Posts Tagged ‘warming climate’
New Path
Have I mentioned lately how pleasant it is to ignore anything and everything related to the criminal-in-chief in the White House? I have also been slowly increasing my distance from any business or institution that clearly supports any policy put forth by the current administration. Doing so has been good for my mental health.
I’m not having as much luck when it comes to climate catastrophes. The disaster videos from Nepal-Tibet glacial collapse/landslide/flash flood keep showing up from differing perspectives. Headlines about the super El Niño appear on Reddit with distressing regularity. Nothing about weather will surprise me anymore, unless it suddenly stays normal for an unusually long time.
Yesterday turned out to be very hot for a day that didn’t seem like it was going to be so hot. The intensity of direct sunlight feels like it has a sharper bite lately than usual for our latitude. I received a midday alert from our electric co-op that they would be initiating a load-control event due to the high heat. That notice always helps to make me aware that I need to adjust my outdoor activities accordingly.
The morning started fine. The high dew point temperature created a hazy landscape that illuminated the sun’s rays.
I was happy to find the horses grazing in the back pasture when Asher and I emerged from the woods. The spider webs were plentiful and very visible with the combination of dew and low-angled sunlight.
After running some errands in the morning to pick up a few conveniences for my upcoming biking and tenting adventure, I put in some time out in the heat cutting a new trail through our north loop field.
It had come to our attention that our animal sitters felt a pathway across that tall growth would be a great feature. The idea had crossed our minds before, but we just never got around to putting in the effort to make it happen.
Since I’ll be away on the bike trip and Cyndie will be taking her mom to the lake for the Labor Day weekend, I wanted to surprise our friends who will be staying here while we are away by granting their wish.
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Good Life
We woke yesterday morning with a glee hangover from our amazing David Byrne show Monday night, and it lingered throughout the day. Blessed with a fabulous climate-warmed summery-feeling November morning, we danced our way through the woods with Asher before approaching the barn to feed the horses.
We found the mares luxuriating in the emerging sunlight and mellow as ever. It got me thinking about how they stand so stoically to endure the miserable conditions when the weather is gruesome, as if they are aware that it never lasts, and that there will eventually be rewarding days like this as compensation.
Lately, mornings as nice as this one was –when the horses are calmly munching their feed and the natural world is as peaceful as ever– serve as a balm, soothing and comforting us. Coming on the heels of our evening of super special entertainment, it felt like we were getting a double dose of feel-good medicine.
Asher seemed to be enjoying the unusually nice weather as well, and it had him romping playfully all over the place. When I decided to try raking some leaves, he behaved like I was making piles for him to race through and kick all over the place.
For what I hope is the last time this year (never say never), I got out the riding mower to mulch the leaves in the backyard grass. Most of the trees that drop leaves have finished doing that, so it seemed like a reasonable time to finish tending to the grass in back.
When I put the mower back in the garage, I moved the ATV to the front and parked the mower behind it, a symbolic gesture in anticipation of the change from mowing season to snowplowing season.
After that, I started picking off little nuisance tasks that had been nagging at me for a while. I drove my car to the shop garage to put air in the tires. Then I brought our three most-used wheelbarrows up from the barn to inflate tires on those. I attached a recently purchased battery manager to the diesel tractor battery. It instantly kicked into “charging” mode. That tractor doesn’t get driven enough to keep the battery charged.
Cyndie cleaned and mended horse blankets. I moved a fresh batch of hay bales from the shed into the barn. We moved her picnic “door table” and chairs from beneath the big oak tree in the woods into the barn for winter storage.
Working outdoors felt like we’d been given a gift to accomplish all these things on such a pleasant weather day. With all of our animals showing irrepressible joy and contentment, it felt like we were living the (really) good life.
If only I could train my brain to retain the sense of this goodness with more weight than it does with the challenging days of harsh weather and difficult problems, I would be ever so grateful. That would be living an even better life.
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Lazy Daze
We are missing out on the wild thunderstorms pummeling the Twin Cities and Wintervale over the last 24 hours because we are up at the lake again. The mass of wet weather is large enough this morning that we are getting a dose of thunder and lightning to start our day, but yesterday was a long, slow, lazy, eventless day up here.
After lounging in bed for longer than I have in a long time, the rest of the day included a leisurely visit to the beach, a perfect nap before dinner, and not much else in the way of activity.
The rain this morning is moving in very slowly, and the air is ominously still. Most notable at this point is how surprisingly dark it is at 9:00 a.m. Cyndie moved the car into the garage under Cabin 3 just in case we get any hail. The weather app on my phone is pinging me with warnings for both Beldenville and Hayward.
These super-sized thunderstorms are the new norm in this ever-warming climate swing. Multiple inches of rain in short spans of time are becoming a common occurrence.
It’s looking like today may be just as lazy as yesterday for us, and that’s just fine. Has us feeling a little sheepish about leaving our horse-sitters to deal with all the weather drama, though. At least Asher doesn’t have a problem with storms, so they won’t need to worry about him.
My motivation for the day hasn’t changed much from yesterday. Maybe I’ll see if I can fit two naps in before dinnertime.
Feeling lazy and only mildly dazed.
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Relative Something 