“I HAVE to do this: believe that there is the possibility of reconstitution. I have to be sure of the fact that there will always be those who are already engaged and can be joined, so no one has to go it alone.” Such were the thoughts on my hike last week, when assaulted by the heat and the views of so many oak trees either diseased, or dying, or dead.
The grasses will recover.
So will the wild blackberries, although the fruit dried on the wine, hard little balls of no use to perusing wildlife.
The trees, though, are suffering.
Eventually I made it to sturgeon lake, now just a puddle. Small California sunflowers lined the shores where there is usually water, a golden band screaming: beauty!
The herons and egrets joined the pelicans, some of them roosting in the trees behind the water.
A flock of Western sandpipers, really a murmuration, undulated as a cloud in the air, and looked like blossoms on a tree, in a particular spot. They were miraculous, shimmering, moving hard in the hot air. They are difficult to photograph and to detect, just look closely.
I had to sit down in a shady spot twice during a hike that I used to do briskly, without any sense of fatigue then. Yet, I am still hiking. I am still casting my lot with those who love nature and try to raise consciousness about the climate crisis. I still believe change is possible. And the birds still signal wonder.
Music today is the same mix of sadness and resilience that colored this week – from Poland with decidedly Jewish melodies perfect for the upcoming High Holidays, I’ve been listening intently.
There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.
I’ve walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don’t be fooled
this isn’t a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.
I won’t tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light—
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.
And I won’t tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it’s necessary
to talk about trees.
Adrienne Rich, “What Kind of Times are These” from Collected Poems: 1950-2012.
So let’s talk about trees, or rather let’s look at them.
What was:
***
What is:
The fires are, of course, every where and getting worse. Not natural but man made disasters, if we consider them a consequence of climate change that we elicited. As I write this, the McKinney fire is growing rapidly in Northern California. It has grown to more than 51.000 acres in the last two days and cost lives, with thousands fleeing and losing their homes. Montana lands and people are afflicted by the Elmo fire, and Idaho residents are under evacuation orders since Saturday as the Moose Fire in the Salmon-Challis National Forest charred more than 67.5 square miles (174.8 square km) in timbered land near the town of Salmon.
Last month, the Pipeline Fire on Nuvatukaovi (Hopi) or Dookʼoʼoosłííd (Navajo) — the San Francisco Peaks — ripped through Arizona forests desiccated by the worst drought in 1,200 years. Thousands of people evacuated and major traffic ways closed for all. New Mexico has unprecedented fires as well, with two of the largest fires on record burning at the same time: The Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon blaze and the Black Fire, approaching 350.000 acres.
Alaska is burning, some 55 fires across the region, active since June.
Here in Oregon, according to the official state website announcing current conditions and evacuation orders, we counted as of yesterday 19 fires.
And if you think there is some stark beauty captured in all of this devastation, I suggest you think about the toll to other living beings, and not just in terms of immediate death through burning or asphyxiation.
Short version of a long research report (with the table below laying out the framework): fires change population dynamics and environmental make-up in a way that affect immune responses and exposure to things that make animals, and eventually humans, sick. One major factor is an increasing contact with select parasites. Fire alters the exposure to parasites (habitat destruction, mortality, host movement, and community alteration)and also changes immune-mediated susceptibility (stress or injury and pollution). your immune system is simply not up to task if it has to fight on multiple fronts. If animals, including parasites, loose their habitat, they come in closer contact to human populations. Fires also shift the balance of a system of parasites, so that if some species are killed other species go unchecked, grow rampantly and are thus bringing more disease into mammalian populations.
So by all means, let’s talk about trees as well as the many, many other complex topics, from general climate to specific fire threats, so we can prepare adequate responses.
Here are the Sighing Firs, from Stanislaw Moniuszko’s HALKA.
