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After an evening of intermittent rain showers, I expected my midday walk through the forest to be a muddy mess. But rather than muck, I was positively giddy to discover this two-foot tall beauty along my path.
It doesn’t matter how many trilliums I’ve enjoyed in springs past or how many I see on a hike; the giddiness doesn’t go away. To me, they’re the woodland answer to an Easter egg hunt, popping up briefly and then disappearing again, hiding until next spring.
Early rise this morning to get on the trail, trying to escape the heat and smoke.
The Pacific Northwest, Seattle in particular, is known for its rain. From July through September however, our forests and fields are as dry as those in California and Colorado. Our summer temps hover in the mid-seventies. Low eighties are unbearable for most of us, sending us in droves to air-conditioned movie theaters, stores, and coffee shops. And for the many without air-conditioning, we open our windows and crank up our fans.
This week we're rising earlier than usual to walk, run, and bike--not only to escape the heat, but the smoke as well. Forest fires in Canada are blanketing us in a gray haze. Friends without air-conditioning open their windows for a breeze and inadvertently set off their smoke detectors.
And that's only the Pacific Northwest. Montana, Colorado, and California residents go to sleep with acrid air polluting their nostrils and wake to more of the same. The west is burning up while we all pray for rain.
Friends in the midwest, in the south, and on the east coast, you are experiencing your own weather hells this summer. Record-breaking heat, hurricanes and tornadoes where none should be, hailstorms in August. Around the world, more of the same. You know. You live there.
Our Earth is talking to us. It's a sick child with a bad cough, whining and crying, needing attention and comfort and medicine. If we keep ignoring the cries of our beautiful planet, our home, how long before it develops full-on bronchitis or pneumonia?
I've been called "crunchy" and a tree hugger, and yes, I wear those badges honestly and proudly, but before anything else I'm a human, a card-carrying member of the political party known as Mankind. And I love our Earth with my entire being. I hate seeing any member of my family sick in bed, and the Earth is our mother-father-grandparent, family to all of us.
But Dear Reader, if you've stayed with me this long, enough doom and gloom. Negativity is not action. What are we going to do about it? How are we going to work together to heal our glorious planet? Arguing amongst ourselves about whether or not Johnny has a cough or is faking it to get out of a test today doesn't make him climb out of bed and go to school. Rather, let's love our Earth, our human home.
While we wait for the brilliant minds of our scientists, the policies of our elected representatives, and the future environmental inventions of our children (and I have faith they will be beyond our imagining), we can each do something small, individually, to impact. We all know what those things are: reduce, reuse, recycle, repeat. Let's not make each other feel guilty about what we can't or choose not to do. Rather, let's promise to each other and celebrate what we can and choose to do.
For my small change, I vow to implement and enforce mellow yellow in my home until the fall rains are well underway. (For fans of poetry: "If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down.") Maybe my family's reduction in water consumption won't have much effect worldwide, but it is a small change I can easily make at zero cost, and at least that's a beginning.
What small change can you make? Butterfly wings, anyone?
It was still this afternoon as I walked through the forest by my house. The midday heat had something to do with it, I'm sure. A temperature gauge showing 80 would be a welcome sight to many East Coasters and Midwesterners this July, but for Pacific Northwesterners like me, blue skies and temps above 75 engender panic, leaving us gasping for breath and looking for the nearest air-conditioned building. Our furred and feathered friends don't like the heat much either, which is why my favorite walking spot was so quiet.
All the better to hear the persistent tap-tapping of a Downy Woodpecker. A quick perusal of my field guide indicated that he's the smallest American woodpecker found north of Mexico. At 6 1/2 inches long, he's just over half the size of his cousin the Northern Flicker and a whopping third of the size of the flashy Pileated Woodpecker. And yet, despite his diminutive appearance, he was unphased by the 200-foot Douglas fir he was exploring.
He dug into it with gusto, not stopping his urgent quest for bugs and grubs even when I approached and noisily fumbled with my phone. He scrambled off to one side and up the trunk and I stepped back, gazing toward the sky into the boughs of the newly dead tree. It was an old one, easily 100 years old, and I feared my friend the woodpecker had bitten off more than he could chew.
He seemed confident though. Day by day, he'd drill holes in the bark, working his way up and down and around the splendid snag. Calmly, diligently poking and searching for his livelihood, he had faith that he could conquer this tree, size be damned.
He shared his confidence with me, this tiny messenger of perseverance. Slowly, persistently, a little bit every day, he will conquer that Doug fir and move to the next and the next. I aspire to do the same. I hope you will join me from the height of your own snag.
I’ve mentioned it on my blog a few times, and if you’re a weather aficionado like my dear old dad, you’re sure to know this already—we in the West are having a bit of a dry spell. A dry spell, as in Seattle hasn’t seen a drier May in 23 years. (Thank you for the “weather in a nutshell”, Seattle Weather Blog.) Don’t even get me started about June. My flowers are gasping their last dusty breath before crumbling into oblivion. Cacti are beginning to look like a viable alternative for my PNW flowerbed. On Wednesday, I sat in my sunny office concentrating on the day job. The by-now-unfamiliar pitter-pat of raindrops on the skylights above my head intruded on my focus. My wild whoops of “It’s raining! At last, at last! Moisture at last!” intruded on my cats’ naps. As they raced off in search of quieter environs, I logged on to Facebook to track the path of the rain storm. My local friends were equally thrilled about the change in weather—for about 60 seconds. It seems that those ten raindrops on my skylights were all that were allotted per household. The little gray cloud rationed out my family’s portion and swiftly moved on to my neighbor’s house.
However, those ten raindrops. What excitement they caused. They were something different. They were what we all needed. Okay, they didn’t do much good, but we were all thrilled about a gray cloud—and how often can you say that, especially about Seattleites?
In my continuing quest to find inspiration in the banal, I offer you that most dreaded of occasions—spring cleaning.
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spider
Spring has finally arrived, and I’ve had the windows open to welcome the air into my winter-stuffy home. So I wasn’t surprised to see the tiny spider scrambling across my bathroom floor this morning. I reached out to squish it and was struck with sympathy. Yes, you read that right.
Sympathy.
One spider. A truly small one. Certainly not long hatched from its egg. All alone.
Ants are always leaving the safety of their anthills to search their environs for food. They help each other drag large morsels back to their hills. They work together to care for their young. They join together to battle other ant colonies and predators who would decimate their communal home. I wonder if they mourn the ants that don’t return from a day of foraging. The ants who were stepped on, eaten by a larger bug, drowned in a sprinkler’s spray.
Bees live in colonies, too. Do the homebodies miss the drones that are caught in spider webs or lost forever inside windows? Scientists tell us that swatted hornets send out help-me pheromones to their friends and family. Bluebottle flies buzz around together. Gnats and mosquitoes annoy us in swarms. Everyone knows that if you find one cockroach, there are at least a hundred more hiding close by.
But what about the lonely spider? She lives entirely alone. She is feared and loathed in equal measure. She is the monster of the bug world: hunting, luring, and gobbling those that cross her path. She doesn’t know her family, she has no BFF, and she lives to kill and kills to live. After her lifetime of murder, she eats her mate, lays her hundreds of eggs, and dies. Her babies hatch and begin their lonely lives. And everyone hates them. Is there any creature besides the bird that is happy to see a spider? And let’s face it, the bird would be just as happy to see a beetle or an earthworm.
Even gardeners like me who are glad to see the spider eating pests in the vegetable garden are disgusted by them when they appear inside the house.
I considered the lonely little spider racing frantically across my bathroom floor. She was searching desperately for a dark corner in which to hide. Nobody loved her. Her mother and father were already dead. She would live alone. My heart was moved with pity.
And then I squished her.