Unnatural Winter, Unnatural Spring, Unnatural World

The world has gone crazy and my head is so full of the loud stimulus that I can’t put all the pieces together to form any of the usual speculations and hypotheses. After spring-like winter, the natural world here in the Southern Appalachians bursts out like never before. Accelerated and profuse, it is nature on steroids.

The starlings that nest each year in the eaves of our little guest house are back this year with a vengeance, but where is the elegant black snake that usually keeps their population in check? Did the constant freezing and thawing disturb his hibernation such that he perished over the non-existent winter? The starlings now brazenly command the space. The space between each rafter stuffed to capacity with demanding hatchlings. Bird shit decorates the walls and windows, an art nouveau that escapes my capacity for appreciation. I would sell my soul for a short visit from a hungry reptile.

The starlings are joined in their fecund ecstasy by ticks, fleas, fire ants and poison ivy. Without a significant deep freeze this year to kill them back. The furry members of the family scratch and stare helplessly with glazed expressions. Frontline, Advantage and the other poisons only kill the bugs once they have bitten, and for every one dead, another ten await outdoors for the newly opened niche.

The footpaths through the woods that provide the avenues for nightly walks are now carpeted in three-leaved green, my arms and legs with the itchy, oozing telltale signature of my floral nemesis.  The unnatural world now beacons me to abandon venues of trees and moss for the safer pavements of anthropocentric constructions. The unmaking feeds upon itself.

The black snake is not the only character missing from this unnatural landscape. I never thought I would miss them, but where are the dandelions? My grandfather used to curse their exotic nuisance as he carefully removed each offender from his well-tended lawn. I, on the other hand, have always adopted a laissez-faire attitude towards the mowed spaces surrounding my house. My lassitude welcomes all. Even the lowly dandelion provides a happy splash of color and fresh greens for soups, stews and salads. How unnatural must the world be when even the unnatural cannot flourish in it?

Meanwhile, political discourse is monopolized by talks of economic growth, the devising of new strategies that will allow the plutocrats to extract even more self-aggrandizement from a strangled earth. Promises of drops of prosperity for the rest of the living biosphere flow down the edifice like starling shit.

Is there any hope to be gleaned from the signals of the natural world? The Canada geese fly back and forth over our house to the ponds each day, perhaps our old friend Lulu, who we raised from an egg a few years ago, is among them. We hope. Deep in the poison ivy-laden woods, a brown thrasher flies up into the trees, calling my attention. Her strategy, I know, is to distract me from the small chick in a fragile nest in a tangle of brambles on the ground. I glance to see the well-camouflaged hatchling and then pass on, allowing the mother to conclude that her ruse was a success. Perhaps the poison ivy will protect the vulnerable baby bird on the forest floor. I hope.

I am reading Peter Matthiessen’s “Snow Leopard.” As my heart sings requiems for black snakes and dandelions, I am at least comforted by Matthiessen’s reminder of the basic Buddhist wisdom – Everything is Right Here Now. I hope.

Dick Cheney - A heartless man gets an undeserved second chance

I was listening to NPR this morning, as they discussed Dick Cheney’s recent heart transplant this past Saturday. The news pushed me to tears. The 71 year old Cheney is an anomaly in the transplant business, where scarce, vital organs are usually reserved for younger patients. The reason for the age discrimination is no mere ageism. Young people are much more likely to survive the surgery and aftermath of rehabilitation. Additionally, ethical considerations suggest that young people, who may otherwise have decades of life ahead of them, deserve a chance to live into the old age that older heart patients have enjoyed. At 71, Cheney is only a few years shy of the 74.8 years that is the normal life expectancy for an American man. I can’t help but feel that the heart that now beats in Cheney’s chest could have been put to much better purpose somewhere else.

Portrait of a Heartless Man

Here is a short but not comprehensive review of Dick Cheney’s accomplishments:

·      Cheney engineered the illegal invasion of a sovereign country (Iraq) by deliberately fabricating and manipulating evidence to suggest that the country was obtaining “weapons of mass destruction,” with the intention of using them against the United States. This action resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives in addition to the lives of thousands of US armed servicemen and women (callous disregard for human life).

·      When Joseph Wilson revealed in an op-ed entitled “What I didn’t find in Africa,” that the Bush Administration’s insistence that Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy uranium in Africa was blatantly false, Cheney masterminded a contemptuous payback by outing Wilson’s wife Valerie Plame. The revelation of Plame’s position as a covert officer of the CIA, placed her in danger and was a direct violation of US law (vindictiveness).

·      As a shareholder and former CEO of Halliburton Inc., Cheney made sure that his dividend-granting cronies were first in line to pick at the carcasses of the above manufactured conflict in Iraq (and Afghanistan) for his own personal gain (greed).

·      Human Rights Watch issued a report suggesting that Cheney be investigated for ordering the abuse of detainees that amounted to torture (war crimes).

·       More recently, Cheney pushed through legislation, known not ironically as “the Halliburton Exemption,” that exempts environmentally disastrous fracking for natural gas from any regulation under the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. Large scale contamination of air and water resources wherever fracking occurs has resulted (crimes against nature).

Cheney’s struggle with heart disease comes as no surprise when viewed with a bit of insight from the ancient wisdom of Eastern mysticism. The fourth chakra, Anahata, related to love, compassion and forgiveness, flows from the heart center of a body. According to the ancient wisdom, diseases of the spirit in the form of petty vindictiveness, selfishness, fear and hatred manifest themselves physically in the fourth chakra as heart disease.

Cheney suffered his first heart attack in his late 30s just as he was beginning his political career as a Representative from the state of Wyoming. During his tenure in Congress, he voted against the establishment of the Department of Education. He voted against imposing economic sanctions on South Africa’s apartheid regime, and voted against a non-binding Congressional resolution requesting the South African government release Nelson Mandela from prison. As secretary of defense, he oversaw the invasion of another sovereign state, Panama, and Operation Desert Storm. Throughout his political career of denying justice to suppressed peoples and violent overthrowing of others, he suffered a total of five heart attacks and had quadruple bypass surgery, angioplasty and an artificial heart pump implanted in his chest. The metaphoric perfection of Cheney’s heartless legacy is chilling.  

As Cheney pours his karma into this new heart, he will no doubt strangle this one to death in the process too. Some younger, deserving heart patient, whose actions haven’t resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocents, will likely never reach the age of 71 as a result. If my loved one’s heart was now beating in the chest of that monster, my grief would be compounded exponentially. That grieving family has my sincerest condolences. 

Vernal Equinox 2012 - The First Day of Hot Spring in a Climate-Challenged World

 Bluebirds are a sign of spring; warm weather and gentle south breezes they bring

The bluebirds have been here since January, but today we officially enter into the season of spring, ending what has been the fourth warmest winter ever recorded in the United States. The vernal equinox usually marks the end of freezing weather and darkness of the soul and wider world. As the earth gently tilts back towards the sun, it brings the hope of the rebirth of spring. For those of us who have been enjoying spring-like temperatures all winter, this usually joyous date is overshadowed by a feeling of foreboding.

If we are enjoying spring in winter,

and summer in spring,

then what will the days of summer bring?

If the balmy weather was just another statistical anomaly in an otherwise normal decade, we could rejoice in our good fortune, but instead it marks another piece of confirming evidence in a long line of similar evidence of hottest years and hottest decades in history. The unanimous predictions of climate scientists are coming to eerie fruition. We have broken earth’s climate.

Right now, the concentration of carbon dioxide in earth’s atmosphere is approximately 394 parts per million. This figure is two parts per million more than last year at this time, and this trend of a 2 ppm increase per year has been fairly consistent over the past several decades. Before the dawn of fossil fuel driven industrial revolution, carbon dioxide concentrations had been relatively stable at approximately 280 ppm for thousands of years, with minor fluctuations attributable to volcanic eruptions and other phenomena.

There is no doubt that carbon dioxide acts as a thermal blanket in the atmosphere, trapping infrared radiation and warming and tempering earth’s climate. Without our atmosphere, our planet would be prone to extreme temperatures, spiking to extreme heat during the day and plunging into bitter cold at night. For example Mercury, the planet closest to the sun, which has little in the way of an atmosphere, temperatures can reach 800°F in the daytime and then plunge to -280°F at night. On Venus, a planet the same size as Earth where carbon dioxide makes up as much as 96% of the atmosphere by volume, the average temperature is 860°F.

As we burn fossil fuels, we convert the carbon in ancient biomass into carbon dioxide and release it into the atmosphere at a staggering rate. Needless to say, the countries with the highest levels of industrialization are largely responsible for the post-industrial increases to atmospheric carbon dioxide. The United States alone is believed to be responsible for as much as 30% of it. What’s worse is that the US continues to generate carbon dioxide at a per capita rate that is more than twice as high as any other country.   

At current levels, we are seeing increased temperatures of around 2°F. If we continue along this path without any alterations to the status quo, by 2100 at 600ppm, we will see increases of 9°F, a level at which much of the coastal world will be inundated and mega floods, storms, droughts and deadly heat waves will be annual events. Life on earth as we know it will completely change from one in which we enjoy a benevolent, abundant planet into one in which survival itself becomes questionable.

Time is of the essence, the longer we postpone making drastic reductions to greenhouse gas emissions, the more dire our reality becomes. This summer, the leaders of the world will be meeting at Rio’s Earth Summit to draw up a plan of action. Historically, the United States, the greatest offender, has stymied any global effort to control greenhouse gas emissions, but this year also has the benefit of being a US election year. We need to make it absolutely clear to our law makers that we expect meaningful action and that we will not continue to vote for them if they continue to sit on the fence.

Petty politics and corporate profit margins are meaningless in the scope of our new reality. Those who argue that fixing the problem will cost too much, need to evaluate their scale of measurement. What good are all the dollars in the world without a decent planet to spend them on?

Let’s hope that this new rebirth of the sun brings a rebirth of American conscience that marks the year we decided to turn things around.

For those who are interested in seeing the effects that various emissions reductions can make in the global climate, the following link provides an easy-to-use climate model. Type "1" in the first column for each country block and then start to play with the numbers. Be prepared for a real eye-opener.

http://forio.com/simulation/climate-development/index.htm 

Trash Pines, Starlings and Manchineel - Finding Beauty in the Absence of Anthropocentric Utility

I am in yoga class. My left leg is fixed high on my right thigh, and my arms are stretched over my head. I don’t know why they call this position “tree” pose. It should be flamingo pose or crane pose, but nevertheless, the instructor is imploring us, “imagine what tree you want to be today, with your roots tapped down into the earth and your branches reaching towards the sun. Are you a majestic oak? Or an elegant willow?”

I clear my mind and feel connection to earth through the pads and toes of my right foot. My fingertips are energized as they reach for the sky. Into my mind pops the image of Pinus virginiana. What? I clear the image and try again, but P. virginiana stubbornly refuses to vacate the premises. I am forced to resign myself to embodiment of the tree that my mother derisively refers to as a “trash pine” (a.k.a. scrub pine). I try to think of some positive qualities. The trees do possess a kind of wild beauty and tenacity. Growing in barren areas often shunned by other trees, their twisted, bonsai-like structures and needles are readily adapted to the scarcity of their environment. Cut down and cleared relentlessly by those who would label them as “trash,” the persistent P. virginiana just keeps coming back.

The humble scrub pine

After wallowing in my species-based prejudice for a moment, it dawns on me. Who am I to judge the relative values of tree individuals? Why is the “lowly” scrub pine any less worthy of my admiration than the venerable oak? The sun shines equally on both. If you cut them down, do they not bleed? Of their consciousness, we cannot know, but surely the scrub pine feels the same joy of existence shared by all living things. My bias is based on a lifetime of anthropocentric conditioning. We admire that which is useful to our own purposes and disdain the rest.

The revelations of P. virginiana have caused me to reevaluate my entire attitude towards many organisms great and small. Last spring, I cheered when a black snake ransacked the nests of the starlings nesting in the eaves of our guest cottage. My bias against the starlings manifested as an almost virulent hatred. I was glad to see them devoured. I am still glad I didn’t interfere and let nature decide the victor of that conflict, but now I am trying hard to refrain from wishing the same fate on this year’s nestlings. I do like black snakes.

I am even considering an overhaul in my attitude towards my arch nemesis Hippomane mancinella or “manchineel” as it is commonly known. In my field studies in the tropics, I have had a few run-ins with this tree. Tellingly, in the first encounter, I was mesmerized by the tree’s stunning beauty.

The impressively toxic Hippomane mancinella

In the dwarfed dry tropical forests of outback Turks and Caicos, the manchineel literally stands out from the crowd. Its deep, green canopy of glossy leaves contrasts sharply to the surrounding browns and yellows of neighboring, desiccated vegetation. And it is loaded with little apple-like, sweet-smelling, golden orbs. The dwarf dry tropical forests do offer up a variety of edible fruits, but like the vegetation they grow on, they tend to be small, tart and relatively dehydrated. The fruit of the manchineel is succulent.

I ventured a taste. It was sweet and delicious, and fortunately, erring on the side of caution I didn’t swallow and spat it out. It wasn’t long before the tingling in my lips foreshadowed the telltale signs of poisoning. Later that evening, I thought my head was going to explode with the worst headache of my life. This torture was followed by a sleepless night of retching and diarrhea. Lesson: manchineel fruit is not good to eat.

Intrigued by my discovery, I did a bit of research and discovered that manchineel is an expert of toxicity. The botanical name reflects another common name “manzanilla de la muerte” (little apple of death). Indeed. Every part of the manchineel excretes poison. In addition to my near-death experience with the fruit, I have had the misfortune of brushing up against the leaves from time to time, which results in caustic skin blisters that burst, only to blister again on the same patch of red, raw skin. Oh manchineel, how I have loathed thee.

In the state of Florida, the negative human judgment of manchineel, and subsequent removal of offending trees has rendered the species practically extinct. Some would say good riddance to bad news, but apart from its animosity to humans, the tree provides invaluable habitat for other species such as land crabs and certain iguanas that thrive on the toxic fruit.  As with all things in nature, when you pull at a single thread, the whole garment begins to unravel. We cannot pick and choose those things we deem useful, while simultaneously annihilating the rest. The beautiful complexity of nature needs both the humanly condoned and the disdained.

I am at a client’s house and notice a spectacular specimen of manchineel. Its thick, gnarled trunk and long, winding branches tell of this sentinel’s advanced age. In the past, I would have offered a warning to the resident. “Cut it down or you will be sorry.” Now, I merely admire the tree’s architecture and note its remote location on the property. No need for warnings. Hopefully this impressive specimen will be able to continue its life of obscurity, minding its own business, completely oblivious to the pettiness of the human priorities that surround it.

No longer will I be enamored with only the useful among species. My admiration and respect will extend to both the harmful and the understated, for in this world of diminishing ecological returns, we can’t afford to lose any of them.

The Commercialization of Saint Valentine

I am not an incurable cynic, really, I’m not. I spent much of my teenage and young adult life fawning over imagined and real romances, addicted to love, even if I found it in mostly the wrong places. When I grew up, I did the expected thing and got married and had children, and I wouldn't change one detail of my history, given the option. After 22 years of marriage to the same man, I can say, however, that the heart-shaped box of chocolates and dozen roses version of commercialized love bears no resemblance to the real thing, and this is a good thing. So why do we keep buying it?

Hubby and I when we were just a couple of kids in romantic lust

Like many of the holidays that we are expected to make purchases for, the contemporary traditions of consumerism surrounding Saint Valentine’s Day didn't originate with the holiday.  In fact, like many “Christian” holidays, Saint Valentine’s Day is a hijacked holiday, established in 469 C.E. by the Holy Roman Emperor Gelasius in an effort to replace and/or overshadow traditional pagan activities that took place on and around February 14.

Like a lot of pagan merriment, the festivals of Juno Fructifier (Roman goddess of marriage) on Feb. 14 and Lupercalia (dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of fertility), February 13-15 were raucous events. To honor Juno, pagans drew names to randomly determine an individual with whom they could choose to couple with in the following year.  

The festivities surrounding Lupercalia are even more peculiar. Men would venture to the cave where Romulous and Remus (the founders of Rome) were supposedly suckled by a she wolf, sacrifice an animal, and then proceed to chase and slap women with bloody straps from the carcass. Apparently, this was conducive to increasing fertility, although I cannot determine the rationale behind the ritual.

Even after the holiday was hijacked in 469 C.E., it wasn’t until the Victorian Era in the 19^th Century that anybody had the notion to commercially exploit the day for profit. The commercialization started innocently enough, with mass-produced cards, but like all good marketing ideas has now exploded into the modern enterprise, which claims third place among profitable holidays, behind only Christmas and Halloween. Interestingly, the Catholic Church disavowed itself from the day in the 1960’s, so now the holiday maintains only its commercial, rather than any religious values.

I think it is sad that in our frenetic Western lives that we have only a single day of the year dedicated to showing our loved ones that we care for them. Even sadder, is that most of us will buy into the marketing and express that love as cheap trinkets purchased from a store. Our lives are so filled with commuting to work, working and unwinding from work that, like our eating, our love has been relegated to a fast-food version that is a cheap imitation of the real thing.

I don’t need a teddy bear, box of chocolates or environmentally disastrous cut flowers to feel loved. In fact, if that were the only way my husband showed his love for me, I would be left feeling pretty shallow. Instead, we talk to each other, a lot. We send each other daily messages. We are always there to support one another when life dishes out its doses of disappointment and despair. We prepare thoughtful meals for each other. We give each other the occasional massage. We argue, fight and sometimes hate one another, but out of a primary respect for ourselves and the relationship, we determine to work through it. Sometimes it isn’t sexy or even fun, but eventually we always come around to loving each other again.

As we grow up together, the loving part gets easier because unlike the cheap fantasies sold in the store, we both realize that neither one of us is perfect. Reality forced us both into giving up the commercialized version of romance years ago. We have discovered the real meaning of love, which is to see a person as they really are and love them anyway.

Today and every day, show your loved ones that you really love them in ways that don’t involve buying something. Happy Valentines Day.

The Road Not Taken – Western Civilization’s Frenetic Dash Towards Destiny

A Road on Grand Bahama, Paved During the Speculation Boom of the 1970s, Fragments a Caribbean Pine Woodland

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;          Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,         And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.          I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

A road. Such a simple construction seems fairly innocuous. They can trace gentle hypnotic paths, winding through breath-taking vistas or present as jammed tangles of exhaust fumes, short-tempers and noise, slapped against an urban background of concrete and glass. Either setting belies the truth of roads. Utilitarian, convenient, an artifact of human civilization, roads can be a path towards connectedness or one of the most powerful forces of environmental destruction on earth.

For most of Robert Frost’s lifetime (1874-1963), roads had a different connotation. They were metaphors for the trajectory of a life and the choices taken therein. The roads in Frost’s own life, lived largely in the wilds of New England, would have been primarily unpaved, winding country lanes, weaving an innocuous path from village to village, their existence maintained exclusively by use. Once their usefulness became obsolete, they would simply melt back into the landscape.

Travelers would have walked those paths or more expeditiously, traveled on horseback or by carriage. The foot of the man and horse or wheel of the carriage, wedded intimately to the earth beneath it. Cold in snow and ice, burdened in mud and rain, and joyous in fair weather, the journey was as much the story of the road as its destination.

Along with the hurry of Western civilization, came the interstate highway system, commencing in 1956 and completing approximately 35 years later. Roads evolved from the path of preferred travel and experience, winding through and connecting people to landscapes, into entities designed to ferry passengers from point A to point B, transmuting the journey from an experience of connectedness into a mere inconvenience to be abided. To remove the traveler from his surroundings even further, cars became air-tight capsules, air-conditioned and outfitted with radios, CD players and GPS.

Again the modern road is a metaphor for the contemporary human life. From the time he is born, the child of Western civilization is indoctrinated into a world separate from the natural world which sustains him. He lives in a house constructed from largely artificial materials, or if natural, then altered with screed and substance so as to render it into a lifeless resource. His food comes from a grocery store, wrapped and packaged, reduced to a chart of nutritional information rather than a composition of once-living organisms. From the constructed home, in the air-conditioned car, off to industrial buildings for education, the natural world from the beginning is an externality that would seem to have no bearing in the child’s life. He is a human, Homo sapiens, taught that this taxonomy separates him from the world around him. Indeed, the child can grow and even thrive without ever contacting or communing with the natural world surrounding him.

It is no wonder that capitalists, developers, bankers and warriors wander through the world, bent on destruction and without remorse. To them, the living world is an abstraction, separate from and subservient to the artificially crafted world of men. They travel past it all on roads, designed to transfer them from one destination to the next. As they commute from crafted home to crafted place of work, they pride themselves that the work they do, rendering nature into numbers on a balance sheet, is the real work in the world. They are the creators of wealth in their minds, job creators, purveyors of the American Dream. The insignificant and the natural tremble and fall at their hands. The road becomes a mere tool to extract from nature the resources that supply the world of men, a one-way street of destruction.

What is a blade of grass compared to Bill Gates? For all the billions of dollars in revenue, computers manufactured, jobs created, good deeds done, Mr. Gates cannot convert sunshine into food. All he can do is take that food and consume it, degrade it, and release its spent energy as waste into the world until another blade of grass can take that waste and using it, again convert sunlight into food. Who or what then is the greater producer? With each blade of grass mowed down and paved over, never to return, the finite productive capacity of the earth lessens. What will the great men use to fuel their empires when the externalities they have long exploited, neglected and abused have been rendered into meaningless numbers on a page?

A Road on Providenciales, Turks and Caicos Cuts Through Pristine Dwarf Forest and Paves the Way for Future Real Estate Speculation

And what for? What is the point of our incessant rushing towards destiny, ignoring all that stands along the distance? We are a culture obsessed with end points, destinations, the weekend, orgasms. What is overlooked is the point of it all. What takes place in-between the end points is journey, making love, life. There is only one finality, one destination at which we must all eventually arrive. Why hurry to get there?

Woodpeckers and Truth – Western Civilization is Incompatible with Saving the Planet

There’s nothing quite like getting a message smashing into your window at 6 am to make one stand up and pay attention. The forest that surrounds my home is full of birds. Outside my living room, I have a couple of feeders, and I love to watch the black-capped chickadees, tufted titmice, cardinals and others come and go all day while I sit and write and/or work. When my son Duncan was home from college for the holiday, he kept telling me that woodpeckers were visiting the feeders. While the woods are full of marvelous members of that bird Family, such as my favorite, the giant pileated woodpecker, I have yet to see any venture to the feeders close to the house. Could it have been a nuthatch instead that Duncan was seeing? Perhaps, he contended, and so I dismissed the notion with a twinge of disappointment.

A Red-naped Sapsucker I Photographed at Jackson Hole, WY

Then a few days ago, a flash of red and knocking about of feeders renewed my optimism. I sat quietly on the sofa, and sure enough, a brilliant red-bellied woodpecker alighted onto the tray, grasped a kernel of corn and flew away, quick as a flash. So deft was he in his foraging, that had I blinked, I would have missed him. My pulse quickened, I held my breath and felt the faint burst of inexplicable joy that is known to birders but seems incomprehensible to others. The knowing that this red-bellied woodpecker shares my habitat makes me feel my life is just that much fuller. I accepted this blessing and thought nothing more of it until this morning.

At 6 am, I was awoken by the dull thunking noise that makes the heart of a bird lover jump into the throat with despair. I rushed into the living room to discover a tiny downy woodpecker lying on the ground under the window. Fortunately, she was just dazed, and as I approached her to check on her, she flew away.

Native Americans believe that animals are messengers and that they bring enlightenment to those willing to pay attention. Last year around this time, I was plagued by an onslaught of skunks. It wasn’t until I did some research on Native American skunk medicine that the skunks returned to a normal frequency of occurrence in my life. Perhaps the woodpeckers had a message for me too.

Interestingly, I discovered that according to Native American lore, I was born under the woodpecker totem, which corresponds to the astrological sign of Cancer. I have always believed that I was born under a lucky star or perhaps, guided by the principle that luck is the phenomenon where hard work meets opportunity, I have thus far led a relatively charmed existence. I have a wonderful family, my basic needs are adequately provided for, and I have work that I find satisfying, rewarding and challenging. I have no complaints and feel genuine gratitude for my good fortune.

In general, I have floated through life with the belief that everything will work out for the best if I just keep on plodding, that every cloud has a silver lining and that I can achieve whatever goals I set my sights upon. I maintained a steadfast belief that the universe is essentially a just place where what goes around comes around and that those who strive in a positive direction are eventually rewarded for their efforts. But lately, my trust in the reliability of the universe has been challenged.

A recent string of unfortunate events in my family has cast a shadow over my usually optimistic demeanor. While I personally have suffered no ill fortune, my precious loved ones seem to be besieged by negative turns of fate. Outside the chill and dull gray overcast sky of winter obfuscates the clarity of light and mirrors the opacity in my psyche. Thoughts are scattered. Truth seems hard to grasp. Nothing is certain anymore.   

So what insight can be gleaned from a family of birds noted for drilling trees with their beaks? While it addles the mind to contemplate the realities of such species, their determination is to be admired.  Hours of constant drumming yield small gratifications of an insect or two, yet the woodpecker persists undeterred. Many taps are required to uncover a single delicacy, yet the drumming continues with a reliable, rhythmic certainty.

I have been searching for truths, certainties, solutions of late, yet find them difficult to come by. A fleeting flash of insight flits through the recesses of my cloudy mind and then disappears again like a wisp of ether, like the flash of a red-bellied woodpecker that allows me a glimpse out of the corner of my eye, but not the full breadth of appreciation. I find the full light of truth obscured perhaps because I shade my own consciousness from the harshness of its veracity.

I have been bombarded lately with the same insistent question, from publishers, readers and friends. “You talk a lot about problems,” they say, “but what are the solutions?” I have thought long and hard on this topic and can honestly contend that the solutions required to save ourselves from ourselves are so dramatic that they will very likely be unrealized. The harshest reality is that planet Earth simply has too many Homo sapiens living upon its surface. We have breached the natural carrying capacity to such an extent that there is no conceivable way to maintain the human population with a reasonable quality of life at current levels and to maintain ecological integrity of the planet. Yet nobody speaks of this unspeakable truth in public discourse.

Another unspeakable truth is that the Western way of life, the American dream, is inherently inconsistent with the maintenance of Earth’s life-force. It is a culture of death and destruction, and we cannot simultaneously embrace the concepts of environmentalism and perpetual development and growth, which necessarily consume and devastate Earth’s living resources. The two realities are mutually incompatible.

Our culture is addicted to solutions and happy endings. We are told that we can carry on with our self-indulgence and that the same technology that created the global disaster will surely save it. The fallacious nature of such logic is self-evident. The reality of nature, minus its beauty, can be brutal. There are no guaranteed happy endings, just reliable rhythms to count on. Through no fault of their own, bad things happen to good people. Justice is frequently not served. Little birds dash their brains on the glass walls of human obliviousness. Predators prey upon the innocent. Disease ravages indiscriminately. The best solution for Earth is a stark one for Western civilization.

The woodpecker pecks, and specks of virgin wood come to light. I can grasp at them for a fleeting second but then realize that in the vastness of the infinite, I am incapable of understanding the synchronicities that bring skunks and woodpeckers to my doorstep. As I write, the little downy woodpecker that dashed herself on my window this morning is back, nibbling on the suet cake I just put out for her and her kin. The calories provided by the lard and seed will improve her chances of fledging her young in the spring. There are no happy endings but those we create for ourselves. A small bird flew into glass and by chance encountered a human with a peculiar fondness for her kind and provided her with the sustenance that may see her through the winter and ensure the survival of her progeny in the spring. In spite of adversity, the rhythm of life continues, and so it will once we have extinguished ourselves from the planet.