Posts Tagged ‘wildfires’
Visible Air
Between Canadian wildfires and tree pollen, our air quality is visibly contaminated of late. Cyndie took this picture yesterday:
The difference in clarity of the closest trees compared to the fainter color of the more distant ones makes it pretty obvious.
Yesterday was one of those days that makes me feel guilty for driving our car when signs over the freeway are posting alerts and suggesting people make fewer trips. I’m afraid smoky air in the summer is becoming a regular thing.
I got 80% of the mowing done, and we were able to make a brief appearance at my grand-nephew, Drew’s, high school graduation party yesterday. Today we are hosting two couples whom we know from Cyndie’s time working with the Eden Prairie schools. We are looking forward to sharing the beauty of our place with the couple who’ve not been here before.
In the time I just spent on Wisconsin State Trails and in DNR campsites, I noticed how the properties are tended, yet also what I consider to be a little neglected. It showed me what a difference we make by tending to our land with such constant effort. As I was mowing yesterday, I kept spotting areas where I wanted to use a string trimmer to clean up or where I needed to use the hedge trimmer.
At least we only have 20 acres to manage, and my time isn’t money. It doesn’t cost any more if I take one or two days to finish a task.
I can spend all of my energy tending to the growth around here, but I’m not able to control the quality of the air that moves in.
Last night, there were a couple of really loud frogs croaking away their musical trills just outside our windows. They can go on endlessly, it seems. One of them seemed to start losing its steam. The staccato chirps began to drop off toward the end in a humorous way, almost like he was running out of air. I wondered if the pollution was getting to him, too.
Cyndie got her phone to record it because it was making both of us laugh. Of course, in doing so, she fixed it. The frog upped his game and went back to producing a perfect repeating pattern of prridit.prrrridit.prrridit.prrrridit chirps as soon as she touched the button.
Show off.
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Distantly Watching
Yesterday, I figured out that I don’t need to remain entirely ignorant about what is happening in the world during my endeavor to avoid news about politics or the government. Reading in my online community I spotted mention of a winter weather alert in some southern states of the U.S. Curious for more detail about that, I looked in on The Weather Channel.
What I found was nonstop news about the wildfires burning around Los Angeles. Yikes! Wind gusts reached 100 mph in places. Eventually, I spotted they were showing future radar scenes for Texas in a little window that showed the potential for significant snow. Dallas, Memphis, Nashville, and on toward the east/northeast will be getting a blast of winter precipitation today and tomorrow.
Up here in our local world, it is possible we might see some snowfall this afternoon, but they are predicting little to no accumulation.
It is always strange to me when weather conditions at our home up north are calm when dramatic wildfires and winter storm warnings are raging in the west and to our south. How did we get so lucky?
For a short while in the morning yesterday, it looked as if all the birds in the area had vanished. I wondered if they knew something about the weather that we didn’t. There wasn’t a single pigeon flying around the vicinity of the paddocks and barn overhang.
There was still one quiet bird, “Plucky,” sitting all fluffed up on top of a fence post under the overhang, but that didn’t surprise me. When I took Asher out for a “sniffari” exploration just before noon, I didn’t see pigeons anywhere. For that matter, I didn’t even hear a single bird call from any type of bird.
It was eery.
Without explanation, when we showed up to feed the horses in the late afternoon, a fraction of the usual number of pigeons reappeared. As I was hauling bales of hay from the shed to the barn, I noticed a flock of smaller birds with muted coloring flittering around the big doors. Everything seemed perfectly normal.
Maybe they all knew a hawk or an eagle that I failed to notice was perched nearby, distantly watching.
My heart goes out to those impacted by the catastrophic wildfires in California and Mexico, as well as the folks who are not accustomed to navigating the hazards brought on by winter snowstorms that are coming their way.
I’ll be watching your situation from afar as things progress throughout the day and sending love to all, both citizens and responders.
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Really Happening
It’s happening right before our eyes. The changes currently playing out on our planet are no longer just scientific theories. They are actual events. Record high temperatures. Droughts. Wildfires. Floods. Thawing permafrost. Rising sea levels. Shrinking glaciers.
I’ve tried to mentally prepare for the possibility of any of the first four catastrophes directly impacting our property, but the thing we are dealing with currently is only peripherally related to the wildfires burning in Canada just to our north. Our air quality is so bad the Pollution Control Agency is advising we avoid being outside and breathing the smoke particulate matter.
Measurements are reaching record levels for Minnesota.
We should probably hold more meetings to discuss how we can reduce our carbon emissions to net-zero by some future date. [sarcasm]
I asked Cyndie if we have any idea what to do in the case of a wildfire suddenly bearing down on our location. She said we should paint our phone number on the horses.
I’m sure they would be fine with that if we were able to find any paint and get them to stand still during the highly emotional panic that would be occurring as a fire threat is bearing down on our property.
Even though the dramatic stories of lost lives and property in the recent floods in Germany and China and the ongoing Bootleg fire in Oregon depict the trauma at the epicenter of such events, life at home feels strangely distanced.
Our horses are calm. Their grass is dryer than optimum, the flies are a constant nuisance, the temperatures are getting too hot again, and the smoky air makes breathing less fun, but they aren’t ones to complain. I sense they may still be contemplating whether the situation they now find themselves in –living out their days in comfort and safety with us– is for real, or not.
Based on my assessment of the reality of global climate calamities playing out in plain view right now, I can understand any hesitations they might have about the comfort and safety part.
There should be no denying anymore that the ramifications of human activity causing increased concentrations of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere are already playing out.
It really is already happening, whether people collectively acknowledge it, or not.
Every day that I don’t have to drive my fossil-fueled car anywhere is a tiny victory in my effort to reconcile still living with a carbon footprint that reflects how we got into this climate predicament in the first place.
May we all keep looking for individual ways to do something helpful, or simply stop doing things that are hurtful, long before governments and greater society finally get around to enacting more broadly effective changes.
I look forward to that really happening.
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Relative Something 