But it’s difficult to keep the beauty of this sacred month from being tamped down with the panic that’s settled into the pit of my stomach. A yellow lab I once knew swallowed a tennis ball, and I imagine she felt something similar. Most of my conversations these days revolve around the phrase “I just don’t know what more we can possibly do”; so here’s an inspiring story of the act of resistance of one young woman, the now former snow reporter for Sugarbush ski area.

For those of us lucky enough to have yards, a windowsill, or a community garden, there is also much we can do. Bees and caterpillars will be emerging soon, and birds are already migrating. They are all concerned with this moment, and not weighed down with political affairs. So to help them in the here-and-now, empty bird houses promptly and clean out bird baths. It’s okay to rake leaves off of early bloomers, like bulbs, but for the rest of the yard, this is when procrastination pays. Delay cleaning up most of the dried leaves and stalks until it’s consistently been above 50 degrees, otherwise you risk disturbing beneficial insects overwintering there.

March is also a good time to start seedlings inside, and to do a bit of spring cleaning around the house to refresh the spirit. Speaking of that, another mood raiser is to keep a naturalist observation and/or sketch notebook. Write down what animals you see, what plants are blooming, and other happenings and thoughts. Over time it will make you feel more connected with and observant of the outside world — and that connection brings both mental and physical health benefits. Over time, your notebook might also become a valuable scientific resource, to document how nature is changing in this Brave New World.

I usually get a little more esoteric with this newsletter, but I know we’re already overwhelmed with thinking about all of the crap going on in our failing country, and its dwindling values of kindness and acceptance, not to mention its collective lack basic self-preservation instinct.

So, for that, let me just say: Be aware. Try to stay in touch with what is going on. Protest for injustices, and especially our public lands, because we’re on the verge of a major land grab. Once the Endangered Species Act and similar safeguards are undermined, our public lands will be sold to the wealthiest class, who intend to scrape them off, pave them over, fence them in, cut them down, and dig them up. The powers that be have been salivating over that for decades, and now the leash is off. And for those in the west, consider subscribing to the High Country News, an excellent source of journalism.

But also, take breaks so you can stay sane. It’s imperative to find time to laugh, to walk, to sing and dance, to meditate, and to spread kindness. Some of our greatest joys come during the times of our greatest strife. Because that is when we are really present for life. Think of the Vietnam War and Civil Rights era. Those who went through it have told me that the only way cope with the horrors was to balance them with as much creativity and playfulness as they could muster.

Make your inner light something that no oppression can extinguish. Spend as much time as you can with loved ones.

And go spider spotting. We recently did this while visiting a naturalist friend in the Florida Keys. Pointed at just the right angle, we could see what looked like dozens of green dewdrops — which were actually the eyes of countless spiders. Wherever you live, chances are you can go spider spotting, too.

And finally, here is our family calendar for March. See you in April.

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If you see one in your yard, congratulations! You have an ecosystem going on. If you have a rat or insect problem, snakes are part of the solution. (With exception, of course, for venomous snakes. They are perfect in nature, but not in your garden. Facebook groups can help identify them, and animal control or the police or fire department can remove them humanely.)

It’s a bit early in most of the country for luring snakes into our yards or otherwise tending to our outside spaces, but now is the time to plan for spring. A few ideas:

Put up birdhouses, so they’re ready for nesting season.

Spread native grass and wildflower seeds. Especially if you live in a snowy area, they’ll go through their natural cycle of freezing, which helps them germinate. The melting snow will also help them get on their way with less supplemental water.

Transplant. For many plants, it’s ideal to transplant them now, while they’re still dormant.

And, what not to do:

Try not to rake the fallen leaves. Wait until after the spring birds have fledged, if you can, since they will need the caterpillars and other invertebrates that are hiding in that leaf litter.

Try not to till your soil. There’s a lot of newish evidence that the microscopic community thrives on undisturbed soil, so your gardening will be all the better for it. Google a few alternatives.

Definitely don’t put out any sort of poison, especially for rodents and insects. Those quickly move up the food chain, killing raptors and songbirds alike. Instead, create a biodiverse yard that will naturally balance itself — like with snakes!

Speaking of snakes, while we’re taking a moment to change our perception of them, let’s also let their transformative nature help us rethink a few other concepts, which we tend to swallow as gospel.

1. Our “progress” of shaping the land, uprooting it, dousing it in chemicals, and otherwise forcing it into the box and purpose we think it should be used for, should not be considered normal. It is a form of violence. But it’s often difficult for us to see it as such because this violence has been so normalized. We’re told it’s necessary for our survival, even, when in fact, the opposite is true. We are part of the land, beholden to it. Yes, of course we need mining and such, but we need to minimize those impacts, not just maximize the profits of a few. Finding elegant ways of working in cooperation with nature will ultimately be the only way for future generations to thrive.

2. Growth is not good. The same masterminds who gave us the above definition of “progress” also insist that growth capitalism is the only possible economy. But logic, and math, tell a different story.

f(x) = a(1+r)x

That’s the equation for exponential growth. It’s something that all of us, and especially our policy makers, should be required to learn. Luckily, it’s an exceedingly simple concept that goes something like this:

If you have a 7% growth rate per year, then whatever it is that you are measuring will double in ten years. For example, if our plastic use grows at 7%, then in 2035 we will use twice the amount of plastic that we used in 2025. It also means that between 2025 and 2035 we will use more plastic than we did during the entire time from when we invented the material through today.

Apply this to carbon dioxide and methane. Apply this to the number of houses we need, and the land they overtake. Apply this to the number of forests that must be cut down. The number of ecosystems that must be upended for mining. Then imagine 2045, at which time 2035’s sprawl has doubled yet again.

Granted, a 7% growth rate is high for these examples. Plastic use is predicted to grow by more like 4% during the next decade, which means a doubling rate of 17.5 years. I’ve heard city councils talk about a target 3% growth rate, which sounds small, but translates to their town’s population doubling in 24 years — a concept they likely aren’t grasping.

Yet this is a very easy concept. But for some reason, few people acknowledge it.

3. Economists are fretting over flattening population growth rates, to the extent that Russia has outlawed media from depicting happy childless couples. Hey folks, forcing women to have more kids isn’t the solution. Instead we need an economy that isn’t dependent on growth. Because no matter how much the Wall Street brokers, real estate agents, and makers of throw-away furniture want to ignore the fact that we live on a finite planet, one way or another a growth economy is not going to end well. Better for us to rethink it now, then to wait until we’re packed together in the megastructures of a dystopian future, where everyone wants to hear tales of what trees looked like.

Great observations, but what can any of us possibly do about it?

As we enter the Year of the Snake — Year of the Wood Snake to be precise — it feels like we have zero control over anything. We’re being intentionally divided on every level, even over what to call our country’s highest, sacred peak, down to the name of the nurturing wetlands and waters of the Gulf.

But, there are a few things we do have control over. We have the ability to realize we are all fingers on the same hand. All humans. All animals. All plants. All fungi and soil bacteria. With that knowledge, we have the free will to instead work to normalize kindness. Kindness to all beings and ecosystems.

One way to do that is to denormalize our consumeristic growth culture. No more idolizing excess; instead let’s buy only what we need, and look beyond material goods for ways to bring joy to our souls.

The other, and most important way, is to be here for one another. Let’s make strength and courage our hallmarks. And instead of asserting our dominance over the land, and one another, let’s take our little patches of earth and help them become ecosystems, free of poisons and rich with native plants to feed our wild cousins. One small, yet radical step toward change.

Whether you have a humble windowsill or a backyard field, even small gestures toward rewilding it will make a big difference — both for the tiny creatures who have lost so much, as well as for the gratification and sense of control we get from being positive catalysts. In this swirling circus of anger and separation engulfing us, making those connections with nature keeps our own inner ecosystems resilient and transformative.

In other words, it helps to think like a snake.

As the editor of the High Country News recently wrote: “Ultimately, it's up to each of us to decide which side of the balance our efforts will fall on. Have we given back? Have we volunteered, planted, honored, protected, donated, cared for, safeguarded, stewarded and restored more than we destroyed, denuded, consumed, abandoned or passively disregarded? The beginning of a new year is an excellent time to take stock, make a course correction or decide to double down in the year ahead. If we all leave the place better than we found it, it will be a more beautiful world.”

In the coming months, I’ll share more concrete ideas for rewilding our spaces, so we can help with those sentiments. In the meantime, there are a lot of resources out there. Especially consider joining the Homegrown National Park movement.

And, finally, for those of us who use the Roman calendar, here’s the February installment of our family calendar.

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A thousand miles away, my friends in LA are surrounded by heat, and some are wondering if their homes have burned down. The natural communities there are also aflame: hills covered with scrubby oak, chaparral, and sage, which are home to coyotes, tortoises, bluebirds, countless insects, and so many others.

It’s jarring and tragic. And it sucks to be powerless.

In nature, however, fire is ultimately a great re-generator, a necessary change to cleanse the old and give opportunities for new life to sprout. But this takes time. Weeks for the first grasses to poke through the ashes and the deer to start wandering through. Years for the bushes to grow full. Decades for trees to regrow, if they are even able to now with the changed climate. Still, it is a fascinating process to watch.

People, too, are extraordinarily resilient after natural disasters. I saw this happen when we lived in the Florida Keys, just yards away from where they marked the official landfall of Hurricane Irma (a Cat 4). We were lucky; our house remained mostly intact, but the community devastation was deep.

It was immediately uplifting to see how neighbors came together and helped one another out, and there will surely be such touching tales coming from LA, too. Those are important stories to tell, as they remind us of the good we are each capable of doing. They also help us get past the deep sorrow and burden of loss. But what the media rarely reports on is the collective PTSD that blankets communities in the aftermath, and lingers for years.

There isn’t much support on the ground for this either. Headlines fade after a week or two, and people who are not there don’t know of the difficult tasks that continue to overwhelm life for months and years. So if you have gone through a natural disaster, or have friends who have been through one, just be aware of that, and ask what you can do to help, or to get help for yourself. And remember, that humans are part of nature, and thus we too, eventually, get to partake in the positive regeneration process, with new possibilities sprouting from the ashes (no matter how impossible this feels at the present moment).

This also makes me think of the natural world around us, and the collective PTSD humans have inflicted on the land, the scars of ripping up native flora for development (under the misnomer of “progress”), the poisons that we continue to add to the soil, water, and air via chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and the animals we have terrorized for generations, intentionally for sport and profit, and unintentionally with walls, highways, and fences, and constant bombardment with traffic noise and light pollution.

Any one of us doesn’t have the power to change our growth-centric society — an economic system that fully depends on the destruction of nature — but we can help to heal those wounds in our own small spaces, by making our yards and public spaces safe for our cousins, the birds and bunnies, bees and beetles. Going forward, one of the main focuses of this newsletter will be expanding on this theme with specific ideas and suggested actions as the year unfolds.

But in the meantime, start with step 1: Think about the wild ones you share space with, and how your yard or space looks from their perspective.

Then think about how to help each place and each being you touch (human or otherwise) be a little more uplifted than when you entered there or met them.

As this year unfolds politically, and as natural disasters worsen, seeing ourselves as part of a greater community will be vital to our resilience. Or as writer Rebecca Solnit recently put it, “Taking care of something else is as important as taking care of yourself… We’re entering a psychotic carnival of separateness, and interdependence is going to be something to hold onto.”

This year, I hope we can put love into action, give back, and strive for honesty, equity, and ethical decision making — in the way we treat one another, and the way we treat the land. Let’s be present for all of our moments. Let’s be here, together. And don’t forget to laugh, whenever you can!

In other news, each year Steve and I create a calendar for our family, with thoughts and photographs gathered from the previous year. This year I’d like to share it with you.

Here is January’s, better late than never!

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Taking down time during this particular December feels especially important. With such unstable times swirling on the horizon, it’s a good time to strengthen our foundations. I’ve been giving thanks to my body with good food and exercise, plus seeking out laughter. I’ve also and put focus on our home, acknowledging it as peaceful, sacred space. I’ve cleaned and organized the cupboards. We emptied the storage shed, finally. And Steve built a magnificent tree-inspired bookshelf.

The bookshelf is already paying off, as I’m finally opening a slew of gems I’ve been meaning to make time for (for years). I’m particularly liking a collection of essays by Edward Abbey, called “One Life at a Time, Please.” The first one is about the myth of cowboys — and more importantly the scourge of cattle — on western public lands. If you have ever read any Abbey, you’ll know it’s more entertaining than my description just made it sound.

For the last six weeks, nearly everyone I’ve talked to has been feeling a similar need to withdraw (though maybe “regroup” would be a better aim). Many of my friends have also expressed a sudden urge to clean house and create art. This is one positive consequence of traumatic times. Like the music revolution in the ‘60s, art is a form of healing, exploration, and resistance. So pick up the paintbrush and guitar, and know that you are not alone.

Fostering nature is another form of art. I was talking with some folks at the National Wildlife Federation last week, and one of their pushes for 2025 is to encourage us to create tiny native plant gardens in urban areas. These help reconnect migration corridors and foster biodiversity, plus add more nature into our lives, which feels good and helps us remember how we’re connected to a dazzling community of countless life forms.

But beyond that, the idea of mini gardens comes at an especially evocative time — to me, these little oases are micro pockets of resistance — one positive action, where we can make a difference, in a world where it’s otherwise easy to feel helpless. I’m looking forward to growing this idea, literally.

“You can’t save everything, but anything you can save is worthwhile,” said writer Rebecca Solnit during a recent zoom, which included Terry Tempest Williams and other wise women, hosted by the Upaya Zen Center in New Mexico.

Yes.

Anything you can save is worthwhile.

Any moment you are truly present deserves celebration.

Any laugh out loud will spread.

Any time taken to contemplate, imagine, or just be still is not wasted.

We are all connected to everything on this pale blue dot, hurling through the universe at unfathomable speed. So whatever happens next, know you are not alone.

Before I sign off, just two other tidbits:

I highly recommend this newsletter by Annie Sand, whose prose are artistic, hopeful, and strikingly in tune with the time. Here is one of her essays she suggested I share, which is particularly poignant, though all of them are worth the read.

Next, Steve has been up to something this fall. With our abandoned house project coming to a close, he set his sites on finally building a workshop, so he can make his own creations possible. It has been inspiring to watch what he and one other friend have accomplished over just a couple of months.

See you in 2025, friends. And in the meantime, don’t forget to find reasons to laugh, create, get outside, and appreciate everything we have in this wild, wondrous world.

A parting shot…

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I feel anger and frustration knowing there are tens of millions of Americans who, though their narrow lens, aren’t at all concerned that they’re going to vote for the destruction of such wonders, with little thought but of maintaining the status-quo of their precious baubles and prized misconceptions.

I’m wondering if is okay to have these negative emotions. Ultimately, anger, angst, and sorrow are natural parts of our psyche. But perhaps where they go awry lies in what we do with them once they arise. Handling that is where our responsibility lies.

Do we hang onto them? Embed them in our identity? Amplify them in others? Or simply acknowledge them as they surface, so they may gently pass like a wave on a vast sea.

Many of those who are voting against nature — with the delusion that we are separate from it, so we have the right to use it up, control it, or otherwise box it out of our lives like some distant inconvenience — seem to harbor more than the typical burden of anger. And I kind of get it. It’s easy to hate. Easier still to be fearful, then compensate for that fear with anger, because anger makes us feel powerful.

Yet throwing angry thoughts into the world actually demonstrates fundamental weakness. A bravado, crafted only to fool ourselves. Like a dog barking blindly into the darkness, to scare off an imaginary predator.

When we wear so much anger, our faces change, becoming stern and misshapen. And boring. Inside, anger blocks out our imagination and creativity by causing us to take ourselves preposterously seriously. Anger encourages us to see ourselves as the center of the universe; so anger is isolation. Yet many angry people combined gives an illusion of companionship; because it makes us feel like we belong and like we are in charge (as if absolute power ever brought happiness).

Anger is addictive; but like other forms of craving, it’s ultimately devoid of pleasure.

I am not without anger. But when it bubbles up, I have been trying to acknowledge it, so it can then fall away, lest it consume precious moments of my life. As I grow older, I realize every moment deserves to be a precious one. And holy shit, it feels so much better to smile.

It feels better to be kind and share, even through the tiniest of gestures, than it does to loathe. Loathing is easy. Telling a joke that makes someone belly laugh is actually rather difficult. But ooh how much more worthy of an accomplishment!

To this extent, these days I have mostly isolated myself from TV news, and even the comedy shows that used to give me solace through laughter. I do not want to give this madness the privilege of seeping farther into my soul. I do not need to know every gory detail of this crime scene to realize that it demonstrates just how unworthy of a species we are proving ourselves to be. By studying it, and lamenting it too deeply, that negativity becomes me. And then those infuriating, infuriated, unimaginative, irritating, ill-meaning, immodest idiots have won. (Ha! Yes, hate is easy, but it is rather fun to vent it out with an alliteration.)

While I’ve been talking about distancing ourselves from negative spaces, I want to be clear that doesn’t mean it’s okay to stick our heads in the sand. This, of all moments in our lifetimes, might hold the most urgency we have ever known, and we very much need to rise to the occasion; to bring our diverse voices together in a chorus to defend everyone and everything that can’t speak (human English) for itself.

And while we do that, let’s make a point of finding the time and energy to laugh, often. To dance with the dawn. To answer the caw of a crow. To feel the sensation of walking barefoot on the bare earth, and to notice how the wisps of winter freeze the hairs inside of our noses.

Now, it’s more important than ever to remember what good we are capable of, too, and in the face of calamity strive to become the most beautiful versions of ourselves; to be fully alive as we careen forward through space and time, sharing our joyous, compassionate energy with the world.

So put up your prayer flags, kneel at your alter, giggle in your garden, roll out your yoga mat, get outside, hug a tree, philosophize with the clouds, read some poetry (and maybe slip a few Dylan and Beatles songs in there for good measure), comfort others, find leniency, explore curiosly, write it down, tear down fences, revolutionize, preach peace, learn an artform, experiment with being silly, listen, sit quietly with a cup of tea, and climb your favorite mountain to shout it from the summit (unless there are nesting birds nearby, then maybe howl it from someplace less obnoxious):

“All we need is love!” And probably a few other things, too. But you get the idea.

This is it, folks. This is life, and all that we have is in this very moment. May you find the strength to be fully present in it, and the beauty of walking with light, my friends — and remember, love and laughter are contagious, too. So if we humans are going to keep insisting on acting like a virus on this planet, let’s make those our legacies.

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On a personal level, some of that optimism is emanating from my front yard. For those following our house project, we’re pretty much done!

It took a few years to turn an abandoned wreck into a comfortable home (there was a lot of traveling and camping intertwined, which pushed the timeline considerably).

Once the inside became cozy, I decided to see what could be done about the dirt-weed yard.

I planted a mix of native grasses, wildflowers and bushes, plus a few non-native ones that I thought might have a chance of surviving here. This is a difficult place for anything to live, with winters that dip into sub-zero temps and less than seven inches of rain a year.

But this year the rains came wildly, nearly every afternoon, which really helped everyone get off to a good start.

And I got the treat of seeing what a bit of green diversity can do for the local residents. Suddenly, there are neighbors I’ve never seen here before: yellow garden spiders, a host of native bees and flies, and a flock of fledgling sparrows who have spent their days learning how to peck and hunt for seeds and bugs. We even had a spotted ground squirrel and a couple of bunnies, who delighted in chasing the young sparrows through the flowers.

The yard is barely a dent in an otherwise barren, plowed over and parched stretch of the valley, but it’s really made our summer watching it transform. In fact, Steve and I had so much fun literally watching the grass grow. It’s also made me realize that while the yard is great entertainment for us, it’s really about something much greater.

For a while now I’ve been thinking about the ‘80s, the decade when it suddenly became okay to be self-absorbed. I remember dancing with reckless abandon to Madonna’s “Material Girl.” Not that my life at that time, or any time since, has been particularly full of material possessions, but in hindsight, those lyrics held a lot of foreshadowing.

As a society, starting in the ‘80s we embraced headlong the idea that amassing monetary wealth — and flaunting it —was the ultimate life goal. Not kindness, or compassion, or community. Just wealth. And to get that wealth, it became acceptable behavior to put oneself first. It became okay to screw over a coworker for a promotion. Movies celebrated doing just that. It became okay for corporations to pollute in the name of shareholder profits. Okay to squeeze in one more housing development. To squeeze out more more piece of habitat.

(On a side note, it’s not just companies like Exxon that have been working against the common good. It’s also pervasive in our food industry. Here’s a good article about it from the Post, and NutritionFacts.org has done some great videos about it.)

Since the ‘80s, these values have been pressed so far into our collective psyche that they’ve become normalized. We tend to define ourselves and judge others based on what we and they do for a living. But there are all sorts of unpaid tasks that are far more important, like caring for family, volunteering, playing music, dancing, finding a practice like yoga or meditation, reading nonfiction, reading murder mysteries, learning, being curious, cooking, and zoning out in a hammock. We even seem to have this notion that a teacher is somehow less important, less intelligent, than some finance dude in a suit. Ick.

Ultimately money is necessary, but it is not so interesting. Too much focus on it has the tendency to make us rather dull and unsavory.

These money and eco-centric values may have become normalized, but they’re not normal, especially for a species that became successful largely because of our ability to cooperate. So, it’s time to change that norm. And one way to do that is to realize that true wealth is found in that brief moment when we see a loved one smile. It’s found in those deep belly laughs we’ve all been longing to find for so long now. It’s found in watching a beetle mosey along its way. What fun is a bank statement compared with the joy of watching a great thunderstorm roar over the landscape?

This is not to say that money isn’t important. For those of us without trust funds, making enough of it often eclipses the more important parts of life. I rush around trying to get enough articles pitched and accepted to make ends meet, and even when I’m not working on them, I’m thinking about them and about finances. I’m trying to change that, though, so I can be more fully present for the best parts of life.

My bad habits, of forgetting life’s priorities and what brings actual happiness, are largely rooted in self-absorptive behavior. Us humans tend to think everything is about us — whether that’s little old me, or a bratty, ill-behaved politician, or a psychopathic billionaire. But it’s totally more comforting when we can realize it isn’t about us. That rainstorm wasn’t out to ruin my hike. It was a product of the magnificent forces of nature that combine to create life on this planet. And that editor didn’t blow me off because of me. She was busy worrying about her own life.

Which brings me back to our yard. I thought I planted it for me. But I’ve since realized that the enjoyment of one human is minuscule compared with the millions of other lives unfolding in those 600 square feet, nearly all of which I will never know. Microbes and ants, mycelium and mites, all communicating in ways we humans haven’t yet decoded. But we don’t have to decipher their precise chirps and vibrations to understand that they are working as a community, and the health of their community depends on acting like one.

We, too, are not separate from their community, even though we have done our darnedest to try to see ourselves that way. Luckily, this desire to reunite with the natural world is catching on. I’m reading about more and more people turning their yards back into habitat, and it feels like a revolution. Creating habitat is important, yes, but the true revolutionary part is that when people choose to do that, they are freeing themselves from that ‘80s self-indulgent mindset — and returning to the ultimate community, nature.

And the good news is, this is a revolution we can all participate in. Some people are creating native plant pollinator corridors, which connect neighborhood yards and public spaces. Others are planting oak trees, even though only their descendants will get to see their full majesty. Even a planter with native species on an apartment windowsill helps the greater good.

However we do it, fostering these natural communities allows us to feel more humble, more balanced. It helps us feel a peace which can only come from a sense of belonging, of realizing that we do belong to the natural community, and the wonders of the world are much bigger than any one of us.

If you are so lucky to have the means to be able to join in this revolution, I encourage you to plant some native plants. It’s also helpful to certify your efforts with local and national conservation organizations, to help foster this wave and encourage others to ride it. Some local Audubon chapters offers certifications. The Xerces Society has resources for pollinator yards and campuses. National Wildlife Federation has a popular wildlife habitat certification. And Doug Tallamy’s Homegrown National Park program is truly fantastic.

And don’t let the magnitude of the task intimidate you. You don’t need a perfect habitat, and it’s okay if you’re just getting started. Every great landscape is forever a work in progress. And every fantastic journey begins with one step… or, rather, seed.

Now, I’m off to go outside and watch the flowers grow. Have a wonderful late summer. That first glint of fall is soon to be in the night air. Such an energizing time of year.

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We are currently in Baja, where the birds are endlessly chattering. Nests are going up. The sun’s rays are coming down. And the ocean breezes are laced with the smell of fresh flowers. We hear it’s snowing wildly at home, which would also be a joyous place to be right now.

In contrast, there’s the new-yet-not-at-all-surprising news from the latest installment of the IPCC climate report, unofficially dubbed our final warning for keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees.

I don’t want to talk about that much, because there is so much to be grateful and present for in this particularly peaceful, happy moment. But it’s been a while between posts, and I’ve been wanting to say hello. This seemed like a good moment. Hello!

But briefly I do want to share an idea about why we can’t seem to act on the IPCC science, because there is something easy that each of us can do to help in a fundamentally powerful way…

If we first go to the really big picture — globally, perhaps we’re not acting with the urgency we clearly need, because we seem to be rooted in the trifecta of an inability to cooperate, a lack of empathy (especially among the wealthy), and a lack of imagination.

Lack of cooperation: To financially achieve keeping global temps at 1.5C means upping global climate investments by 1.8 to 3.6 trillion dollars annually until we get the infrastructure in place. That sounds like a lot, but for perspective, our country’s annual defense budget is nearly 1.8 trillion. So the real problem isn’t money, it’s that wealthy nations don’t want to change the status quo, plus they particularly aren’t lining up give developing nations the resources they need to reach their climate goals (which would only seem fair as wealthy nations got their wealth from exploiting those countries, and those countries are for the most part getting hit the hardest with the early problems of climate change).

Alas, economics (both global and personal) have not been something I’ve devoted any part of my life to understanding, but this column by Robert Reich is really great for explaining the wealth gap, in an entertaining and thoughtful way to people like me who are mostly ignorant in such matters, on a real-time basis with current events.

Coming up short on empathy: Again, in the really big picture, I was talking with a wise person I know, about what the “____” is wrong with some of our political and corporate leaders. I suggested the obvious greed and power-lust, but he said he’s now thinking those are just symptoms of a lack of empathy. That makes sense. But regardless of what the root of these nefarious character traits of our leaders, the wealth gap didn’t just appear from some glitch of capitalism. It was installed, with a lot of behind-the-scenes effort over the course of my lifetime. And the people who put it there are those who really like money and power.

Thus, our global lack of cooperation is due to the decisions of individual people. It is individual people, or groups of individuals, making these destructive decisions of action and inaction.

In my mind, super-charged traits like greed and power-lust should be identified as diseases, not held up in our society as the hallmarks of what we’re all striving for. After all, anyone who feels the need to hoard such an extreme amount of resources is a detriment for all of us humans and all of the species we share this planet with.

Which brings us to what we can do. Supercharge our imaginations.

In the same way the ‘80s built up the idea of materialism, the 2020s can dismantle it through art, culture, journalism and education. A shift in cultural perspective can quickly give foothold to more positive traits, and push those un-empathetic traits out the window. This is a shallow example, but take something like a big, loud pickup truck. People drive them because they think they’re cool. But if the new summer blockbuster puts the sexy hero on a bicycle and subtlety points out that pickups are totally uncool because they’re poisoning all of us, plus not really enjoyable as daily drivers, that helps the shift.

And we can all help the shift. Good ideas spread and we can all help spread them. To our friends and neighbors. To our politicians. To our bosses. Let’s all be an active part of that culture shift.

Besides manifesting the human traits we want to celebrate, we’ll also need to imagine the world that we’re trying to create, because big changes are happening quickly, and we need to make sure that in our haste we’re not making the same old mistakes all over again. For example, as the High Country News pointed out, why not put solar arrays on the roofs of big box stores instead of destroying pristine wilderness with solar farms? And of course, instead of just replacing every gas-powered car with an electric one, wouldn’t it be much better to reduce our need for cars altogether, and shift our economy away from being based on growth (which is ultimately also unsustainable even if we fix the carbon problem)? When we stimulate our global consciousness with such questions, good outcomes are sure to advance.

On that imagination note, if you want some climate hope, and some joyful ideas to ponder in an afternoon hammock daydream, this column by Rebecca Solnit in this week’s Washington Post is must read. And speaking of peaceful, happy moments, days like mine today are evermore important to cherish. Moments of peace and happiness aren’t always planned, but when they come, make sure to be ready to drop what you’re doing and fully enjoy each moment. Be present. This moment, right now, is all we actually have.

Okay, I’m off to the beach to watch gray whales spout, after two more thoughts:

A quick horn toot

I’ve had a rather wonderful month for published articles. Besides my normal myriad of online regulars, I got to feature my old friends and their upcoming final search for the slave ship Guerrero for Atlas Obscura. It’s a group of people and story that have been central to my life since I directed a documentary about it two decades ago.

Then, one of my essays, about the aftermath of the Keys hurricane, made it into the literary magazine Hairstreak Butterfly Review. And I can’t link to these others, but if you’re near a bookstore, you can find hard copies there: I made the cover of Reader’s Digest! Yes, it is still in print. And best of all, it’s advocating for getting rid of lawns. See, these ideas can become mainstream! Utah, please read it. You know why.

Also, one of my photos is in Orion, on the murmurations photo collage; an image of a sign my dad and I hiked by on the Camino de Santiago some years ago. And an article on balancing outside home lighting to be compatible with safety and dark skies was in this month’s Family Handyman. I think it’ll be next month’s edition when Steve and I have a joint article about how to build a hydroponic garden.

A Parting Thought

On this trip we camped on a ranchero (a small, rural farm) for the first time. Their land is on an oasis and their house built on the ruins of an old Spanish mission. The family who owns it — a couple, their grown son and his wife — is setting up a small campground, which they hope might draw in a few visitors from the nearby Baja Divide Trail bicycle/overland route.

The father, Maximo, said that his family has lived there since before the mission was built in the 1600s. He took us on a long walk to show us his land. We don’t speak great Spanish (yet), and he spoke zero English, but we could clearly understand him when he said (in Spanish), “We don’t have any money but we have everything we need. All of the peace and happiness in the world.” He beamed, every moment. He really meant it. We agreed.

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His testimony was pretty simple: there wasn’t enough water to sustain more than a scattering of small communities. In short, people shouldn’t move out West.

That wasn’t what Congress wanted to hear. So they didn’t listen.

Instead, they doubled-down on Manifest Destiny and fairy tales, and decided that there was no problem with water because the “rain will follow the plow.” God wanted people to move west and spread capitalism and Christianity so badly that of course he would change the weather patterns.

Strangely enough, that didn’t happen. So we drilled wells, a million straws sucking life from the aquifers. And we damned the rivers, without consulting the salmon and trout. We even named one particularly ill-conceived reservoir after Powell, which wasn’t an honor but rather a slap in the face, as it strangles the very river he loved so much.

Scientists from Powell through present day have warned us we are living on borrowed time. Today, we are barely starting to listen, now that we are forced to. The Colorado River is waning and the hydroelectric dams are on the verge of failing. It’s an understatement to say we’re in a bit of a pickle, along with the ecosystems and species that rely on not having a river run dry.

It sounds bleak, but I see a bright side. I see a chance to heal.

The problem with the Colorado River isn’t really drought. That just finally brought everything to a head. The problem is that the ecosystems of the West were never meant to to support 70 million people — especially people boxed away from nature in air-conditioned houses lining the cul-de-sacs of otherworldly-green subdivisions. Most of all, it’s not capable of supporting large-scale cattle ranches and farming.

Native nations managed to live in harmony with the West for 12,000 years (and probably a lot more than that), because they lived with the land, as part of it. Our European fore-bearers came in and managed to royally mess it up in every way possible in just a hundred years or so. We insisted on shaping it, forcing it, digging it, scraping it, poisoning it, and twisting it to our demands and whims, bleeding it dry of resources in search of a dollar, instead of accepting its boundaries and limitations.

Now that Las Vegas is banning lawns, the illusion is being lifted.

As green spaces are replaced with native plants, people in Las Vegas are realizing that they actually live in one of the harshest deserts in the world. And some are realizing that they don’t like it. It’s encouraging to see the illusion lifted. It’s unfortunate it took a breaking point for that to happen. But in the big picture, it’s positive.

It’s positive because we’re finally having to deal with reality. I liken it to the bare spots on the grocery store shelves we’ve had for a couple of years now. I love it. I love having to find a creative alternative to whatever I was seeking, or better yet just settling for nothing at all. It’s brilliantly refreshing to not have access to everything we want, at any time of day or night, and probably has some environmental benefits. Just as our reality shouldn’t be unfettered access to consumer goods, it shouldn’t be disguising a desert as an oasis, whether that’s in subdivisions or farm fields growing water-intensive crops like alfalfa, soy and potatoes, in a place that gets less than 5 or 10 inches of rain a year.

Which brings us to what we can do. Greet the ghost of Powell.

Or, more concretely, start listening to the scientists, and change our habits accordingly. There’s a lot of talk out West about we can do personally to reduce water use. One well-meaning journalist said he was going to cut his daily showers in half. That’s a valiant sacrifice. If a million of us did that, it would really add up. But it would still be a metaphorical drop in the bucket, which is why we need solutions based off of math.

The average person uses around 36,000 gallons of water a year, including watering the lawn. The average shower is eight minutes, with a 2-gallon-per-minute shower head. That means our shower consumes 16 gallons of water a day or about 6,000 gallons of water a year. Cut that in half and you save 3,000 gallons of water a year.

That sounds good, until you learn that 80 percent of Colorado River Basin water goes to agriculture, and more than 50 percent goes specifically to growing crops to feed cattle.

One pound of beef takes about 2,000 gallons to make (most of that isn’t what the cow drinks, but rather the irrigation for the crops that feed the cow). The average American eats at least 55 pounds of beef a year (that estimate may be on the low side, as other numbers I’ve found suggest average total meat consumption is 274 pounds a year). But even so 55 x 2,000 is 110,000 gallons of water used per year for one person’s beef diet, which means…

Three restaurant-size steaks equal a year’s worth of showers.

Regardless of where you live, your diet is probably adding to the water woes of the West, because western-states’ beef, as well as crops that cattle eat like alfalfa and soybeans, are exported across the country and the world.

Please don’t get huffy, or feel shamed by your diet.

What we put into our bodies is a highly emotional and personal subject. A lot of times it’s even how we define ourselves. And that makes it really difficult to have a conversation about. Even for those of us who want to change our meat-eating habits for health, environmental or animal cruelty reasons, can rarely do so. It’s just really hard to do.

But just because this is a difficult subject doesn’t mean we should sweep it under the rug or keep up our illusion. For me, learning the science behind the amount of water that goes into the food I eat has been making it a little easier to make the changes I want to my diet.

I started to look up more food, and here is what I found, in terms of gallons of water used per pound:

• beef 1,847

• pork 718

• chicken 518

• fruit 110

• veggies 39

• an egg 53.

Understanding the impact of our choices simply helps us make better-informed decisions.

What those decisions are will be different for each of us. To me, running these numbers changed something else in my thinking. I really don’t want to waste an egg now. Fifty-three gallons of water?! Add to that all of the people who grew it, picked it, shipped it and stocked it on the shelves, and I better realize just how valuable the food I have access to is.

These numbers also feel strangely encouraging, because it means we are actually capable of conserving a lot of water, with a relatively small amount of action. Cool.

And for the record, I’m all for saving water in other ways, like shorter showers and fewer lawns. Every bit helps.

If you are motivated to shift your diet, here are a few resources: for the health benefits of a more whole-food, plant-based diet, Dr. Greger has some really good info and scientific recommendations for various health problems; and if you want some easy recipes, try my uncle’s cookbook, which I edited and designed. Despite living in Ohio, he went totally plant-based years back, with no regrets.

But enough about water, let’s talk about woodrats.

Woodrats are delightfully large rodents (pack rats, actually), with fuzzy tails, cute white bellies, and elegantly long whiskers. The ones in Key Largo, Florida, build six-foot-tall stick nests, which help myriad species thrive in the tropical forests. I had the fortune to learn about those endangered woodrats and the people who have dedicated their lives to helping them while writing this article for Atlas Obscura a few weeks ago.

The night the article came out, we were camping in Colorado and heard a kerfuffle on the table. Our flashlight reveled a bushy-tailed woodrat (a cousin species to the Key Largo woodrat). I’d never seen one before, but I recognized it immediately. She must have heard we were now friends of the woodrat clan and came by to say hello.

News from the Valley of the Cool Sunshine

This morning we woke up to the first air of fall. I love the hint of the winter. Everything on these mornings feels crisp and full of possibility. When I lived for snowboarding, I particularly cherished the shift of seasons.

We’re still working on the house. Steve’s been scraping and painting the outside, which is making it really come alive. I’ve been busy with writing deadlines, but hope to jump in soon.

We’ve also been spending as much time as we can camping. Last summer slipped away and we wondered where it went, so we were determined not to have that happen again. I know nearly everyone has been in heat and drought this year, so I feel a bit guilty revealing that we’ve been hanging out up at 10,000 feet in cold air and rain for a good bit of the season. But I certainly don’t regret it!

A Parting Thought

Two photos captured my heartstrings and imagination this week. The first was of James Webb telescope photos on display on the giant screen at Piccadilly Circus in London. How uplifting to have these images as the backdrop in a busy city, instead of fashion advertisements and stock tickers. They show us not only the wonders of our universe, but inevitably give us a healthy dose of ego-squelching, as we see the insignificance of our tiny selves.

The second is a photo of a girl growing trees in a refugee camp in Rohingya. The story is short, and very much worth the read.

Happy almost autumn! May your days make you feel like dancing, exploring and laughing, a lot.

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As we approached tree line, the smell of pines invigorated our lungs, filling them with phytoncides. Phytoncides are healing gifts from the trees, compounds which boost our immune systems. Yes, science is teaching us that even five minutes among trees improves our heath.

The road up 14,115-foot Pikes Peak is iconic, but also a rather colonialistic tribute to man’s will over nature. It’s about to endure the 100th running of the Pikes Peak Hill Climb, where dozens of racecars roar to the summit. It got me thinking about roads, just before two of our country’s other iconic roads — gateways to Yellowstone — washed out, along with the economies of towns like Red Lodge and Gardiner, who depend so heavily on those thin ribbons of asphalt and the tourists they deliver.

It is immensely tragic, but after looking at the photos, it’s also hard not to be in awe of the power of water. When humans are gone, it won’t take long on the geologic timescale to wash away our road relics, our noisy rivers of pavement that prevent birds from hearing each other and does from crossing safely with their fawns.

Damn cars. They are all at once our greatest tool, our God, and our scourge. In A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, one character who had just arrived on Earth tried introducing himself to cars (instead of humans), as he presumed they were the dominant life form on the planet.

In the lower 48, the farthest place you can get from a road is just 21.7 miles. That magical point is actually in Yellowstone. And yes, I am guilty of heavily participating in the car culture I’m about to criticize. But just because we use them a lot, doesn’t mean we can’t start to rethink our relationship with them.

Environmental writer Bill McKibben pointed out recently how cars have taken us humans further apart from one another. “We went from people who traveled (together) by train and streetcar and boat between towns and cities that were relatively compact and contained, to people who sprawled… alone. The average American has half as many close friends as the average American of the 1950s—because when you spread out, you run into each other less often. But even if [cars] didn’t actually make us happier, we clung to our new forms tenaciously, and when they were threatened in the 1970s we lined up to save them.”

During the energy crisis of the ‘70s, Jimmy Carter made a plea to Americans. He said, “Ours is the most wasteful nation on Earth. All the legislation in the world can’t fix what is wrong with America. Too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption… owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning, that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.”

Of course, we did not heed Carter’s wisdom. Instead we unfurled into the great decadence of the ‘80s, laced with ever-enlarging SUVs and pickup trucks we drive for fashion, not necessity.

Today’s EV (electric car) movement is a positive one, and urgently needed, but it is not the full answer. Ultimately, we need fewer cars, fewer roads, less distance between us, and less emphasis on immediate gratification. I think that it is possible, because deep down doing that makes us feel better.

A while back, my dad and I walked part of the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain. We walked 10 to 20 miles each day, and after only a couple of days, motorized transportation seemed foreign and unwelcome.

I wrote this on my last day on the Camino, April 27, 2011:

And so, like that, it was over. I waved goodbye to Dad and walked onto the bus. It’s the first thing I've been on in a while that’s powered by something other than my legs. And it went toward Pamplona. Undoing all of yesterday's hard work. Past the Auberge Jacke from last night. Past the mysterious Obergon. Through the tunnel, under the wind turbines. Past the castle under construction, and the wheat, grass and mustard fields waving in the wind. Yesterday’s 25km erased in a mere 20 minutes. Tempered flat brown by the tint in the bus windows; the winds and smell of the flowers replaced with someone's B.O., thickening the stuffy air. Outside is now gas stations, traffic and freeways. So foreign after only a brief travel down the Camino. And I'm sad. Fighting back tears sad. Longing to have more days. Longing for the feeling of aching feet. Buen Camino, Dad. I hope it is the wonderful journey that you so deserve. Everything’s changed now. I’ve changed. I hope I can remember that change.

My dad continued on, eventually meeting up with my brother for the later stages of the 500-mile extravaganza. Today I often wish I would have taken more time off, to travel farther on it with both of them. I still long for the simplicity of life on the Camino.

I suspect I am not alone. I suspect there are a lot of us who yearn for more simplicity in our lives. A slower pace. Filling our souls with the nourishment of companionship, kindness and nature, instead of material stuff. The simple joy of walking.

On a side note: our current predicament isn’t exactly our fault. Our car-centric culture was crafted by the same oil profiteers who covered up global warming for decades, and are now keeping gas prices high in order to reap record profits (in the first quarter of this year, Shell made almost three times its profits over the same quarter last year). They will use those earnings, along with expensive prices at the pump, to sow more political discourse, to ensure those politicians who support their profit-over-planet mentalilty gain even more power.

It’s important to realize all of these ways we’ve been had — from an over-the-top car culture, to the false notion that growth economies are necessary — so we can start healing that mindset, and voting in politicians who are willing to make the swift, sweeping positive changes we desperately need.

One of those is a simple rethinking of cars, so they don’t rule our lives. Let’s replace car-lined downtown streets with walking malls and green spaces. Let’s turn to e-bikes, e-scooters, bicycles, and our own feet.

And let’s go for a walk. A really nice, long walk.

To our friends in Montana and Wyoming, know we are thinking of you, sending our compassion, and hoping the cleanup and the times to come aren’t as daunting as they look right now. Let us know if we can help.

Now for a bit of slow-moving, happy nature news

This headline says it all: ‘Fantastic giant tortoise,’ believed extinct, confirmed alive in the Galápagos. You can read more about Fernanda here.

And finally…

News from the Valley of the Cool Sunshine

Steve and I haven’t made much headway on our abandoned house project recently, as we have been doing a fair amount of traveling. But we did manage to install a deck at my mom’s house.

By “we,” I mean Steve masterfully planned out and executed the whole thing, and I followed his orders with screw gun in hand.

And finally, Happy Anniversary, Steve!

This Solstice marks year eight for us, and what an amazing journey it’s been so far. I love you, Steve! I couldn’t have even dreamed up a better life partner and friend.

And happy Solstice to all!

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We’ve just returned from a six-week road trip down the Baja Peninsula, and I am looking forward to sharing more about that, but I’m way behind on official assignment deadlines, so for now I’ll just leave it with Benji.

Benji was our unofficial host at a beach camp on the Gulf of California (the Sea of Cortez is undergoing a rename in the spirit of not celebrating violent men).

A ramshackle palapa (sort of like a tiki hut) and some tarp-engineering by Steve allowed us to cook out of the wind. Later, we waded through the bioluminescence of countless tiny creatures in the night sea, then slept in the back of the car, feet first to the water. As the sun came up, we woke to the sound of dolphins so close we could hear their gentle breath, intermixed with the crashes of brown pelicans dive-bombing schools of fish.

It was early and I was still in bed when I noticed Steve wandering up a trail to an overlook. Benji jumped into bed to let me know the urgency of the situation. With no time to change out of my pajamas, I managed to slip on some sandals to join the trek.

Benji was so thrilled, he tore up and down the beach in circles, pausing with each lap to say hi, before racing off again. The three of us had a grand hike. Then, Benji returned to his main job, which was protecting and herding the local goats.

We stayed at many peaceful and beautiful places in Baja, but the feeling of this one lingers, as if I’ve left a bit of my soul back on Benji’s beach. That’s fine. I think I’ll get to visit it again from time to time, either in person or in imagination.

A Thought About Radicals on Earth Day

People who protest invasive pipelines, who see forests as sanctuaries rather than timber farms, and who brave Arctic seas to stop whalers from breaking international laws, have long been described as radicals. But is why striving for a healthy planet a radical notion? Why are people like that senator from West Virginia, who are so deeply corrupted by the soot of their own fossil fuels and dirty money, described as moderate? It seems super radical, in the most negative sense of that word, to vote for yourself over policies that might salvage a habitable planet. It’s also radical to water a golf course in Phoenix, when the Colorado River rarely reaches its delta at the Gulf of California. Just as maybe it should be called moderate, in the positive sense of the word, to strive for clean air, water and an equitable distribution of both to people regardless of where they live, how much money they make, or what color skin they happen to have.

As a related side note: Ever since I foolishly took a forestry class at the University of Montana, thinking it would be about forests (it was not, it was about how to destroy them most efficiently, and the textbook even had a “top 10” list for how to best get around environmentalists), I’ve wondered why natural resources management is mostly about mining, logging, grazing and fossil-fuel extraction — those things which bring destruction to nature — and not about managing resources to keep lands more free of man-made muck and the dull buzz of the sodium lights of progress. Thanks Deb Haaland for at least mentioning that this week.

Back to radicals, though, I think that how someone or some thought ends up getting labeled radical or moderate must be part of our continuum of wealthy colonialist thinking, and the propaganda-news hosts who support such thought, like Limbaugh and all of his angry spawn. He was part of a fossil-fuel-charged multi-decade campaign to discredit science — or rather proposed environmental policy changes based on science, which were necessary to keep our planet healthy — and mock anyone who stood in the way of maximum corporate dividends (i.e. environmentalists). Was labeling environmentalists as radicals and weak-minded snowflakes one tactic in the oil companies’ coverup of global warming? Sure seems like it.

As a young person, I grew up in a conservative school district, where I was sometimes teased and called a tree-hugger, like that was some sort of ultimate insult. I was also mocked for being vegetarian and a child of ‘60s peace activists. Hippie seemed to be a dirty word with many of my peers, a lot of whose parents worked in oil and defense-related industries.

Back then I was insecure, and thus unsure of myself and my place in the world, which affected my drive to be an activist. It was just a little eaiser to go with the flow, than to speak up against it. As I got older, terms like feminazi, and environmentalist wackos, infiltrated dialogues and became standard in our country’s collective social consciousness. That twinge of fearing critisim from my friends, coworkers and boyfriends made me too intimidated go out and speak up. To be a radical. To devote my life to protecting nature and human equity, even though deep down that’s what I dreamed of doing.

No more.

Today, call me a tree-hugger. I say thank you. Call me a feminazi, and I know that you are just scared and insecure in your own mind and body. Call me a snowflake, and I will defend snowstorms from those moderates who are trying to make them extinct.

On this Earth Day, let’s shift our terminology, so it’s clear that every politician and CEO puttering about, greenwashing, or otherwise standing in the way of the progress we now need — which foremost is all hands on deck for ceasing to burn fossil fuels — are the irrational radicals. And it’s high time for their reign to end.

Note: I wrote these thoughts yesterday, and this morning I heard about the new Frontline documentary on PBS about oil deception, which I expect is a terrific piece of journalism.

And now in the brag department…

Last summer Steve and I reported on a group of young Zuni men, helping to stabilize their ancestors dwellings in Bears Ears National Monument. They worked for the Ancestral Lands Conservation Corps, a marvelous organization full of hope for the future. My article, along with Steve’s photos, made the cover of the spring edition of National Parks magazine. We are both humbled and thrilled to bring Crew 642’s story to light.

Happy spring, everyone. May wildflowers and robbins brighten your day, creative energy blow in on a light breeze, and the rain nourish all.

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First, Madagascar. Dozens are dead and 65,000 homeless as torrential rains continue flood the capital and surrounding areas. It hasn’t made much U.S. news, just a mention in the Washington Post. I learned of it when climate activist Bill McKibben wrote about it in his newsletter yesterday.

He explained that, “There are virtually no American reporters stationed in Africa anymore—it might as well not exist. One study of 700,000 hours of tv found that a fifth of references in our entertainment programs to the continent were on Jeopardy; and that Wakanda [the fictional home of superhero Black Panther] was the fourth most commonly referenced African ‘country.’”

Madagascar is a ground zero for people hurt by climate change, though they didn’t make it happen. Each person there produces just .012 tons of carbon per year (vs. American’s 15.24). People who live there will go through increasingly severe floods and droughts. According to the UN, they are already on the brink of a climate-induced famine. The BBC published these quotes:

From a mother of four, who is scavenging insects to survive: "My children and I have been eating this every day now for eight months because we have nothing else to eat and no rain to allow us to harvest what we have sown.”

From a mother of three, whose husband recently died of hunger and whose neighbor’s death left her with two more children: “Today we have absolutely nothing to eat except cactus leaves. What can I say? Our life is all about looking for cactus leaves, again and again, to survive.”

We feel separated from one another, but separation is actually impossible.

Thich Nhat Hanh, or Thay as he is often called, died at age 95 this week. Beyond being beloved in Buddhist communities for his teachings of compassion and non-violence, he was a civil rights activist and the “father of mindfulness.” He inspired the secular movement that has blossomed everywhere from yoga studios to corporate board rooms (though the latter seemingly hasn’t quite grasped the concept).

For Christmas last month, my mom gave me a small book of his writing. It opens with: “If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without the cloud there can be no rain; without water, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, you cannot make paper. So the cloud is in here. The existence of this page is dependent upon the existence of a cloud. Paper and cloud are so close.”

Every page in that book is inspiring, if not life-changing. He wrote a lot of wonderful books, but here’s the link to that book in particular.

There’s poetic interconnectedness, and then there’s the ultra wealthy.

A professor at the Wharton School of business — which costs more than $100,000 a year to attend, and whose alumni include Elon Musk, Warren Buffet, and our country’s most recent past-president and his kids — tweeted an informal poll from her classroom. She asked her students what they thought the average American earns in a year. A quarter of the class believed it to be more than six figures, and one answered $800,000. The actual answer is $53,838, though more than 43 million of us earn below the poverty line of $31,661.

In a related gaffe, last year when NYC mayoral candidates were asked what they thought was the median sales price for a home in Brooklyn, two of them reckoned it was $100,000 or lower, one of whom was the housing commissioner under former mayor Michael Bloomberg. The answer is actually $900,000.

It’s hard to imaging anyone fixing a problem they don’t know exists.

It’s easy to laugh at their separation from reality, but most of us suffer from a similar disconnect when it comes to relating to families in Madagascar, both on personal and political levels.

The U.S. has spent the last 200 years helping all of us who live here become relatively wealthy and food secure, when compared on a global scale. To create that wealth, we have emitted more CO2 into the atmosphere than any other nation in history.

If we listened to Thich Nhat Hanh, we would realize that we are all in this together, we are all part of the cloud and the piece of paper. Ramping up our sluggish climate policies to help those who we have directly harmed in Madagascar and elsewhere would be a no-brainer. Instead, we’re creating ever-callous immigration policies to keep out those who are suffering and need help.

In America’s opposite-world of Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings lies a frenzied land, where we demand unbridled freedom, unending stock market growth, and the supreme right to make money over the health of humans and habitats. Sometimes instead of thinking about how our actions can help others, we selfishly argue over even the smallest gestures of caring for strangers, like wearing masks and getting vaccines. It’s disgusting to think we are the underlying cause of families scavenging for cactus leaves, while we are howling about mythical government plots to take away our triple cheeseburgers — a special kind of irony considering our country’s 40% obesity rate.

Meanwhile, airlines have been flying around empty planes for the last two years, just so they don’t loose their airport gate privledges. And people around the world know the name of Joe Manchin, “the villan,” the ego man with the world’s fate in his hands.

Does all of this make me feel defeatist? Sometimes. But also it inspires me to be a better bringer of light, peace, and the most postivie human emotions, like Thay.

Here’s where the super rich, Malagasy refuges, and a Vietnamese monk collide.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was profoundly affected by Thich Nhat Hanh. He nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize. In King’s words: “It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

We are all one. It’s a foundation of Buddhism and many Indigenous beliefs. But it’s more than that — the idea even has legs in theoretical physics. And geology.

In 2019 scientists discovered that the rock formation Castleton Tower in Utah taps into the earth’s natural vibrations. It pulsates at the same rate as a human heartbeat.

As activist and writer Terry Tempest Williams, described. “The earth has a pulse, just like we do. No separation.”

I hope each of us can find our way to ditch our own particular exceptionalist notions, take inventory about how we impact those around us, and become part of the healing. Let’s get a little Thich Nhat Hanh in our lives, and take a walk with mindfulness.

In the good news column

Here are all of the new species found in the Mekong region. Like slug snakes and ghostly monkeys.

And this new map shows where nature is healing.

News from the Valley of the Cool Sunshine

Even though the midday air temperatures hover in the 30s, as long as the sun is out, it’s quite warm and pleasant outside. That helped Steve finish up the back siding on the house. Then I escaped the computer for a few days to help him make the deck, which was truly enjoyable. Now we’ve moved back inside to tackle floors and spackling. The floor has been a creative challenge to get level. More about that in the next episode…

Fortunately, the High Country and Front Range are finally getting a decent amount of snow. But here in the San Luis Valley, we only get a dusting, maybe an inch here and there. I’m wishing we had a little more.

Last weekend we made a spontaneous leap to Taos for the night. It’s just a couple hours away, and it was refreshing to walk around the plaza at night and browse the gallery window displays.

On our way back we took a walk along the Rio Grande Gorge, and then visited the earthship biotecture community just to the west.

It’s a neighborhood where all of the houses are self-sufficient and built largely from discarded materials, like tires, bottles and cans. They are stuccoed inside and out with local dirt. They are completely powered by renewables (mostly solar) and are so efficient with water that they can get by with only the water captured from their roofs, which is remarkable considering the annual precipitation is around 7 inches.

I particularly liked a poster in their visitor lobby, which said something to the extent of: if all of the soldiers put down their weapons and picked up shovels to build zero-emission homes, everyone in the world could have a decent life. It got me thinking about the incredible waste we spend on war. It’s too big to conceive.

Anyway, who knows, maybe an earthship will be our next project.

We were only gone overnight, but when we returned, there were flocks of sandhill cranes flying across the valley — the first ones of the year! They’re returning from wintering farther south. I believe many of them will stay here to eat from the barley fields for a couple of months before heading north to nest for the summer (my bird friends, correct me if I got that wrong). It is uplifting to hear their chatter and have them around for a while.

A Parting Thought

“If I am anywhere, it is in your mindful breathing and in your peaceful steps.” — Thich Nhat Hahn.

If you want to learn more about mindful walking, here’s a good piece on it.

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This newsletter is now free for all, but I can’t figure out how to get rid of the pricing page. So if you hit the subscribe button, just choose the free option. And if you’re in the mood, donations are welcome through this link. Happy 2022! Let’s make this a year to remember.

Being immersed in the moment is one of my 2022 goals. Last year skittered by too quickly. Time to slow it down. Time to be fully present, because this free-flowing moment is the only reality we have. Time to honor it. Revel in it. Despite looming planetary doom and the impending fall of democracy, my present days are otherwise spectacularly rich with food, safety, health, nature, mountains, family and love. I am infinitely thankful. I am infinitely lucky. And I want to be more conscious of all of the good that surrounds us everyday.

Some people pick a word and make it their personal theme for the year. This year I’m going for harmony.

Inner harmony, aligning spirit, body, mind, emotions, and intuitions. In these complex times, thoughts are scattered like honeybees in a field. Time to bring them all home to the hive, where they can regroup, nourish, rest, and start working in concert, with clearer focus.

Outer harmony, finding kindness and empathy for all beings. Being thankful for my distant sisters, who picked my bounty of vegetables. Being aware of how my energy ties into the universal flow, and how my smile might change a stranger’s day for the better.

Existential harmony, acting with urgency toward our nature crises, while refraining from spending constant energy and conversation on worry and sorrow.

Time harmony, better balancing work with all of the things that are most important: nature, Steve, family, health. Ah, health! I can’t tell you how many years I’ve written down my goals of yoga, meditation, workouts and healthy eats, looked at it daily, yet still failed to act on it.

Harmony as a chorus of our voices, weaving a audio tapestry of peace and compassion, singing for the world that we want to manifest. Harmony in community will help us be resilient, to weather those times ahead that will not be so peaceful and easy.

Honor this moment, because all we know is that it’s impermanent.

After a lazy holiday week in Boulder, Steve and I drove back to the San Luis Valley on Dec. 30. It was a wildly windy day, which had taken out my mom’s electricity earlier in the morning. By the time we hit the road, we were being sandblasted with 100-m.p.h. gusts and dust devils.

Minutes from Boulder, we drove through downtown Superior’s web of box store shopping centers and seas of pavement. Up the hill, where businesses give way to a landscape of densely packed cookie-cutter homes on the east and a dry patchwork of open space grasses on the west, I said something to Steve, like, ugh, can you imagine if a fire broke out in this wind?

“IF YOU SEE FIRE, LEAVE IMMEDIATELY.”

We weren’t an hour down the road before this first evacuation alert lit up the phone. Superior was ablaze.

By now, you’ve probably heard the rest of the story: A thousand homes burned, many with dogs and cats inside, their humans dashing from work, desperately driving into the apocalyptic smoke, trying to find ways around the roadblocks to rescue them. Two people are still missing.

2021 roared to a close with a new disaster phrase, “urban firestorm.” I hope this isn’t the doom term that defines 2022. I hope the numerous tales of community banding together through hardship are longer lasting than those of the grief.

In a twist of irony, that evening brought the first snowstorm of the year. Fluffy flakes floating down upon burning embers. Usually we celebrate the first snow, but this year it didn’t feel very comforting, especially since it should have first accumulated in September or October. And this wasn’t just a wildfire. It was something more troubling, which now has fire behaviorists diving into a new branch of research. To understand it better, this is the best article I’ve seen, with David Wallace-Wells interviewing Boulder climate scientist Daniel Swain.

But on to other tales: Apologies are in order

It’s been far too long since the last newsletter. What happened was that I got a regular freelance gig with familyhandyman.com, a DIY publication with roots back to the 1950s. That, combined with a road trip to Florida and some other projects (like this newsletter for the Florida Keys Wildlife Society), took up my time. But, the upside is that I’m getting to infuse all sorts of ways to help nature into stories that traditionally don’t include much of that, while myself learning about interesting topics from living walls to sunflower seeds.

But I’ve missed writing this newsletter. This newsletter is about to enter its second year, and I intend to keep it going. But because of this new gig, my brain power is limited, and at least for a while, my posts will not be as frequent as last year (trying for that harmony of time idea). As such, I am discontinuing the paid subscription option. But if you win the lottery and want to make a donation, I certainly won’t turn it down. You can do that here at BuyMeACoffee.com.

Four things to help set the tone for 2022

Just a few odds and ends, to help us dance gracefully into the future.

1. Amanda Gorman’s new year poem “New Day’s.” One line that particularly resonates, “So let us not return to what is normal, but reach toward what is next.”

2. Don’t Look Up. The new movie is all the talk in climate circles. I heard that they made it specifically to give some cathartic laughter to climate scientists. It’s on Netflix.

3. Buy Nothing Project. If you’re giving away your old vacuum or or need a vegetable steamer, try this circular economy sharing program. They split from facebook and started their own app, and are in need of people to facilitate local groups.

4. 100 Ways to Improve Your Life Without Really Trying. Just a fun, helpful, light-hearted article from the Guardian.

News From the Valley of the Cool Sunshine

As many readers know, for the last year we’ve been turning an abandoned house in rural Colorado back into a livable home. This fall, Steve ran all of the gas lines and we passed inspection. Just as we were leaving for Florida, we lucked into finding a rental propane tank. They are in short supply, but Steve’s diligence in calling every supply house in Denver paid off, when one ended up having a buddy in the Valley who gave us an insider connection.

Steve also built the furnace plenum and ducted the house, which was no small task.

The furnace got up and running just before the first heavy freeze, making it an official house, with all systems online.

Steve also installed new siding on the back, and is a good way through constructing the back deck. Meanwhile, Karuna writes and writes, and tries to offer as much moral support as possible.

A Parting Thought

Oh yeah, and the reasons we went to Florida were to pick up our beloved Ed’s Boat, when the person who bought it from us told us she didn’t want it anymore; and to caretake Ballast Key. Ballast Key is 9 miles southeast of Key West. It’s an idyllic island with at least five habitats, which is a lot for a small island. It was bequeathed to the Nature Conservancy and the Florida Keys National Wildlife Refuges by Key West developer and arts patron David Wolkowsky when he died in 2018. I can’t say too much about it yet, besides that it was one of those experiences where time slows down, and the place forever infuses itself within one’s soul. I’ll be writing more about it in the not-to-distant future.

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Sorry, I can’t yet figure out how to get rid of the pricing, as this newsletter is now free for all, but if you hit the subscribe button, just choose the free option. And if you’re in the mood, donations are welcome through this link. Happy 2022! Let’s make this a year to remember.

A lot of us now know that our environmental woes are fueled by humans regarding nature as a novelty, not as an integral part of our daily lives, and an extension of our own health and well-being.

We could change that with maps.

Instead of bombarding us with every restaurant, pharmacy, and place to buy shoes, what if Google told us the names of the mountains and the rivers, and pointed out a nice old stand of spruce trees? What if it reminded us that it’s migration season, and that we should take a trip to the wetlands to see the plovers and ibis?

If they did, it would integrate curiosity toward nature into our society.

Right now, it’s only people who actively seek out nature who understand how vital it is for us to reconnect with it. But what if everyone was reminded about nature every time they punched in an address on their GPS? What if instead of having commercials blaring at the gas pumps (a most annoying invasion of privacy) we learned about how trees talk to one another, or the lifecycle of a woolly bear caterpillar?

I think the more places we can integrate nature into the forefront of our thoughts — and seriously, how much more wonderful is it to think about nature than chewing gum or car insurance — the more people will naturally grow closer to it, without much effort at all.

It only takes a little bit of knowledge to start a lifelong intrigue.

For example, once you know names of a few types of clouds or geological formations, or the sound that a squirrel makes when he’s defending his territory, or how finches turn red during mating season, you suddenly feel as if you are part of a whole new world. You no longer see the landscape in terms of buildings and roads, but as a flowing, interconnected planet of alluvial fans, oxbow streams, cumulus vagabonds, and horny birds.

While we’re on the subject of new perspectives and putting nature before commerce, here’s a side thought. Everyone really only needs one or two coffee mugs over their whole lifetime (okay, maybe three or four for those of us who are particularly clumsy). So why do I see a cool coffee mug and want to buy it? I don’t know, but I’m trying to rewire myself so things like that don’t happen.

Similarly, Steve and I have been pondering what would happen if the world just stopped making plates. We would surely still have enough plates for everyone on Earth for a long time to come. Maybe instead of everyone having 12 place settings for the annual Thanksgiving feast, we just all brought our own plates when we visited people. BYOP. Kind of catchy, eh?

Okay, maybe BYOP is not the sole solution to our climate, biodiversity, and pollution crises, but I like how ideas like these get us rethinking our lives, which are currently so insanely burdensome on nature. Spend a moment. Think about where you can subtilly introduce nature over commerce in what you do with work.

One more thought, and then on to a cool rundown of online maps and atlases.

This has been a difficult summer, with the Delta variant, Hurricane Ida, the California fires, the unhealthy smoke-filled skies across the West, and political footdragging. My mom, always a source of inspiration, offered this bit of wisdom for dealing with it.

“I think we have to accept that we’re always going to have bad air, covid or something like it, and a continual effort against greed, anger, and ignorance. Or maybe it’s better to think of it as a continual effort for generosity, kindness, and wisdom.”

Thanks, Mom. I keep reading that. It makes the world a little happier each time.

Maps, Maps, Maps

For you map fanatics out there, here are some of my favorites.

Here’s a good happy one about tracking fall foliage from the Washington Post.

What to know who’s funding Line 3, the origins of common house plants, or bus routes to abortion providers outside of Texas? Then the Decolonial Atlas is the place to go. Their free collection of maps “help us to challenge our relationships with the land, people, and state.”

Japanese architect Hajime Narukawa figured out how to flatten the globe more accurately, solving the 447-year-old problem of the highly distorted world map.

Health watchdog nonprofit EWG mapped forever chemical (PFAS) contamination in United States water supplies.

The Anthropocene map is enlightening… but as with anything with Antrhopocene in the title, it’s also a little depressing.

Another slightly shocking map is this one, which shows what land is predicted to be lost to sea level rise, on a very detailed scale.

Barcelona published a biodiversity atlas of the city’s flora and fauna so “everyone can enjoy contact with nature close to home, which enables us to achieve a better quality of life.” This is something we can all encourage in our communities or neighborhoods.

Need something to read? Here’s a map of all of the registered little free libraries in the world.

This one is a little outdated, but might become relevant again in 2024. It maps out the former president’s corruption.

This fire and smoke map, lets you know which burnt-down forest is keeping you from exercising safely today.

I don’t know what to do with this wind map, but I really like looking at it.

For a beautiful interlude and meditation on how everything is connected, artist Robert Szucs maps illustrate the water sheds and forest cover of various countries. There are nice articles about him here and here.

And finally, Mapnificent shows you areas you can reach with public transport in a given time.

News from the Valley of the Cool Sunshine

The first twinges of fall have come to Colorado’s San Luis Valley. It’s the largest high-alpine valley in the world, and near the headwaters of the Rio Grande River. Yesterday as we crossed the river, the brush on the banks was just starting to show yellow-orange. Also yesterday, the nighttime temperature dropped about 10 degrees, and is now in the low 40s. The late summer is such a magical time of year.

We had a family of boysterous rufus hummingbirds all summer, but I haven’t heard them for a couple of days. The rufus undertake ambitious migrations, from northern Canada to southern Mexico, so maybe they’re headed back south for the winter. We’re seeing more geese these days, too.

On the inside of our abandoned house project, we’ve completed the drywall, and we’re now in the long-haul of spackling it all. The propane lines are nearly complete, which means we are not far from having a furnace (just in time for winter), and retiring the camping stove for a more grown-up range. There is still a lot to be done, but we are well over the halfway point, and it looks optimistic that we will get what we need done before the cold hits.

A Parting Thought

The prairie sunflower bloom at the base of the Great Sand Dunes might be one of the world’s greatest seas of flowers, certainly on par with the southern California’s poppy bloom. Unfortuantely, we procrastinated on bringing the big camera out for a photoshoot until they were past their prime. But if you ever are able to visit the dunes in August, don’t turn it down. Nothing brings joy like a sunflower, or a million sunflowers.

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Have a wonderful autumn, and savor the changes in season. They are precious.

As with most conversations these days, our reunion inevitably drifted into wondering what the future will be like. It’s hard to imagine that humans will be successful in stemming global warming and mass extinction. We can’t even cooperate enough to curb a virus, let alone change the entire world power grid along with its economic and agricultural systems. 

Usually, these conversations wander to their inevitable conclusion. It’s too immense. It’s too corrupt. We’re fucked. End of story.

Next comes silence. 

It’s the awkward moment in the conversation, when everyone stops talking and just stares at the floor, straining to find a new topic.

How’s the weather? Yikes, don’t say that, or we’ll just keep talking about the climate. 

Going anywhere cool this summer? Yeah, but it involves an airplane, and I feel too hypocritical to talk about it. 

What do you think the world would be like if we succeeded? Oh yeah. That’s what we’re missing.

Let’s change the subject to that. 

Reimagining the Norms

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told us to imagine what it would be like if all of the Supreme Court seats were held by women. I almost can’t imagine that. And because I have a hard time imagining that, it really puts into perspective our centuries of systemic male domination. 

The reason it is hard to imagine an all-women Supreme Court (and the world that such a beast-ess might create) is because we are living tightly inside of our patriarchal norm. We’ve never been outside of it. 

But if we are to have a bright future, we must do more than just convert the grid and plant pollinator gardens. We must break away from so many of our other ingrained norms — like growth economies, the celebration of consumerism, rugged individualism, and the acceptance of corporate greed and power. We must redefine what we currently see as the pillars of our society.

Initially, it seems like too big of a task. But imagine if all of the patriots waving flags were waving for the future of the whales and the monarch butterflies. Or if they were waving for corporations to cut their stock dividends and use the money to clean up their messes.

Imagine if we put Indigenous leaders in charge, and started to listen to them and get back centuries of fire prevention and land use knowledge. 

Imagine cities woven around nature, instead of the seas of pavement that erase it.

Imagine a generation of kids, not too far in the future, who have never seen a smog-laden city. That could actually happen in a few decades, once cars are electric and power plants run off of wind and sun. 

We must imagine the future, so we know where we’re trying to go.

There’s a chance we can get there. There’s also a chance we won’t. As individuals, we don’t have control over this. We only have the ability to decide that it’s worth the effort to leave this world a little better for our having been in it. 

In the meantime, here are some ideas for dealing with this load of crap we’re up against. 

• Stop letting science-denying anger-trolling fools into your head. We don’t have any more time to let them suck up our life forces. We must progress into the future, and then welcome them into the new world once we get there.

• Do something each day, or even each week. Even if it’s just a little bit, make a consistent effort. Right now, with our time-urgency, the most important thing we can do is protest, write letters, make phone calls, educate others, and demand that our leaders and corporations rise to the occasion.

• Be a decent human being. The most important tool in our box might be our ability to spread kindness, be honest, and generally just strive to be someone who deepens everything they touch, instead of the opposite. 

• Get out there and appreciate what we still have as much as we possibly can. If we take no joy and wonderment in what still exists, then there is no purpose in trying to save it. Also, appreciate the people you love, and the relative safety we have right now.

• Conversely, we need to also take the time to say goodbye to the outside spaces we love, and come to terms with what is lost. We must try to do this without becoming callous to so many losses. 

As we push for change, we must not rise against, but rather move forward, toward the good we want. 

This was pointed out by a wise man I know, Dinizulu Gene Tinnie. In one of our correspondences, he wrote, “If our movement is defined by our opponent’s existence, then not only does every mention of the movement empower our opponent, but our actions get defined by the opposition so that we are easily forced to scatter our energies in ‘putting out fires’ here and there, without formulating a larger vision.” 

His example was groups seeking to defeat Trump vs. “focusing on creating a more harmonious, sustainable society so future generations will have a birthright to their full humanity and fulfillment.” He continued, “Instead of asking those in power to ‘give’ us what we want, as if we expect those structures to remain in place, that is understandable, but it weakens and distracts from the real need for complete, radical decolonization, of this land and of our minds.” 

My friend was speaking of decolonization, but it isn’t much of a step to apply this further to encompass our environmental problems and the systemic societal problems that brought us to today. 

Ah, but back to friends. Next time I have a conversation with a friend, we’ll still surely talk about what the future will look like, but maybe we can add some happy visions as well.

In the next issue, I hope to talk about human ingenuity, and the imaginations of scientists. From nitrogen soil sensors to concrete that soaks up carbon, this is such an exciting time to be a scientist.

Sending much love to all of you compassionate souls.

A parting thought…

Horseshoe crabs have been around for 450 million years or so. It was only about 70 years ago that humans started relying on their blood to check the safety of vaccines. In just 0.00000016 of their exsitance, they have saved hundeds of thousands of human lives. In those same 70 years, humans have cut down roughly half of all of the trees on earth, caused the demise of more than half of all coral reefs, and seaside-condoed over an awful lot of horseshoe crab habitat. The good news is that horseshoe crabs have survived at least four, if not all five mass extinctions. They are my new heroes.

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Representatives from every country in the world approved every sentence in the new IPCC global climate report. Imagine the magnitude of that. That surely makes it one of the most important documents of our time.

In summary, the report says that in the best-case scenario, things still get worse, but if we don’t stop burning fossil fuels of every kind really soon, the future Earth will look unrecognizable.

Climate journalist Eric Holthouse sent out a newsletter this morning, and his explanation of the report is a good one to read to get some more details.

What is especially important, though, is his disclaimer at the beginning. He writes:

“This is a difficult report to read. Chances are, you’ll learn new truths about the climate emergency that will be terrifying in a way you haven't yet felt. That’s what happened to me, at least. But like my favorite climate essayist Mary Annaïse Heglar wrote, Home is Always Worth It. You get to cry. You get to grieve. You get to be angry. You get to take all the time you need to do these things. You get to ask for help. But you don't get to give up. I’m asking you not to give up. We are learning from each other about how to struggle for systemic change on an impossible-but-necessary scale every day. People have been doing this same thing for hundreds of years, all over the world, in every country. What we're doing now isn't new. There is so much worth saving. There is so much more to grow into that we can't even imagine yet. And there always will be. You're not alone. You're right where you need to be. And we're doing this work together.”

It is not hopeless. It is very much time to act.

As the New York Times wrote, “It’s up to the leaders of the world’s most powerful nations and companies to determine which path to take. Limiting temperature rise requires big structural changes to the way the world produces electricity, heats buildings, moves around and produces food.”

And it is up to us to get them moving.

It’s time to call every politician, write every corporation, plead with every entertainment journalist who continues to spread lies and dissent, and take to the streets in protest to make sure we are heard. In November 197 countries meet in Glasgow, Scotland for UN climate talks.

Our voices are particularly powerful between now and then.

Let’s call on our politicians to address the country, and tell us that we must make sacrifices, and tell us that they will force companies to help, just as they have done historically in wartime. We all need to know that we are facing the most pivotal moment in humanity, and inspire everyone to rise to the occasion.

That’s it. That’s all I got.

Just wanted to say happy Monday, and let’s roll up our sleeves and make this happen. Peace to all.

A parting thought. From Carl Sagan.

I don’t think he’d mind that I’m sharing it here, considering the circumstances.

The following excerpt is from his book book Pale Blue Dot and was inspired by an image taken, at Sagan's suggestion, by Voyager 1 on 14 February 1990. As the spacecraft was departing our planetary neighborhood for the fringes of the solar system, it turned it around for one last look at its home planet.

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

Fortunately, we are at least on track still to complete what has to happen before the first frost. We’ve installed around 130 sheets of drywall (the majority of which fell to Steve’s strength), with only three or so left to go. If all goes well, we are just a few days away from having complete electricity.

The natives we’ve planted — chamisa, great western sage, wax currant, Apache plume, and others — seem to be comfortably established. The volunteer sunflowers, planted by the birds, are also unfolding their late-summer cheer.

And we’ve had rain. More rain than is typical.

We are in an unusual bubble of good fortune right now. The massive heat domes, a term I had never heard before this summer, have not yet managed to stretch their tentacles into these headwater lands of the Rio Grande. So far, Colorado’s eastern Rockies are not yet ablaze.

For those who are not familiar with the West, you should know that something here has fundamentally changed in the last three years. There is an unspoken uneasiness now, an unsettling lump in the pit of people’s stomachs. We collectively wonder if our iconic bright-blue-sky summers may be no more.

We don’t actually wonder. We know. But no one will say it out loud. It’s too difficult.

On most days now, a great carbon haze settles over the horizon, a concoction of remnants from the burnt northwestern homelands of gray jays and barred owls. Colorado has been under a months-long air-quality alert, as we breathe in molecules that were once Englemann spruce and giant sequoias.

It seems inevitable that smoky summer skies is the way it’s going to be now. For centuries to come.

How many times can we say “A New Norm?”

Our valley’s brief bit of unseasonable rain is the exception, a temporary reprise to an ancient, shrubby desert playa that averages 7 inches of rain a year. Meanwhile, the Great Salt Lake has dried to the point that the fall migrations of white pelicans and avocets will likely end in tragedy, while freshly-dried toxic dust will scatter with each gust of wind.

The Colorado River is also in a death rattle. The waterway is the lifeblood for 1,400 miles of habitat as it winds from the alpine snowfields of Rocky Mountain National Park, through the now-charred walls of Glenwood Canyon, to Lake Powell. Poor Lake Powell. The people of Page, Arizona, are suddenly broke and trying to figure out how to survive. The water finally stopped short of the boat ramps that fuel their recreation economy. This was no surprise. For years, scientists predicted this outcome. For years, officials warned them to prepare for this moment. For years, business went on as usual.

What’s left of the Colorado makes its way to Lake Mead, whose hydroelectric turbines are on the verge of not having enough water to feed the air conditioners of Arizona and California’s subdivisions. Vast seas of pavement, which sit atop the former homes of cactus wrens and giant saguaros.

The endgame for the watery beast is the Colorado River Delta, and its once-broad wetlands that distinguished its vibrant transition into the Sea of Cortés. But it hasn’t actually flooded its namesake delta in many decades, except for a few weeks in 2014 when the United States decided to throw the Mexican farmers a courtesy bone by releasing a pulse flow.

But back to the Valley of the Cool Sunshine

It’s only about 72 degrees today, and cloudy. It’s August and I’m thinking about putting on a hoodie. I’m also trying to come to terms with not feeling guilty about our good fortune, however temporary it may be, in the face of this rapidly changing West.

I’m trying to come to terms with how my water use takes away happiness from the people of Juárez, and makes survival challenging for the songbirds along the Rio Grande. It’s all connected, after all. Others’ Arizona retirement dreams, the transplanted chamisa I have to water until its roots grow strong enough for it to survive on its own, and the death of the Great Salt Lake.

But less and less do these thoughts push me into despair.

I’m beginning to see something. Those feelings of hopelessness, grief, and anger that we get when we realize that we have already passed a particular tipping point — they are rational. Helpful even. It is okay to grieve anew, with each piece we lose. It’s also okay to find happiness in the beauty of what we do have. It’s even okay to feel nihalistic sometimes.

Then it’s time to get to work. Like the people in Page, eventually each of our own security bubbles will burst, and we will be forced to reckon with what comes next. Instead of clinging to the way it was and wishing it wasn’t so, it might be more helpful to look toward the future, realizing it will be different than the past, and helping one another prepare. There are some ideas on that below.

Okay. I’m outta here for today. Gotta get out and enjoy the cool temps while they last. Peace and laughter, over and out.

What does taking a stand look like?

It looks like a lot of different things, but I think that mostly it means being aware of the consequences of our actions, and trying to be a decent person. For example, I just heard that Maui locals are having to ration water so the tourists can play away without worry. The mayor is pleading with the airlines to reduce the number of flights, and locals are begging people not to go there. So taking a stand could be not visiting Hawaii. Or it might be campaigning against a city’s planned destruction of wetlands (we just had a campaign about this in Boulder, which seemed hopeless but now suddenly seems to have legs, yay!). Or volunteering. Here’s a nifty list of projects, compiled by Patagonia, of nonprofits who need help with specific tasks.

Or meditating, since we must do right by ourselves in order to help others.

Another powerful step toward helping is reading Gary Ferguson and Mary Clare’s new book, Full Ecology. They give some truly wise advice about how to get connected with ourselves and nature, before we go off on a frenzy trying to fix the world. This is really a must-read, full of hope and the author’s contagious, grounded, and positive attitudes.

Want more ideas? Here’s a great list from climate writer Emily Atkin, who more and more is hearing from people starting their own movements that were inspired from her newsletter. It’s catching.

A Parting Thought

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One reason it’s hard to see is because it means cracking open and discarding so much of what we think we know. The status quo, the myths we’ve been taught throughout our lives, are hard to see beyond. It’s kind of like knowing if you sail too far you’ll fall off the edge of the world, and then suddenly scientists declare Earth is round and we are all hurtling through space at 67,000 miles an hour. Major mind blower.

But it doesn’t have to be. It’s actually rather simple. Our problems are not separate issues, but symptoms of a larger one — most of those who shape our systems of politics and economics care deeply about wealth and power, and not so much about people, community, and the ecosystems which we are a part of and depend upon in this great circle of life.

Conquer and divide.

A small handful of people are in charge of making the decisions that condemn the whole planet. That is a serious power imbalance, especially since the people calling the shots have used, and continue to use their wealth to shape the political system so they will always be the winners.

Historically these are the people who built their fortunes on the backs of slaves and Chinese railroad workers. On the severed trunks of giant redwoods. On the destroyed cultures of Indigenous Americans. They continue to do it now under the war cry of fossil fuel dominance. They do it in the name of meeting quarterly profit goals, which require unleashing toxins into low-income neighborhoods. Through blocking bans on plastic bags, cruise ships, and glyphosates, because the ocean, bees, and our health are secondary to their portfolios. Portfolios that require building unsustainable growth empires that forever raise human suffering and all but ensure the extinction of Monarch butterflies, sea turtles, elephants, and orangutans.

This must stop. It’s time for wealth to become unfashionable.

Our society touts monetary wealth as the ultimate goal. The supreme god. We are taught to measure our worth and our happiness by our financial prowess. For most, money is the end-all goal, not the wealth of raising a healthy family and having ample time to spend with them. Not the wealth of a river teeming with fish, or a clean breath of air.

Our movies and pop culture celebrate wealth and consumer excess. We buy this and that for perceived happiness, even though these goods are actually the very things that are leading to our destruction. We tree-huggers are laughed at, belittled. This is not an accident, it is by design. Just as the oil companies waged their war on science under the banner of climate change denial, those who stood to profit from environmental destruction also worked to culturally discredit people who fight for clean air, clean water, and endangered species.

Those who spread the notion that there are more important things out there than a growth-economy and maximizing profits are accused of treason. Silly, socialist snowflakes, who care about silly things like old-growth forests, spotted owls, coral reefs, glaciers, and children in poverty.

It is not a sign of weakness to care about our ecosystems and fellow humans.

This pop-icon celebration of excess — and the coinciding push to make intelligent environmentalists seem like fringe alarmists — sprang up in the Regan years, at the same moment when the wealth gap began its rapid expansion. The idea of me first and the glory of Wall Street dominated blockbuster movies and magazine spreads. And so began the era of self-exceptionalism, the celebration of greed, and the disconnection from nature that is mandatory in order to fuel such ideals.

We were taught that private yachts, high-fashion, fast cars, and barely-clothed women were desirable. That it was okay to have few morals if it meant getting ahead. We were not taught this by accident. We were taught it because it helped the system grow. But that system was created and forced upon us by people who were disconnected. Disconnected from the intricate beauty of a grassland. Too busy in their quests to sit quietly on a shaded log, listening to the forest, with a good friend.

It’s time to change our heroes.

Let’s replace the Kardashians with icons like E.O. Wilson and Mary Heglar. Let’s decry our celebrities, CEOs, and politicians who jet-set to their world-scattered vacation homes. It is not cool. It is so totally not cool, because what they are doing is taking our future away from us, and from all of our descendants. A rich person who evades taxes is not getting away with something, he’s taking money directly from our kids’ educations. From our ability to build the resilient communities that we’ll need to survive a changing planet.

I’m not saying we should become celebrity haters. Not by any means. We all need to work together, and many richies are just following what they were taught was desirable. No, what I’m saying is that we need to replace our status quo with one where we recognize the consequences of our actions, and act accordingly. We need a culture where kindness, sharing, and not taking more than we need are the sacred pillars.

A new status quo

Climate writer and activist Ryan Hagen sums it up best. He says, “We must correct two of society’s foundational beliefs that are at the root of the problem: 1. Instead of prioritizing profit above all else, we must prioritize people and the planet. 2. Instead of the widespread belief that we’re separate from and better than nature, we must see that we are a part of nature and that we rely on it for everything. (More of his writings can be found here.)

So, how is systemic racism, misogyny, and wealth inequity connected to climate change? The people who divide us by race and gender for their own self benefit are the same people who enable polluters. They are the same people who choose to put a chemical plant in an African American neighborhood, instead of their own backyard. The same ones who profit from pandering to oil companies. The same ones who have done whatever it takes to make sure their voices are the loudest. It isn’t too much of a stretch to further say they intentionally divide us by race and class, in order to profit from it.

They are disconnected from the true beauty of humanity and nature. Forever searching for something to satisfy their desires, but which they will never find until they repair their souls. Ironically, a healthy soul is the one thing money cannot buy.

It’s time for our voices.

Now that we recognize these connections, and where we have been manipulated, we can regain power. Those of us who find our wealth in a dark night sky, or watching a bumble bee, can finally have our voices heard. Those of us who volunteer in urban community gardens, bringing nutrition and food security to our neighbors, will finally be valued as much as those with six-figure incomes.

It’s time our knowledge and the greater world good dictate the decisions that affect us all. We will have a say. It is our time to shine. It is our time to lead. It is our time to create a society based on compassion, equity, and nature.

And so, the connection is quite simple. Because it is the same handful of people who perpetuate systemic racism, global warming, misogyny, poverty, and ecocide, it is quite impossible to fix just one of these problems, without inadvertently fixing them all.

And that, I think, is the good news. That is a world we can hope to create.

To illustrate this idea is an amazing piece by climate writer Amy Westervelt, titled:

Pipelines Are Not People.

"Last week Jessica Reznicek, one of the two women who claimed responsibility for tampering with the Dakota Access pipeline in Iowa, was sentenced to eight years in federal prison, plus fines. Other pipeline protestors and valve turners have faced similarly severe consequences. In this case, the addition of ‘terrorism’ to Reznicek’s charges made the sentence much harsher. Her co-conspirator, Ruby Montoya, is still awaiting her sentencing on the same charges.

“It’s as ludicrous as it is terrifying–especially when you consider that a pipeline literally set the ocean on fire LAST WEEK. Over the course of several months, Reznicek and Montoya lit a few machines on fire, and blew out valves across the pipeline. They probably cost Energy Transfer Partners, the owners of the pipeline, about $6 million in damages—a mere rounding error to a multi-billion-dollar company. No one was injured, because the women made sure they never even came close to causing physical harm to a single soul. How the hell is that terrorism, but poisoning the water of thousands of people, exacerbating climate change, leading to the early death of untold millions…that’s just business? Or let's compare apples to apples: How are Montoya and Reznicek being sentenced harshly as terrorists, but the domestic terrorists who attacked the Capitol in military gear, with weapons, on January 6th so far seem to be getting off with fines and minor sentences?”

And a bit of other news: We’ve just returned from a writing assignment in southern Utah. While we were there, we had the good fortune of seeing the totem pole that is en route from Washington State to D.C. It was created by Lummi Nations artists, and is stopping at sacred sites along the way, including Standing Rock and the Black Hills. Some say the 4,900 pound cedar artwork acts as a battery, collecting positive energy from the sacred places it visits.

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I’ll be back in a few days with an update on our abandoned house project. Until then, peace, laughter, and happiness to all. Make your voices heard!

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Wild horse wells: A new study shows wild horses and burros dig water wells that help other species, like badgers, elf owls, and toads survive the dry times. This doesn’t sound too earth-shattering, except that under current public land management practices, wild horses and burros are considered non-native and the BLM (as in Bureau of Land Management) is striving to significantly reduce their numbers. Horses as we know them were introduced into the west by the Spanish, but 10,000 years ago in the Pleistocene — not terribly long ago in ecological evolutionary terms — there were species of equines in the American west. So maybe this study will retool the debate.

Food futures: In a great example of taking your profession and making it nature-friendly, the cooking site Epicurious announced that it will add no new content about beef. In their statement, they noted, “We believe that what we cook, and how we cook it, is a powerful action that anybody can take to fight climate change …Our hope is that the more sustainable we make our coverage, the more sustainable American cooking will become.” Chic Manhattan restaurant Eleven Madison Park recently dumped meat off its menu entirely, saying it is “becoming ever clearer that the current food system is simply not sustainable.”

Coal posturing: Wyoming is poised to sue states that stop buying their coal. Some argue it might be wiser to instead help prepare their residents for the inevitable end of coal (or the end of civilization, if we don’t stop burning their coal, whichever way it ends up going down). But many speculate this legal feather fluffing is simply to make the hard workers of Wyoming think their government has their backs. After all, from those worker’s perspectives, they’ve kept the country’s lights on by mining 40 percent of the nation’s coal. Now they have suddenly gone from heroes to villains, and are stuck with leaders making decisions from nostalgia, versus science.

Oh give me a home, where the PCBs roam: Similarly, politicians in Louisiana want their state to be a pollution sanctuary. That sounds pretty sexy. Maybe they can put that slogan on their license plates.

Mike Rowe’s dirtiest job: If you’re vegging out, do yourself a favor and skip Mike Rowe’s new show on Discovery+. He’s the guy from the hit series Dirty Jobs, and his new show, Six Degrees, is sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute. The premise is to show how we are all connected — by the wonders and joys of oil and gas, of course. Row “shouts out the oil and gas industry in some capacity in every episode,” journalist Dharna Noor wrote in an article in Earther, which sported the headline “Mike Rowe’s New Discovery+ Show is Big Oil-Funded Propaganda.” Apparently he loves his new dirty job, or at least his new paycheck so much that he wrote a 6,000 word facebook post to his 5.3 million followers, somewhat misogynistically bashing Noor and explaining how truly awesome fossil fuels are.

Rising Climate Star: Jerome Foster, an 18-year-old climate activist, protested every Friday for 58 weeks in front of the White House. Under Trump, he stood alone outside with his “School strike for climate” sign, but once Biden took over, he got invited inside as the newest member of the climate team. In an interview with the Guardian, Foster had something to say about people like Rowe (though he didn’t single out Rowe, just people who share similar opinions). “I thought, ‘I’m done convincing people. We’re just going to work around you.’ We don’t have time to be slowed down by people that don’t understand and don’t acknowledge the science. It’s far beyond that. You got 50 years to read the papers. You had 50 years to understand this crisis and you still are doing nothing. So we’re done spoon feeding you. We’re moving on, next step, next phase.”

No surprises here: A new report exposes how chemical companies knowingly covered up the health dangers of forever chemicals for years. No biggie. These are only the chemicals that are now found in nearly every human and most other living organisms on earth.

How about some good news: A pair of cranes are nesting in Ireland. That’s pretty amazing, as it’s been 300 years since the last ones were spotted there. The birds were once numerous in the country, so much so that they are an integral part of ancient Irish mythology. No word on if they’re planning on hatching an egg yet, but if so, it would be the first crane chick born in Ireland since before we made ‘Merica.

Solar for Teachers: More good news. A small town in Arkansas installed solar panels a plenty to power their school. That saved them more than $600,000, which allowed for “massive salary raises” for teachers. This is how we can start reimagining the future, and curing multiple ills with one action.

Hope in Florida: It’s nice to report that Florida is doing at least one thing that isn’t crushing the world’s dreams for environmental and racial justice. Orange County passed a “rights of nature” law in November, and now they are suing developers who want to destroy wetlands.

But of course, there are also plenty of Florida fails: In November, Key West residents overwhelmingly passed a law to severely limit cruise ships in their port. That is good news. The ships cause myriad environmental ills from spilled sewage to sediment damage to reefs, not to mention social ills in the city, while only benefiting a small handful of already wealthy property and business owners. Days later, the state legislature responded, giving the city a big middle finger by passing a law that says towns can’t make laws banning cruise ships. It’s currently on Gov. DeSantis’ desk, with little hope for a veto, since he loves ‘em cruises so much he also wants to make sure they can’t mandate vaccinations. To find out how to help the people who are tirelessly fighting Key West ships, visit Safer Cleaner Ships.

More cruising chaos: Cruise ships are ecological disasters. Between the CO2 and particulate emissions, unregulated raw sewage dumps, churned up silt, marine noise pollution, oil spills, and enormous plastic waste, they amount to a gruesomely destructive industry. Now Disney is pushing through approval of a $400 million cruise ship port on Eleuthera in the Bahamas. The site has been discussed as a Marine Protected area, but now it looks likely there will be an extra million visitors a year there instead. The Puerto Rican’s call these sort of tourists “shiny people,” because they show up coated in sunscreen, bug spray, and makeup, and then wash it all off on the reefs. It’s okay, when the reef dies Disney will just build a plastic one, with an underwater Saving Nemo ride.

Ode to oysters: Here’s an enlightening, interesting essay on oysters, especially if you’re thinking about kicking the habit.

Another win for activists: While the death of the Keystone XL pipeline made headlines, another win passed by more quietly. Northwest Innovation Works, who wanted to build the world’s largest fracked gas-to-methanol refinery, abandoned their project in Kalama, Washington. By the way, the Onion newspaper most poignantly summed up the death of Keystone, by saying, “Wow, imagine wasting all those years fighting against something that never ended up getting made.”

Perfect kingdom, again: The tiny Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan often makes the headlines for its progressive thought, especially its decision to base its economy off of the Gross Domestic Happiness of its people versus Gross Domestic Product. When Covid hit, the King took off with a backpack, through a country of very few roads, trekking across rainforests and up to isolated Himalayan villages, to make sure everyone was informed about how to keep themselves safe. He figured if they heard it from him, they would take it seriously. It seems to have worked. So far, there has only been one death in the country of 700,000. If only other leaders were so humble, and compassionate toward the people they are charged with looking after.

And apologies for the lapse in posts. I’ll have some more news and thoughts up later this week.

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The landscape is dominated by fortresses of red cliffs. Spiny, towering rock monuments pierce through sagebrush plains. Some look like giant people, frozen into the fabric of the land. An occasional creak of ravens’ wings echoes off of water-sculpted canyon walls. Ancient fossilized sand dunes roll underfoot, decorated with intermittent, flamboyant collared lizards. Risking stunning cliché, yes, wild horses actually romp and play.

Bear’s Ears became a national monument during last gasps of 2016. About a month later, one of the first acts of the new president was to slash its size by 85 percent. Before then, Bear’s Ears was largely unknown to the rest of the country. Now it is the poster child for human conflict over land use; a confluence of oilmen, cattlemen, hikers, politicians, off-roaders, grandstanders, conservationists, miners, clothing manufacturers, river rafters, town planners, hotel owners, and archaeologists. Oh yeah, and Native Americans, who might finally have a proper seat at the planning table thanks to our new Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, whose Laguna Puebloan ancestry is tied to the area.

To the Hopi, Navajo, Ute Mountain Ute, Zuni, and other peoples, southern Utah is sacred ancestral land. The canyons and mesas of the area are rich with ancient dwellings, but it’s not just those that are holy. It’s all of the land, plants, cedars, herbs, cliffs, hawks, snakes, and rivers. Hopi and Zuni ancestors likely moved to the area in Paleolithic times. That means the roofs of some sandstone alcoves have been blackened by at least 10,000 years of human campfires. When agriculture became a thing, the ancestral Puebloans settled down and started building. Their populations in just southeastern Utah numbered in the hundreds of thousands (a stark contrast to San Juan County’s current population of 28,000).

Based on what we can surmise from archaeological evidence and ancestral stories, it was pretty peaceful through most of time. But in the late 1200s, something changed. The rains became weak. The springs dried up. A long-lasting drought made crops more sparse. With thinning resources, dwellings became more fortified. More defensive. Peace turned into turmoil, and eventually the Pueblo cultures migrated south to New Mexico and Arizona.

The bighorn sheep, spotted rock squirrels, and yucca blooms remained behind.

A hundred or two years later is when we think the Utes rolled in, though they could have been there all the while. Just a bit later, the Navajo, or Diné, arrived, finally working their way down from the northern tundras. In the 1600s, the ancient dwellings were “discovered” by the Spanish, and then “discovered” again in the 1850s. It wasn’t long after that that white settlers decided they wanted to own the land, and not share it, and so began the mass slaughter of the Navajo and Ute, with survivors being condemned to concentration camps out of state.

Like most of the West, Bear’s Ears is a strikingly beautiful place with a terrible black spot on its past. But perhaps we’re learning. Steve and I were very much uplifted when we ran into an archeological team comprised largely of cheery Zuni men, helping to preserve their ancestral sites and translate some of the petroglyph and pictograph symbols, the meanings of which had been handed down to them through many generations.

We couldn’t help but think about how the demise of the ancestral Puebloans in Bear’s Ears is a daunting parallel to our current trajectory. The West is in an ever-worsening drought, with no end in sight. Climate change is shifting the weather patterns across our country’s farmlands. Presumably, as our resources dwindle, our lives will become more defensive. Our walls will get bigger. Our weapons more numerous. This age of relative peace and comfort that many of us have enjoyed during recent decades may very well be coming to an end.

Or maybe it’s possible to imagine ourselves into a different outcome.

We know that we have to change our baseline, if we are to mend our broken relationship with the earth and one another. We will have to rethink everything, from how we live, to how we travel, to the very structure of our society. That takes a lot of imagination. Imagination we better start using now, so we have a clearer vision of the new baselines we want to create.

In my imagination, I see us no longer claiming dominion over the land. We humans take so much. I see us fixing that by regaining a sense of sacredness. By seeing the land and waters, plants and animals as an extension of us, and us of them.

I see us ceasing our glorification of money. Without the money deity, caring for our parents, or volunteering in a community garden would be a more honorable way to spend our days than being the leader of a multinational corporation.

I see our children understanding that greed and ecocide are not okay. Even better, I see them living in a world where those are not the norm. A world where the self-indulgent no longer call the shots.

Maybe we can redefine wealth as a clean river teeming with fish, rather than a vacation home in Jackson Hole. Maybe we can move into the future by taking down all of the cattlemen’s fences, instead of forever fortifying our homes.

I further imagine us disassembling those artificial gods that we’ve created, concepts like stock markets, GDPs, and even countries. It’s feels almost impossible to imagine a world with no countries, or maybe it’s easy if you try. If you haven’t heard it in a while, it’s worth a listen.

For too long we’ve hung our beliefs on concepts that aren’t important, or downright ridiculous, like a growth economy. Health, community, love, family, nature, peace, laughter — and time enough to fully participate in each of those — that feels essential. More essential than Wall Street.

These days, it seems that the world has fully tipped into crazy-town. But for conservationists, and surely for Native Americans, our modern world has always seemed haywire. An insane uphill battle against forces of ignorance and destruction. But now, now there is momentum. Now there is a whole world watching, and most of a world wanting to help. Now, just when everything looks the bleakest, is there actually hope for deeply meaningful change.

And so the moral of this story is… if you ever get the chance to go to Bear’s Ears, don’t turn it down.

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It’s been a hectic, yet also relaxing few weeks. Hectic, because we’ve had family in town lending a hand on our house. They’ve kept us moving at an un-leisurely, yet pleasingly productive pace. Relaxing, because they’ve also kept me away from technology and my interminable news-reading habit.

It’s a temporary, guilty pleasure not following the headlines. And taking this pause was easier since we finally have leaders acting somewhat compassionately toward nature and humans. It’s sure lightened my mood, a lot.

To further make life lighter still, the headlines I have seen have been outstanding.

One in particular is Biden’s announcement to double U.S. Paris climate goals, by cutting greenhouse gas emissions 52 percent by 2030. That is doubly important because this country can now finally start pushing other countries to up their ante. This week the U.K. also stepped up and announced its plan to slash emissions 78 percent by 2035. Another amazing milestone, we have a Native American running the Interior Department, who just started her job. It is wonderfully bizarre to experience a president and political majority who are actually an environmental champions.

But on the other had, I’m feeling a bit like Gandalf.

I know that over in Mordor the orcs are regrouping, preparing for the next battle. Their lies purchased with oil revenues. Their eyes that see only lumber, not the beauty and intricacy of a forest.

Wait. Let me retract the battle analogy. To make lasting change, we really need to work toward something positive, not spend our energy fighting something negative. But it is really damn hard to just ignore a fight when people keep chucking spears at you.

These spear-chuckers seem to be fueled by blind desire for money, and we, as a society, have spent a great deal of effort glorifying this pursuit of wealth, even as we know it is causing the breakdown of our planet’s life systems. Maybe someday we’ll see such greed as mental illness and diagnose this destructive money-delerium as a disease for which there is a cure.

But in the meantime, a fine example of the regrouping of unkind forces happened last week. The oil and tobacco industries jointly sponsored a conference at which government environmentalists spoke about climate solutions. Hmm, two industries who use the same PR tactics (even the same PR firms) to harm people and influence policy on a grand scale. It’s a disturbing greenwashing debacle for many reasons, as cunningly pointed out by climate reporter Emily Atkin in this piece.

So, I know it won’t be long before the world’s troubles burst my bubble of respite.

In a few weeks, we’ll be tipping into wildfire and hurricane season, with record levels of greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere. Smoke will stain our lungs, winds and water will tear apart our communities, and both will destroy some of the places we love most. The very places we turn to when we need solace.

Our extinction crisis will throw deep depression on those whose sensitive, compassionate hearts we need most. Crops will fail. Millions more refugees will need help, but a kind hand and sympathetic border policies will be increasingly harder to find. Before the decade’s up, it’s likely the last wild orangutan will take her parting breath. Her forest finally fully replaced with the palm oil plantations that are necessary to fill trillions of little plastic-wrapped snack packs, ensuring our unlimited access to junk food while making good on our worship of shareholder profits.

These are many problems we need to tackle head-on. Problems we can tackle. But that’s enough of them for today. Because sometimes we really need to just go outside and appreciate how wonderful this world is, at this very moment.

It is spring. And spring brings many reasons for hope and happiness.

Around here — here being the high-altitude, harsh environs of Colorado’s San Luis Valley — the bare tree branches are hinting of buds. Bits of green ground cover are peeping out, and livening up the scene.

I could go on for pages about our valley coming to life. Prairie dogs are up and about. Beavers are chomping down cottonwoods. Finches are flirting at the bird feeder. We even saw two doves humping on the telephone pole. Every story needs a little romance. You’re welcome.

So drop me a line and let me know how your spring is shaping up. I’d love to hear your stories and see your photos.

News from the Valley of the Cool Sunshine

Steve and my spring stories mostly have to do with the house project. So for our friends following this, here’s a long-overdue update.

We finished dry-walling the upstairs, just in time for my dad and Martha to show up. They officially became the first people to spend the night in the house (we’ve been sleeping in the van).

They spent the next week or so helping us disassemble this bastard child of a back porch. It was laborious work. The roof had about a dozen layers of soggy shingles and plywood. I guess someone thought that when it leaked they could just keep adding more layers to fix the problem. It didn’t.

Another huge task they completed for us was a big clean of the yard. There were decades worth of tumbleweeds, garbage, and a really gnarly old camper top. They trimmed the trees as well, and set the stage for the next round — planting the yard.

On the way to a hike we found a newly graded road, with some plants uprooted. So we grabbed a bush and a small tree, and I planted them. The tree didn’t have many roots, so we don’t know if it will make it, but it’s been almost five weeks and it’s still alive, so there’s hope.

Just a day or two after they took off, Steve’s dad arrived from Florida. We had just enough time to go to storage and upgrade the guest room with a bed (vs. a camping mattress), arm chair, TV, dresser, and curtains. Very fancy. Almost like a real room.

Steve’s dad, Charlie, came in a whirlwind of knowledge, first getting our shower up and running, which is really an upgrade, and then the rest of the plumbing. We are also now able to use the washing machine, as well as wash dishes in the kitchen sink. We are feeling quite fancy.

Meanwhile, Steve rebuilt floors, dry-walled the bathroom, dug a huge trench for the outside water line, straightened the roof line, built soffits, and a other manly things.

I’ve mostly just been working in the yard. When I say “yard,” I mean the quarter-acre of dirt surrounding the house. My mom is an amazing gardener, but I neglected to learn from her, and so I am sorely uninformed when it comes to any of this. But my wonderful mother helped me pick out some plants, and the work here has begun. I have to say, I am really loving this work.

Now that everyone is gone, last night we finally got to spend our first night in the house. We love sleeping in the van, but the house adds a level of luxury. That’s it for now. And don’t forget to send in your spring stories to karunae@mac.com, or

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