September is Watching

September came with a purpose and a declaration: summer’s hot and sultry air would be archived and September would take immediate control with cool nights and perfectly ideal afternoons.  And suddenly the subtle transitions that mark the beginning of the end of seasonal growth— the nodding heads and drying leaves of ripened sunflower, the goldenrod ablaze in yellow, the seeds of milkweed adrift in the slightest breeze— came into perfect focus.  The old dog saw it and spun in circles before sprinting off in no particular direction and for no apparent reason.  She moves at a fraction of her former speed, but old bones can still be filled with the spirit of September.  

It won’t last, this perfection, but it’s highly probable the doldrums of summer are gone and any bonafide heat from here out will be short lived.  Meteorological fall has commenced, the days are growing shorter.  Morning mist rises from the pond, its waters cooling, a fish flicks the surface.  We weed the strawberries, perhaps for the last time.  The potatoes are dug and put to cure in the root cellar.  Migrating birds by the tens of millions pass overhead at night.  A timeless energy flows as adaptive behaviors and responses initiate and a season of dormancy draws near.

The other day there were four young wood ducks on the pond.  Today, there are two.  On a trail through the woods we found a pile of feathers shining with the blue and green iridescence of woodies.  Among the feathers were bones picked clean, and a string of whitewash to indicate precisely where an avian predator stood, there among the lobelia and tick seed of September, as energy was passed one to another.  

I ran into an acquaintance at the coffee shop yesterday.  She was bubbly, clearly happy as we exchanged pleasantries.  Then the conversation shifted to world events, and in an instant her face fell to express dire concern.  “It’s a bad dream that will not end and nothing will ever be the same,” she said.  There is a great divide in our country and she gave no indication on which side she stood. These days it can be hard to tell. 

September is neutral on the matter.  She favors neither side, but simply fills her days with whatever magic she can muster.  Over many millennia her routine has changed, and is changing now.  Components of the atmosphere have shifted, species abundance and diversity have lessened, air and ocean currents behave differently, ice is disappearing.  September considers it all, adjusts, and moves on. We take what she delivers.  For the moment, under clear Midwestern skies, ideal temperatures, and an explosion of late summer flowers, all seems perfect.  She’s good at glossing over the rough spots, initiating subtle changes in colors, introducing change.  Late in the month she’ll tease us with hints of reds and yellows, then pass the pleasure to October.

She is like a protective parent, shielding us from the harsh realities of the world; like a wounded commander that never divulges her injuries lest the troops lose heart.  She offers tough love, trusting us to see the error in our ways or face the consequences they bring.  This she shares with her eleven siblings, documenting time and seasons cued by ancient rhythms.  Over the eons they bore witness to an endless array of evolutionary change and adaptation, saw major setbacks, stood by as a superior intelligence developed and spread across the planet, plundering its resources. Errors were made and have led to great challenges that are not yet beyond repair. 

There is still time. Not much. September will take note. 

August

August was named for Augustus Caesar, the first Roman emperor, who lived from 63 B.C to A.D 14.  Much of the month is included in the dog days of summer, when the hottest days typically occur, when dogs and men alike tend to go mad from the heat.  It’s a big month for vacationing, for home canning, for swimming in lakes when water temperatures are at a seasonal high.  It’s a month when warm, humid nights are alive with the drone of cicadas, katydids and crickets, when summer, though still firmly engaged, begins to show evidence of submission.

Bird migration has begun, and almost daily we see swifts, swallows and martins winging their way south in loose groups.  The orioles have left, shorebirds are on the move, grackles and blackbirds gather in fall flocks.  Restless.  Flighty.

In the garden, ripened sunflower seeds are picked clean by goldfinches.  Overripe tomatoes plop to the ground.  Potato vines wither. Butterflies and hummingbirds stock up on nectar from zinnias at the garden edge.  Three months ago we were dropping seeds in the ground, and today the freezer and pantry are full to bursting.  

In spring it’s easy to take notice of toothworts and Dutchman’s breeches and bloodroot.  Spring flowers garner worthy attention as they light up forest floors awakened from winter dormancy.  The flowers of late summer are no less varied, abundant, and impressive but many aren’t fussed over so much, perhaps because things green and growing have become routine and we’ve stopped looking.  We can’t help but notice field thistles and goldenrods and giant sunflowers, but the less obvious knotweeds, skullcaps, bugleweeds, willowherbs, snakeroots, and nearly endless others, are often met with little more than a casual glance.

Maybe it’s anticipation. We look forward to spring wildflowers as indicators of a new season, a clean slate.  By the time August rolls around we’re caught in the summer doldrums, hardened by heat and a sea of green, and maybe not so thrilled by yet another flower, especially if it doesn’t stand out.

But summer is ebbing.  It shows in the walnuts that litter the woodland trail, in the stickseed entangled in the dog’s fur. It’s there in the sound of hickory nuts banging off the metal roof of the pole barn.  And soon a spell of hot weather will be short-lived and the nights will be cooler and we’ll rummage through dressers for sweatshirts and socks. The fields will brown, the trees will take on new color, and the night insects will grow quiet.  Frost is still weeks away but its promise is shown in August.

Our two sons are somewhere high in the sierras, carrying their provisions on their backs.  They are hiking across one hundred million year old granite, following waterways at 10,000 ft and higher, exploring the western backbone of the US, a place naturalist John Muir called the Range of Light.  Knowing them as I do, the boys will not be blind to the details they encounter, and they’ll view that spectacular alpine country through eyes that recognize how fragile and vulnerable it is.  All around them the fires burn, the land dries, the drought intensifies.  The worst of the California fire season typically comes in September and October, but already there are over 800 more fires burning a million acres beyond the average for this time of year.  California, and other many western states, are breaking long held norms.

August falls in hurricane season and a mean storm has struck Louisiana.  The region braces for 150 mph winds and intense flooding.

In comparison, those of us in the Midwest are fairing pretty well.  There are areas that could use rain and others that have had too much.  It’s hot, and right now that’s about all the weather drama we can muster.  There’s plenty of other drama, of course, plenty to get worked up over, much of it beyond our control.  

Paraphrasing a post from Wyoming resident John Roedel, we live on a spinning wet rock next to a constantly exploding fireball in the middle of an ever-expanding universe filled with mysteries beyond our wildest imagination. We’re hurtling through the great expanse with billions of people who have free-will and whose own experiences shape their perspectives and beliefs. And while this is going on our souls are residing in a physical body, a miracle of delicate engineering, which at any given moment could produce its last heartbeat. So, what is it we think we control?

There is an abundance of small but dramatic August flowers blooming.  Look for them.

Rational Conclusions

 

A woman who was a classmate through grade and high school is now one of hundreds of thousands who have died of Coronavirus. Maybe she had made every effort to avoid the virus and was simply an unfortunate victim, or maybe she was confused by misinformation surrounding the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine.  Regardless, her perpetual smile is gone, and a life fueled by hope and marked by kindness is no more. 

The debate over mask mandates continues and is now an embarrassing political game. If ever we have strained at gnats and swallowed camels it is now, as we bemoan a minor inconvenience in favor of  a far greater threat. An op ed written by a 14 year old Florida Parkland student says it perfectly: https://www.orlandosentinel.com/opinion/guest-commentary/os-op-schools-masks-keep-politics-out-20210811-tl2qby2b3bgybivv2boe26ylji-story.html. 

I read that tourist businesses on Lake Powell are being threatened by the mega drought.  Some feel the national parks service is to blame with its failure to extend boat launch ramps to reach receding water levels.  “They (the NPS) are allowing a beautiful, beautiful place to fall apart.” The man with the grievance made no mention of climate change or the ramifications of not having water for hydroelectric power or irrigation or people, but rather stuck to the problem of launching a houseboat without a suitable ramp.

The other night there was a small gathering at the Black Dog Tavern to wish a local couple bon voyage as they prepare to embark on a new life in the North Carolina mountains.  There were only eight of us, and it was one of very few gatherings my wife and I had attended since COVID reared its ugly face.   It was also, I soon realized, the first time in nearly two years that I was at a table with a group of politically identical folks, and it was incredibly refreshing. It is one thing to feel connected to an online commentator and quite another to be at a table of peers carved from the same log. 

With the shroud of American presence removed in Afghanistan, the Taliban are resuming their conquest and are wasting no time at it.  How hopeful they must feel to be free of constraints in forcing their beliefs on the Afghan people.  They have persevered and are reaping, in their minds, a just reward.

We recently listened to an NPR Science Friday report on orca whales.  It’s long been known that orcas have strong and permanent family units.  The old matriarchs, with their long life experiences, will lead the pod to known sources of food in times of scarcity.  It’s also known they mourn the loss of members.  In one documented case, a mother carried its dead newborn a thousand miles before the corpse was dropped or literally disintegrated.  The pods around Puget Sound rely on chinook salmon for food, and the chinook are disappearing as a result of human activities.  Orcas are not the only mammal that values chinook, and efforts to bring them back carry with them a cascade of environmental benefits.

There was an article in the New Yorker on why it is so hard to be rational, and it made me think of the rational people I know and how well it has served them and how the world might benefit from a wave of rational thinking.  We are bombarded with news and endless opinions, and it is easy to get swept up by emotion and half truths or falsehoods and to turn a blind eye toward rational conclusions.  I came across a 

social media post from a pastor in upper Michigan: “Our minds are easily influenced, but we control what the influences are.  Choose wisely.”

August is waning.  Areas of the garden that grew sweetcorn and onions and cucumbers are ready for winter cover crop.  There was a heavy fog this morning and the nests of fall webworms, particularly common this year, were heavy with water droplets and glowing a soft white.  In the woodlot the white snakeroot is blooming, as is blue cardinal flower and wingstem and others that mark the last weeks of summer.  The forecast calls for hot and dry weather.  Parts of Tennessee received more than 14 inches of rain in just a few hours, causing incredible damage and loss of life.  A tropical system brought in moisture which accumulated in an ever warming atmosphere and resulted in an atmospheric river that emptied on central Tennessee. Physics in action.  No rational thought required.

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Rhubarb Pie to Revive a Guy

In the pond, a few bluegills spared by the otters built nests this summer.  Each nest can hold 6000-18000 eggs, and they face grave danger from the outset, with less than one half of one percent resulting in fish that die of old age.  Thirty out of every 6000.

The capacity of the earth to replenish itself is impressive.  Many species low on the food chain produce massive numbers of offspring.  Among insects, the cabbage aphid may be the champion.  Under perfect conditions a single female could, in one year’s time, spawn enough descendants to cover the earth to a depth of 90 miles!  But since perfect conditions don’t exist, most aphids are quickly lost to predation by birds and other insects.   Generally, larger animals have fewer young, but there are exceptions. Female ocean sunfish weighing up to two tons can release 300 million eggs at a time, but most never get fertilized or are eaten by foraging fishes. Everything’s connected, seeking balance, beautifully functional.

We grow cucumbers on trellises, A-frames made of four foot wire panels.  This year we had two trellises three feet apart, each holding eight plants.   We pick cukes when they’re small and bristly, prime for pickling, and this year’s crop has been good.  There are 65 pints of pickles in the pantry, refrigerator dills for good measure, and we’ve given away over 100 pounds of surplus.  The space between trellises is filled with vines that extend into the yard and are growing up adjacent tomato cages and threatening to cover pepper plants and anything else that gets in their way.

Like all living things, a cucumber plant is driven to procreate.  Removing small cukes with their immature seeds spurs the plant to produce more fruit, not unlike stealing eggs from a laying hen.  The push to procreate and replicate is strong and mutations are part of the process, which helps explain the Delta variant.  With more than half the world unvaccinated the virus has a great playground where it experiments on cooperative and willing hosts.

In spite of my best efforts there are cucumbers I miss and they grow large and yellow and are filled with mature seeds so the plant succeeds in its objective.  Nature always wins.  We’re just players in her orchestra who sometimes pretend to be smarter and more capable.  We develop poisons to kill weeds, she develops super weeds, immune to our chemicals.  We abuse soil, she washes or blows it away.  We remove key components from established ecosystems, she removes services we deem essential.  We overpopulate and abuse land and lay resources to waste, she will ultimately thin us out like so many aphids.  Her checks and balances are finely tuned and not open to compromise.

The earth constantly regenerates resources and ecological services but every year we’re using more than can be replaced.  This year, we used our annual allotment on July 29th, so from here on out we’re in the red.  The date is known as Earth Overshoot Day and in recent history has been occurring in July.  In 2020, the influence of the pandemic moved the date back by a month to August 22, still four months shy of where we need to be.

My wife had a birthday recently and her request was a rhubarb pie. I made her one using my mom’s hand written, lard-heavy pie crust recipe and rhubarb from the freezer.  It turned out superb, if I do say so myself.  We ate a piece right after Lee summarized the news of the day: cattle starving and being sold months early due to drought, sweet onions in the NW completely destroyed by intense heat, California fighting its third largest fire in history, scientists becoming increasingly alarmed over changes in the Gulf Stream.  I was reminded of a little ditty Garrison Keillor did on his Prairie Home Companion radio show: Beebopareebop rhubarb pie.  “One little thing can revive a guy, and that’s a piece of rhubarb pie.  Serve it up, nice and hot, maybe things aren’t as bad as you thought.”  And for just a little while, they weren’t.

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.