Walk with me. This time on the northern side of the Columbia River, at Catherine Creek. It is a beautiful short loop offering wide vistas to the East and West along the river, as well as impressive cliffs on the southern side straight across from where you hike.

Plenty of wildflowers around, the annual explosion of poppies,

bachelors’ buttons (in German “grain flower” or Kornblume, since it used to grow at the borders of the wheat fields,) immediately catching your attention.

Buckwheat, fork-toothed ookow and cream bush abound, intermixed with dill and bindweed.

Swathes of sweet peas.

Then there are the beautiful cluster lilies (Brodiaea elegans.)

And one of my favorites, fool’s onion.

I had come to photograph the oaks, still in fresh greenery, for my Columbia Gorge art project. What drew attention instead, or in addition, were the many dead trees. I saw mostly pines, felled by drought, which brought up thoughts to fire, no coincidence given the photographs from the East Coast, with horrendous smog drifting south from the Canadian fires this week.

These fires are raging in Quebec tree farms that are counted as carbon offset. These mono crop plantations are much prone to catastrophic burns. This year a combination of contributing factors created the catastrophe: warming temperatures led to earlier snow melt and little spring rain made the ground dry. Occasional freezing rain had weighed the trees down, with broken branches littering the forest floor, perfect tinder. Reforestation with mono crops has been the norm for remote areas previously damaged by mining, because it covers up the destruction and it generates income more quickly than waiting for a natural forest to re-emerge. “Reforestation” also enables claims that states are honoring their emissions reduction pledges in the IPCC framework.

Alas, that led to further contemplation – with an advance apology to my dear friends who have devoted part of their lives to replanting clear-cut swathes of land in order to help the environment – of a new report out of the Yale School of Environment that points to the problems with reforestation across the world.

“High-profile initiatives to plant millions of trees are being touted by governments around the world as major contributions to fighting climate change. But scientists say many of these projects are ill-conceived and poorly managed and often fail to grow any forests at all.“

The upshot of many studies says that afforestation is failing for a variety of reasons, but those failures go undocumented because there is no official follow-up to the PR actions that these plantings satisfy, and that they amount to little more than “greenwashing.”

“Cynical PR is one thing, but phantom forests are also increasingly sabotaging efforts to rein in climate change. This happens when planters claim the presumed take-up of carbon by growing forests as carbon credits. If certified by reputable bodies, these credits can count toward governments meeting their national emissions targets or be sold to industrial polluters to offset their emissions. Many corporations plan to use their purchase of carbon credits as a means of fulfilling promises to attain “net-zero” emissions. So the stakes are rising.”

If you have time to read the article, there is also a discussion on Oregon fires and general issues associated with the increased fire danger across the Western U.S. and problems with the credibility of our carbon offsets.

Heavy fare, I admit. But hey, at least this week brought some good news, with two Supreme Court decisions regarding voting rights and some guardrails for Medicaid included!

And there is always the option not to think at all and cherish the fact that the cherries are in season!

An blackberries not far behind.

Music from the Depression era reminds us of people’s resilience! Life is a bowl of cherries….