an even better place to live.  

I remember a college professor describing his reaction to seeing the Rockies for the first time.  He looked skyward, his mouth wide open, and without saying a word summed up the experience perfectly.  I thought of him years later when an acquaintance was on a guided tour of Denali.  As is typical, the summit was shrouded in clouds, but my friend was enjoying his time at the base, reveling in the smells and sights, knowing he was in the presence of greatness.  Then he looked up and couldn’t believe his fortune as the clouds parted and there lay the summit, snow capped against a backdrop of azure blue.  He was standing, awestruck, when the guide moved in quietly and whispered, “That’s not the summit,” then pointing straight up said, “That is.”

There is an appeal to mountains that is almost universally shared, and rare is the person not humbled by them.  The Rockies, the Cascades, our beloved Sierras, need no introduction.  When among them we speak in whispers, as if in a grand cathedral, because we are.  Grandeur has that effect.  

Midwest cornfields generally do not elicit similar emotion. When they extend uninterrupted to the horizon they carry a beauty reserved for industrialized farmers.  But when a cornfield is interwoven among wooded draws and brushy fencerows where the soil has been undisturbed a different story emerges.  It lacks the splendor of a snow capped peak but offers a cacophony of birdsong and a symphony of life that nonetheless commands attention.  Biodiversity flourishes where deep and nutrient rich soils underlie the landscape.

The other day I shot a video of something outside and sent it to a friend.  His response was not of the footage, but the background noise: a riotous blend of varied and incessant birdsong.  Mountains, especially those in the west, are often incredibly quiet.  The same is true in the wild lands of northern Ontario or the desert Southwest where, on windless days, the silence can be deafening.  And what all these places have in common are relatively thin, poor soils.  The Yosemite area illustrates how little soil is actually required to grow trees.  Walking through a mature stand of pines rooted in the cracks and crevices of bare granite is a mind blowing experience: a forest with trees separated by clean, weather-smoothed rock.  

Lee and I and the dog spent a night in our backyard in a tent set close to the pond.  It was an interesting night but not a restful one.  A beaver in close proximity repeatedly slapped its tail in alarm, raccoons chattered, coyotes howled, deer snorted, the dog bounced off the tent in an attempt to investigate it all, and with first light we were awakened by birds.  It was a fitful night of wild disturbances exceeding anything we’d experienced in national forests or wilderness areas. 

Rich soils allow wild populations to be more diverse and productive, with physically larger individuals found in greater densities than on poorer soils.  So here in the heartland, where a cottontail might need a packed lunch to make it to the next bit of brambly cover, a rich assortment of wild species and the hint of a fully functioning ecosystem can still exist given half a chance.

We need cropland to grow food, but popular methods of producing most crops, by anyone’s assessment (USDA included), results in soil degradation and loss.  Management strategies refer to a “tolerable” loss of soil, which is a way of feeling good while describing a loss that becomes intolerable over time.  There are new methods employing permaculture principles with extensive use of cover crops that offer tremendous hope in preserving and restoring valued organic matter to topsoil while lessening reliance on pesticides.   These methods promote biodiversity, and of critical importance, store massive quantities of CO2.  Agricultural lands everywhere hold a critical key to addressing climate change and the rapid loss of biodiversity now sweeping the planet. 

Today I learned the heat wave gripping British Columbia has resulted in the death of more than a billion seashore animals, and 75 percent of the crops have been literally cooked on the vine. Wildfires in that province are three times the normal with two thirds of them burning out of control.  Temperatures reached 121 degrees in a small village within the Canadian temperate rainforest, and within days 90 percent of the town burned in a wildfire. The haze from western fires is influencing our weather.  We’re talking a lot about climate change, promising technologies and practices, but global emissions continue to rise. We’re planning trips, rebuilding our economy, getting back to normal following a pandemic that might not be over. The oceans are rising and there will be mass migrations of people away from coastal cities probably before their new 30 year mortgages have matured. Most of us lack the mental construct to know what we’re in for. It’s just too much to process.

The magnificent mountains of the west aren’t going away. Their glaciers will disappear, their flanks will turn to tinderboxes, and when fires pass through, their forests may not return and another critical carbon sink will be lost.  The Midwest is losing topsoil, and what remains is becoming less functional.  But soil can be rebuilt, and the Midwest’s value in supporting a vast array of diverse life can be improved.  We can all play a role.  We can choose foods that are produced using sustainable, soil and life enriching methods. Think of it as a birdsong in every bite. The onus is on us.