Listening for Loons

We were in Canada a couple weeks ago at a place we’ve enjoyed for 24 years: a small cabin on a remote river once used by the voyageurs. It had been a while since we were there during June. Spring was just getting a solid foothold and the warblers and kinglets and thrushes were singing their hearts out. We saw old friends— fringed polygala, wild lily of the valley, sarsaparilla, blue bead lily. We filled our lungs with the essence of spruce-fir, floated lazily downriver casting for pike, saw an impressive moose in a river tributary, watched eagles and beavers and snowshoe hares. The mosquitoes were in peak season, but they are as much a part of the June north woods as the voices of nesting songbirds.  The experience would be strangely different without them. 

They were days well spent, unplugged from electronic gadgetry, living simply, tuned into solitude. Time in the north never fails to inspire and offer perspective. It gives us a chance to recalibrate and consider what has changed and what needs to. 

An article appearing in Nature describes a peer reviewed study on the planet’s health. A team of scientists looked at eight key thresholds and concluded seven have already been breached. The areas measured were climate change, aerosols (air pollution), surface water, ground water, nitrogen fertilizer, phosphorus fertilizer, intact ecosystems, and the functional integrity of all ecosystems. Aerosols were the only category not breached, but the team warned that no amount of polluted air can be considered safe.

Within 20 years projected sales of electric cars are expected to surpass combustion engine vehicles. A Washington Post article indicates that electric cars “require six times the mineral input, by weight, of conventional cars.”  The minerals have to be extracted and processed which invariably results in harm to workers, communities, and the local environment. In a separate article published in The Guardian, carmaker Volvo claims greenhouse gas emissions during production of an electric car are 70 percent higher than gasoline vehicles.  Both articles are irritating because neither mentions that upfront environmental costs in manufacturing EVs are readily offset by zero emissions over the car’s lifetime, especially when batteries are charged with renewable energy.  I love our electric car— roomy, peppy, economical to operate, almost zero maintenance. EVs are, at the moment, the most earth-friendly automobile option. 

We noticed as we reached the boreal forest on our drive north that our windshield became littered with smashed insects, something we no longer experience in the industrial heartland. The Indiana Economic Digest ran an article entitled Scientists, Advocates Decry Drastic Declines in Insect Populations in Indiana and Throughout the World.  In April of this year, a CNN report stated “between the climate crisis and high-intensity agriculture… insect abundance has already dropped by nearly 50%, while the number of species has been slashed by 27%.”  As I read the piece an ad popped up promoting a new and improved bug zapper guaranteed to make summer outdoor activities more enjoyable.  Seriously?

For the past several days we’ve smelled and looked through the haze of smoke from Canadian forest fires.  The air quality throughout the northeast and Midwest has been in the dangerous category, at times considered the most polluted in the world. It’s a record breaking year for fires across Canada with no end in sight as peak fire season approaches. 

A man that suffers a serious heart attack is likely to develop a sudden interest in the workings of the human heart.  In the same way, the health of the planet and the stream of ecological services that allow life to flourish will one day garner the respect and attention it deserves.  We need an epiphany before tipping points and feedback loops are fully engaged and everyone becomes grimly aware we waited too long. 

I turned 70 this year. There are some in my cohort who say our remaining decades are few and the environmental crisis is for the next generation to fix. Yet we’re responsible for the mess. We’ve spent our lifetimes supporting an economy powered by polluting energies and poisonous land use practices with little consideration of its uncertain end. We were warned early enough, but special interests and our own determination to carve out a slice of the American dream killed the messengers.  If anyone is obliged to make reparation it is the boomers, and we’re mostly dragging our feet. 

This morning a loon is calling on a celebrated waterway connecting James Bay to Lake Superior. The song is mournful and eerie and melancholic, and a sense of the wild and pristine is carried in it.  It’s a plea to review our priorities, an urge to slow down and look at how our living impacts the bedrock systems that support us. It’s a voice known to carry a long distance. Anyone listening can hear it. 

A Good Casserole for a Better World

Dinner tonight is a casserole that starts with a mass of chopped kale and spinach, lightly salted and wilted in a hot skillet.  A pound of penne is cooked al dente and layered atop the greens.  Next, the cast iron gets a drizzle of oil, a large diced onion, and a couple pounds of sliced mushrooms (any kind will do, but it’s spring so we treat ourselves to plump morels). As the fungi  soften a pint of frozen sweet corn and several stalks of fresh chopped asparagus are added, seasoned to perfection, and spread evenly over the pasta.  Then comes the white sauce, rich and creamy, complemented with the remnants of mushrooms and onions, a dash of salt and pepper, a generous portion of shredded cheddar.  It is ceremoniously draped over the awaiting casserole and all goes in the oven until bubbly and lightly browned. Somebody pinch me. 

There is much to be said about wholesome food prepared in a home kitchen, food that is unprocessed and grown without chemical inputs and free of preservatives or dyes or ingredients I can’t pronounce.  Too many highly processed items on grocery shelves are palatable but not actually food, and as a regular diet they can lead to a myriad of health problems. There’s an unavoidable string of environmental benefits attached to organic production and the quality of the final product is superior in nutrition and flavor.  According to Mayo Clinic, foods earning the organic label are also higher in Omega 3 fatty acids, likely higher in antioxidants, and lower in heavy metals and pesticide residues.

We had a meeting with our financial advisor, Brad. He’s worked at his trade for nearly 40 years and is good at it. He understands the market and the merits of portfolio diversification and has expectations based on historic performance. He is confident in his advice with one caveat: the mounting national debt and the looming economic hardship it promises. But not all debt are monetary. Within the first few months of every year we take from the planet more resources than can be replaced the same year. That is a debt that gets little attention and has been mounting for decades. Environmental bankruptcy can’t turn out well.  

I said, “Brad, do you rate climate change as a world threat?”  He answered swiftly: “If we don’t get the debt under control, we won’t have a world.”  

And there you have it: the economy trumping the environment. It’s nothing against Brad doing his job, and it’s not that we’ve totally ignored the environment in our zeal for growth. We’ve cleaned up rivers, added scrubbers to smokestacks, pollution controls to combustion engines, protected areas of wilderness and rich habitats. And while we seem to have less tolerance for blatant environmental offenses, we continue to overlook some of the most threatening— the loss of microbial life in soil, the worldwide decline in biodiversity, the record concentration of carbon in the atmosphere.

In March the ocean temperature off the east coast of North America was the highest ever recorded, more than 50 degrees Fahrenheit above the 1981-2011 average, and scientists don’t quite know what it means. Wildfires in Alberta have already consumed 150 times more land at this time of year than in the last five years combined.  

Our visit with Brad was good, and he gave us a thread of confidence that what is left of our life savings might carry us a few more years. Meanwhile, as the US flirts with default on its debt and our representatives pretend to negotiate the matter (which by law is non-negotiable), proposals to cut environmental spending are brought to the fore, and as capitalism runs amuck and environmental threats are discounted, the damage continues.  There are so many great ideas— actions that would give ecological systems highest priority and offer genuine hope for a prosperous and more just world— but apathy, misinformation, special interests, and the status quo are hogging center stage. 

It’s May in the heartland, and the blue skies are whitened with smoke from Alberta fires. The other day on a walkabout, the Merlin app picked up over 50 birdsongs: orioles, warblers, vireos, thrushes, a bonafide symphony.  Birds still make a worthy show on our little piece of the continent, though nearly every species is experiencing population decline, as are insects, amphibians, and reptiles. 

But right now there’s a casserole, golden brown and bubbling with goodness, most of it made from what we grew or wild harvested, all of it prepared with satisfaction in our home kitchen. We know every ingredient, it fits our budget, and producing it did not contribute to the environmental or national debt. It is simplicity and wholesomeness and gratitude baked in a dish, hope with a cheese topping, common sense for a better planet. The world needs a good casserole.

A City Then and Now

We drove to Indy the other day and were taken aback by all the construction.  New housing, cleared woodlands, new pipelines, improved roadways— everything that accompanies progress and an economy on the mend. 

Oliver Johnson grew up in Indianapolis with his parents and eleven siblings. His earliest memories were of a deep forest and a log cabin and meals of fried squirrel and cornbread. The family arrived in 1822 and settled on a piece of land that would one day be a part of the Indiana state fairgrounds.

The Johnson cabin measured 18’ by 20’ with walls of logs saddled and notched into place. The floor was made of wooden slabs pinned to log joists. Door hinges and latches were carved from wood. The hearth was a mass of pounded clay and its opening lined with bricks of soil and grass. The chimney was framed with a crib of oak limbs, then packed and smoothed with fine clay. On the roof was a series of overlapping boards split and held in place with “weight poles” notched into the gable logs.  Not a single nail was used. 

The cabin stood in a clearing, and beyond it the black forest rose from a thick layer of dank and molding leaves.  There were few roads, so men and their wagons carved and slashed their way through great stands of timber and brush.  The streams were ripe with fish, the forest abundant with game. Oliver once shot 18 squirrels from a single tree without changing position. 

Buckskin was the standard dress among pioneers, but not the Johnsons. Oliver’s mother owned a spinning wheel and gathered armloads of flax that grew along wetland edges. From the cured stems she spun fiber into strong thread, then bartered with a neighbor who owned a loom and fine linen was the result. Mrs. Johnson saw to it that her family wore nothing less. 

Clearing land for grain production was a primary objective. The work was arduous and continuous and wherever mineral soil was scraped clean, corn was planted. Eventually wooden plows gave way to steel, and old stumps rotted and more land was cleared and more corn planted. The corn not ground into meal was sold or fed to livestock. When fat hogs were ready for market they were herded overland to slaughterhouses on the Ohio River, a destination requiring more than two exhausting weeks to reach. 

Young Oliver loved it all— the days of hard labor, the tending of livestock, the hunting of game. He relished the deep woods, appreciated its abundant and varied life and never felt alone in it. But his concept of land use differed from those who had occupied the region for thousands of years before his family arrived. He was bent on carving out a piece of wilderness and transforming it from what it was to what it could be. His ambition was shared by all settlers and their combined efforts brought change to the landscape that was reinforced by succeeding generations. A mere two centuries later and the White River winding through Indianapolis might be the only landmark those early settlers would recognize. 

We are a reckoning force, and our resolve to build a better world has often been with little consideration for long term consequence. The sixth great extinction is underway and it’s no less life-altering than an ice age or comet impact. It’s happening due to our land use, manufacturing processes, and utilization of resources.  Some studies estimate current extinction rates 10,000 times greater than historic norms, and a UN Report concludes that one million animal and plant species are threatened. 

Agriculture accounts for 90 percent of global deforestation and relies on a cocktail of poisons which destroy soils and kill invertebrates and disrupt food chains. What we eat and how it’s produced can be vastly improved by shifts in diet and the use of farm practices proven beneficial to local ecologies.  If everyone in the US ate a vegan diet for one day, it could save 190 billion gallons of water (enough to supply every household in the country for a week) and the equivalent of 78 million gallons of gasoline. Our reliance on carbon rich fuels, our rampant use of petroleum-based plastics, the environmental contamination from persistent chemicals, the immense volume of waste going to landfills— all point to a short sighted civilization. 

Oliver Johnson likely considered the forest and the resources it held inexhaustible. The concept of sustainability would have been foreign to him, and few people of his time could have anticipated what lay ahead.  Now, with a clear understanding of multiple environmental threats, few of us are responding with justified urgency. 

A warm front moved in and overnight the lawn became an uninterrupted sea of green.  The wood anemones have opened, buckeye leaves are unfurling, wood ducks have claimed the nest boxes.  It’s spring in the northern hemisphere and our planet responds as it has for millions of years, ushering in a glorious season of renewal.  This blue sphere is a life-sustaining marvel but offers no guarantees.  

Oliver could not have anticipated what his city would look like in 2023– the infrastructure and machinery, the technologies and comforts we take for granted.  We are equally uncertain of our future and are deciding whether or not we’ll have one.

Reference: A Home in the Woods, Pioneer Life in Indiana.  Indiana University Press. 

         

All Hail Patagonia!

March arrived with sunshine and warm southerly breezes but then had second thoughts. Within a week the peepers and turtles crawled back in the mud and the daffodil buds were white with frost. We were dealt a string of days with drizzling rain and snow squalls as the sun stayed buried in clouds and temperatures hovered near freezing. They were days not conducive to tending the flower garden or washing the car or getting enthused about much of anything. 

Lee and I were knocked down by Covid a month ago.  The coughing, congestion, and lack of energy are hanging on, and we’re shivering in a seventy degree house trying to satisfy appetites that have suddenly grown ravenous.  Cushy chairs, bowls of munchies, stocking caps and blankets, aren the main attraction. It’s a challenge to get ourselves out the door for a walk along the river. 

I read a piece in The Guardian how Patagonia, the outdoor clothing company, is forging ahead with its commitment to be an earth friendly and sustainable company. It is now making grants available to support activist organizations that work on the root causes of environmental problems. Founder Yvon Chouinard is a visionary, and leads Patagonia with the mantra: Profits Can’t Be Made on a Dead Plant. Imagine the likes of ExxonMobil, Monsanto, or JPMorgan Chase adopting such a creed. Imagine consumers and investors demanding nothing less. 

My friend Jack retired to Sanibel Florida a few years ago. He and his wife had been vacationing on the barrier island and were smitten by its shell-littered beaches, its warm gulf waters, its lush vegetation. Almost seventy percent of the island is permanently protected against development, set aside as a National Wildlife Refuge or private conservation foundation. Building regulations limit height to two stories, landscaping favors native plants, billboards and gaudy, flashing lights are prohibited. The result is a carefully developed island paradise that has not lost its essence, a subtropical destination with an abundance of undisturbed land and more than enough natural beauty.  

Hurricane Ian ravaged the island last September. The average elevation of Sanibel is three feet above sea level. Ian’s surge was ten feet. The causeway connecting the island to the mainland was breached and sections of the road washed away. 

Water swept through Jack’s kitchen, living room, and lower level bedrooms.  I spoke with him after the event and he made it clear they would rebuild.  “It’s too perfect here,” he said. “We were due for a hurricane. This is Florida. It happens.”

A growing number of forward thinkers believe Sanibel is prime for a “managed retreat”, a planned community relocation that comes with government support. It’s a challenging and time consuming process that’s not popular with the folks of Sanibel, most of whom, like Jack, plan to stay. The reality of sea level rise and the threat of more intense and frequent hurricanes do not compete with the appeal of living on a lush subtropical island. 

I’m reminded of a novel, The Light Pirate, where a coastal Florida town is hit hard by a hurricane, and before the town is rebuilt, it gets hit again. In the years that follow, storms and rising seas become the norm. The local government goes bankrupt. Services and jobs disappear, businesses close, residents flee. Only those that planned for this inevitability stay, and they watch their beloved community grow unrecognizable with collapsed buildings, flooded roadways, and windrows of trash and debris. The grid is down permanently. Cell phone and internet towers are nothing more than surveillance perches for raptors. Midday temperatures exceed human tolerance. Excursions to gather food, collect fresh water, glean soap and matches and anything of value from the moldy shelves of flooded big box stores are carried out at dusk or during total darkness to avoid the intense heat. 

It’s a novel that describes in tangible detail a Florida that scientists predict if climate change is not abruptly addressed.  Already, in a growing number of coastal neighborhoods, flooding has become routine. Raising roadways and adding lift stations to failed stormwater sewers are underway. Some city councils are considering moratoriums on new building construction. 

This morning we pushed ourselves out the door into a moderate snow driven by a steady west wind. The first mile required determination, then the sky partially cleared, our cores warmed, our strides lengthened, and we felt more alive than we had in weeks. 

Our family physician tells us everyone will eventually get Covid. Just as surely, everyone is experiencing a world being changed by rising global temperatures and failing ecological systems. The virus caused world wide disruptions in employment, supply chains, and economies. A planet that’s losing the ability to sustain human life will experience havoc of far greater magnitude.  Remedies will likely take generations, not just because the challenges are extremely difficult, but because they lack political will and broad corporate and public support. A new UN report says there are many feasible and effective options to avoid worst case scenarios and they are available now, but urgent action is needed. 

ExxonMobil is showing record profits while being fattened with subsidies from taxpayers and bankrolled by JPMorgan Chase et al.. Monsanto, with its endless stream of herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides, is contributing mightily to a long list of environmental woes while convincing its customers that poisons are in their best interest. Patagonia is producing high quality clothing while becoming ever more sustainable and using its success to keep our planet from dying.  

Not often does a corporation continue to build value not just from quality products and service but from the thoughtful and purposeful way it shares profits.  Patagonia is getting it done. 

 

When So Much Seems So Right

In early January, rainfall in California led to historic flooding as storm systems lined up across the Pacific and brought wave after wave of atmospheric rivers ashore. Reservoirs, long critically low, overflowed. For much of the state, the grip of the megadrought lessened, at least temporarily. 

The event brought snow to the Sierras, more than 300 inches, and the forecast promised additional feet! South Lake Tahoe was buried under billows of powder, its streets flanked with snow banks reaching 8-12 ft or higher. We stepped out the door, clipped our boots into cross country skis, and traveled city streets and sidewalks to the shore of the largest alpine lake in North America, a lake whose crystalline waters run deeper than Superior’s.  We skied among the ponderosa and Jeffrey pines, their boughs heavy with snow, radiant in the sun. They stood in sharp contrast against a blue sky enriched by the blackness of space.  High altitude blue is a color all its own. 

The elephant seals hauled out onto the beaches of coastal California. Breeding bulls gathered harems. Cows gave birth. For several weeks an ancient scene played out as bulls fought and pups were weaned and females were bred.

We hiked the headlands north of Bolinas and stood on a bluff at the edge of the continent. Below us a shale reef parallel to shore was speckled with resting harbor seals, a mix of gulls, a few cormorants. Behind us, within the boundaries of Point Reyes National Seashore, lay pastureland flecked with coyote brush and pocket gopher mounds. A coyote appeared, rolled onto its back to scratch in loose sand, pounced unsuccessfully at something, then strolled past us within 20 feet, showing scant regard.  We saw northern harriers, kestrels, coopers and red tailed hawks, groups of bluebirds and white crowned sparrows, mule deer, a black-tailed jackrabbit, a burrowing owl. 

We happened upon a couple biologists trying to determine the southernmost range of the mountain beaver. When they learned of our Midwest connection one asked about fireflies, and the conversation shifted to a European study showing a dramatic decline in overall insect populations.  “The animal that is the foundation of the food web,” the biologist noted, “is in rapid decline worldwide, and few are talking about it.” He shook his head resolutely before disappearing in the headlands to resume his work.  

We drove to Mount Tamalpais and hiked a canyon trail. A cool rain was falling on the redwoods. The canyon waterways raced and leapt and cascaded among misty ferns and primeval forests. 

So much can look and feel right when so much is wrong. The benchmarks we use to define environmental quality are always in a state of flux.  Populations of birds, insects, fish, mammals, the number and extent of areas wild and undisturbed, the health of soils and oceans, are nearly all in steady or dramatic decline. We look at what we have, recognize the good, adjust the benchmark and resume living as we do. 

Lee and I recently realized that in the past year we saw fewer house flies than butterflies, and far fewer butterflies than usual. We saw no more than a few dozen grasshoppers, a smattering of snakes and frogs, zero June bugs, and the number of insects drawn to the summer evening porch light was slim. As of mid February, ice covered only six percent of the Great Lakes, compared to an average of 41 percent, and sea ice globally was the lowest on record. In the past 50 years, world animal populations have decreased nearly 70 percent. 

We made a road trip to west coast destinations and in the process pumped over 9000 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere. We returned to find canada geese showing interest in nest islands, to sandhill cranes winging northward, to an intensity of bird song that seemed unusual for mid February.  And, this morning, a single golden eagle winged its way over the pond. 

Finding the good in our environment is a healthy habit and a source of hope, but recognizing what has been lost and what we’re losing keeps our objectives grounded in reality. It shows us what happens when destructive practices are not abandoned, when opportunities for curative actions are missed. It allows a truer perspective when so much still seems so right. 

A Roadkill and a Dream of a Better World

The call came after dark on a cold and rainy November evening: there was a road-killed deer south of town, ours for the taking. When we arrived a squad car was directing a spotlight on a buck lying at the base of a slope, several yards off the roadway.  It was a big deer, well over 200 pounds, wearing a headdress of eight polished points. The investigating officer had to put the animal down. 

There was little external sign of injury except a rear leg broken at the knee. Field dressing and processing would show there had been a spinal injury, enough to disable the deer’s hind quarters.

It was an unfortunate end to a beautiful animal, just entering the prime of life. Tooth wear indicated the buck was two and a half years old. A deer in the wild can live up to 10 years, though few do, particularly males which are selectively targeted by hunters. 

Almost immediately after a deer dies there is a dramatic change in its eyes— an attentive and alert gleam gives way to dullness.  It is common among mammals, explained by a lack of blood flow and a breakdown in neurological function. But it can seem that something bigger has happened, something grand and ghostly. 

The native Americans embraced a belief in animal spirits, and most world religions make reference to a sentient if not a spiritual existence among nonhumans.  The question begs consideration at that somber moment when the light in the eyes of a whitetail fades. It persists, days later, as meat is meticulously cut from bone, packaged and frozen.  It returns when the backstrap is searing on hot cast iron, when preparing steak fajitas, meat balls, smoked summer sausage, shepherd's pie. 

In a world where most wild populations are in steep decline, white tailed deer are holding their own, sometimes thriving to the point of nuisance within city limits and protected parks.  Over much of their range they are the only significant big game animal, observed frequently, almost universally appreciated.  They rely on instinct, wit, and learned behaviors to find their way. They are given little consideration if their habitat is lessened or destroyed by urban sprawl, infrastructure or agriculture.They, like all wild species, exist mostly on the shirttails of man’s ambition. Their forced objective is to survive in spite of us. 

I don’t think much about the animal that provides my morning bacon. A grunting, rooting, coarse-haired ungulate is less endearing, despite its proven superior intelligence. But appearance and intelligence has little influence on our demand for pork chops, barbecued ribs, ham, and sausage. Almost one and a half billion hogs are slaughtered annually worldwide.

Before reaching the killing floor, before the light fades from their eyes following a short life, the vast majority of hogs are raised in an environment far removed from what they would have chosen.  Advocates say that animals raised in factory farms are pampered relative to their wild counterparts, fed rations developed by nutrition scientists, given easy access to water and shelter. If they get sick, a licensed veterinarian is standing by.

In a recent airing of NPR’s Living on Earth, author Frances Moore Lappe talked about the high environmental costs of meat production and the urgent need to adjust our diets to one that is more plant-based.  According to Lappe, our food system globally contributes almost 37 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and about 40 percent of that is from the livestock sector.  Of equal significance, industrialized agriculture, as it stands, will not feed a planet of eight billion people and counting (https://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=22-P13-00046&segmentID=1).  

There are new, promising technologies. Our grocery shelves may soon include meat that is biosynthetically produced using selected animal cells, grown without a living animal that requires food, water, and housing. A California firm is one step closer to earning USDA approval using the technology (https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/food-and-farms/climate-friendlier-meat-just-got-a-step-closer-to-your-plate).  

There is also work being done with Precision fermentation, a refined form of brewing, where microbes are multiplied to create specific products.  One method uses microbes that feed on hydrogen, water, carbon dioxide and fertilizer to manufacture a flour containing 60 percent protein, compared with only 37 percent found in soybeans, and the process requires 1700 times less land mass (https://apple.news/A9dWnaLjHSCmZGYh0EbhPhg). 

Millions of acres now used to grow animal feeds might soon be producing foods we consume directly, with much improved efficiency. With more corn and bean acreage up for grabs, hemp may finally be brought to scale, providing a superior alternative for manufacturing paper and fabric and building materials that are actually carbon negative, all from a crop requiring little or no chemical inputs. Even more exciting, with less demand on acreage for food production, rewilding could enter the mainstream and bring with it our greatest hope for storing carbon, controlling climate disruption, and halting the sixth great extinction. 

Maybe there’s a world in the near-future free of confinement livestock operations and killing floors. In that world, perhaps they’ll be autonomous vehicles so advanced that collisions involving deer will all but disappear. It’s an encouraging possibility. But for now, there is a hundred pounds of fresh venison in the freezer from an animal that will be long appreciated. His spirit, or whatever it was that put the spark in his eyes, lives on. 

A Connecting Thread

We are driving 650 miles north, to a cabin in the Algoma wilderness. For 23 years it’s been our escape from the routine, a place of solitude, a link to the boreal forest and its maze of rivers and lakes.  A colleague once said unless his travels took him beyond the eastern deciduous forests he really hadn’t gone anywhere. I’m inclined to agree. 

The cabin overlooks the Michipicoten River, less than 20 miles from where its tannin-tinged waters empty into Lake Superior. Upstream, by way of a chain of lakes, rivers, and portages, a wilderness traveler eventually heads downstream to the great James and Hudson Bays. In a different era the voyageurs loaded with furs and trade goods would have passed the very spot we see from our cabin window. Today the route is interrupted with hydroelectric dams and water control structures, but the wild country— a land of cedar, pine, fir, spruce, birch and aspen— remains as a million square miles of contiguous forest stretching from Alaska to Newfoundland. 

It’s quiet there in November, almost eerily. In an entire day the silence may be broken not more than once by the chatter of a chickadee or a raven’s raucous squawk. But there is solace knowing that bears, moose, lynx, and wolves are in proximity, and there are an array of songbirds every spring. The forest stores 208 billion tons of carbon, critical in a world where atmospheric CO2 has reached concentrations exceeding anything humans have ever experienced.  

There is a wholesomeness in hauling water by the bucketful from the river, in warming a chilled cabin with heat from a crackling wood stove, in finding ourselves unplugged from the world except for two radio stations whose broadcasts reach us. There’s value in having the essence of fir and spruce fill our lungs with every breath, with letting the wind and water steer our skiff as we drift downriver, in landing a 30-inch pike following a hard fought battle. Time spent in the north is contentment grounded in the simple and uncomplicated, where daily living is reduced to the basics, where an eagle soaring overhead or a beaver cruising upriver is entertainment enough. 

Our stay is short, and too soon we’re back home, plugged into our devices, drawn into political battles and a world of crises. But still fresh in our memories is a place of reverence and simplicity, a place that lifts our spirits, resets our priorities and refuels our resolve to focus on worthy causes.

This morning I heard a white-throated sparrow sing. He’s left his seasonal home in the north to overwinter here. His experience, the quality of habitat he finds, will determine whether or not he’ll return to his breeding grounds next spring. He sings in the spruce-fir and he sings in the oak-hickory and both destinations are crucial to his existence; two ecotypes explicitly connected by a traveling songbird. 

No place and no thing is truly isolated. The fish we catch in the north contain levels of mercury, emitted from industrial sources and carried hundreds or thousands of miles on air and circumpolar river currents. Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment warns of eating more than one meal of fish per week. Whitetail deer in Maine and several other states have meat tainted with dangerous levels of PFAS, forever chemicals used in household products such as cosmetics and detergents and non-stick cookware, that follow a connecting thread from contaminated soil and water to wild ungulates. PFAS are not restricted to deer— they are widespread in our water supplies, in the soil and some of the foods we eat, in the air we breathe— we carry them in our blood. 

A coral reef dies from ocean acidification and 25 percent of marine life is disrupted. A warming climate melts glaciers and influences weather patterns, threatening water supplies in some regions while flooding others. Midwest farmers, homeowners, and turf managers, send nitrogen and phosphorus down the Mississippi and 6000 square miles in the Gulf of Mexico become lifeless. The Living Planet Report from the World Wildlife Fund and Zoological Society of London shows a nearly 70% decline in vertebrate wildlife populations since 1970 due to such things as habitat loss, over harvest, pollution, and climate stress. Declines send ripples if not tsunamis across ecosystems and are never without consequence. 

We talked about these things on a still November afternoon as we sat next to a fire on the Canadian Shield. Accepting that nothing acts alone or independently is a way of making the earth a smaller, more intimate space, where a flippant or less than reverent regard for the environment should never exist. But that is not our history, and even as we better understand our place in the ecological community, our response to the damage we inflict remains far from adequate.

The wind shifted overnight and is blowing straight in from the north.  I convince myself I detect the essence of spruce-fir flanking the Michipicoten River, and take a deep breath to feel the connection.  If it’s all in my head, there is still a sparrow singing in the back yard that is truly linked to a place where simplicity reigns and contentment is found in the rudimentary. The connection spans 650 miles then continues on, linking an entire planet with common fiber, binding everything together with magnificent purpose.  Nothing is unattached.