Smoke from Colorado’s Springer Fire paints the dawn sky orange
As advocates of gardens based on native plants and wildlife habitat, as gardeners passionate about restoring nature nearby, we’re not in the mainstream. So it’s critical to stop now and then, and remember the heart of why we do what we do. Especially in these times when global climate change is already causing tremendous instability in the weather, and thus tremendous hardship for so many—including last week’s destructive “derecho” windstorm in the Northeast, and the drought-fueled wildfires in the inland West.
Here’s an excerpt from a post on my personal blog looking at the way what happens to our beloved landscapes is connected to our daily lives and our spirits:
You have to get over the color green.
Wallace Stegner’s advice about how to live sustainably in the inland West is not a suggestion. You won’t survive, he says, in these largely arid expanses between the 100th Meridian and the relatively well-watered West Coast, if your soul requires green.
Especially this year; especially in the Southwest and the Southern Rockies, where last winter’s snow pack–the source of our summer water–was so sparse as to be scary, and spring heated up so quickly even that paltry moisture simply vanished.
Western tiger swallowtail butterfly, its wings tattered and worn
Which is why we have more wildfires burning in Colorado right now than I can ever remember. Two of those fires are the most destructive in Colorado’s history in terms of homes burned, the 87,000+ acre High Park Fire west of Fort Collins, which burned 259 homes and cabins, and the 18,000+ acre Waldo Canyon Fire near Colorado Springs, which blew right into the uphill edge of the city and torched 346 homes.
I feel as tattered and worn as the tiger swallowtail butterfly in the photo above, which looks like it has been through heck and back, its tails and the lower edges of its wings broken off, and the scales completely rubbed away in several places.
The landscapes I love are hurting in this drought, and that hurts me to. I can water the native grassland and wildflowers in my yard sparingly to keep them alive, but I can’t water the mountainsides around my valley. I can only watch helplessly as mountain meadows usually green at this time of year turn brown, as the evergreen foliage of the pinon pines and junipers on the nearby hillsides begins to dull, as the streams and the green band of riparian vegetation they nurture shrink.
Wholeleaf indian paintbrush (Castilleja integra) blooming in my dryland native meadow front yard, where it gets some supplemental water
We’ve received less than three inches of total precipitation in the first six-plus months of the year. That’s not enough to keep alive the living communities that animate these landscapes–from microscopic soil inhabitants to black bears and towering ponderosa pines, from rustling willows to lithe trout. These landscapes have survived long droughts before, including the decades of drought in the late 1100s that were a factor in causing the Ancestral Puebloan people to move from cliff dwellings like those of Mesa Verde to more reliable water sources along the region’s major rivers. But I’m guessing that survival wasn’t easy, or pretty.
As I watch the landscapes I love wither in this extraordinary drought, I grieve the losses. For the company we humans are losing as each individual, and in some cases, whole populations of plants and animals, die out. For the homes burned in the wildfires. If this is global climate change, I hate it already.
Full moon sets on the morning of the Fourth of July
How do we survive times like thes? I know that I turn to nature, be it ever so beleaguered by drought and fire, and look for the grace notes–like that tattered tiger swallowtail, the brilliant indian paintbrush blossoms, or this morning’s setting full moon, rosy-cheeked from wildfire smoke, but still beautiful–signaling that life manages to thrive despite all.
Those small miracles remind me that joy lives on; I only have to pay attention and let it in.
© 2012, Susan J. Tweit. All rights reserved. This article is the property of Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens. If you are reading this at another site, please report that to us
About Susan J. Tweit
Thank you, Susan. After our 2011 drought and fires here in Central Texas, I understand and share your grief. We’re on the 98th meridian, the “institutional fault line” described by Walter Prescott Web as the great divide between the eastern woodlands and the grassland west. But it’s been a wet couple of decades and we’ve gotten used to rain here, and to the green that comes with irrigation: the use of fossil water to create an unnatural lushness. For most of us greenies, browns and tans will be an acquired taste.
Susan, That’s the irony of those kinds of water subsidies: what we think of as “natural” may not be what is sustainable. That’s the beauty of restoring the natives, as you have on so much of your place. They provide at least some green on much less water.
Sigh! it’s one thing when nature on her own makes such changes.
It’s another thing when irresponsible humans cause the death of whole species. Irresponsible as in not taking responsibility for the direct consequences of one’s actions – drive an SUV, live in a McManson, cut down the forest to create “view”, over use the AC ….
What will happen to the bears?
Sue, I agree. The fires are a kind of perfect storm situation: too many decades of suppressing natural fires and allowing the forest’s flammables to build up, drought cycles (at least partly natural), beetle kill (ditto), and global climate change. These kind of fires are part of life in the Rockies now, so we in ecosystem restoration need
Susan j Tweit recently posted..Headed for the river, despite myself
To learn how to deal with this new reality. (Sorry. My fingers got ahead of me and truncated the last comment. I’m headed for the Green River for a four-day river trip.) The bears will move–they’re the most mobile of the critters affected by these fires. The native trout are goners.
Susan j Tweit recently posted..Headed for the river, despite myself
The bears will move on.. but to where? The available space becomes smaller and smaller.
I don’t mean to seem cavalier about bears, Sue, but the truth is that in Colorado we’re actually pretty lucky in having a lot of good black bear habitat left. (Grizzlies are another story, and we may not have any left at all.) In other places, I know that habitat is limiting for black bears. Honestly, I worry more about the lives dependent on our riparian areas, which will be hard-hit as global climate change makes life here hotter and drier.
Susan J. Tweit recently posted..Headed for the river, despite myself
Here on the east coast we are dealing with hotter and drier weather than ever before….we see more fires and drought…more severe storms…farmers lose crops and for me I see fewer butterflies…as we heat up year after year I can only imagine what will happen to the native forests/plants as invasives who thrive in these conditions continue to take over..
Your reminder to find joy in those small moments is so needed….I am thankful every day we get rain or I see a baby bird…frogs, deer and any native plant that flowers and grows.
Donna@Gardens Eye View recently posted..Harvest Day in July 2012
Donna, Your attitude is a good one, and I really do believe it is those small joys we need to celebrate–and teach others to see and appreciate, so they’re more likely to be saved. May rain return to your landscape as it is beginning to return to mine (for the moment) and the frogs and butterflies and all the green life respond with abandon….
Susan J. Tweit recently posted..Headed for the river, despite myself
Susan, I will carry your wise words with me during this horrific drought in TN…”Those small miracles remind me that joy lives on; I only have to pay attention and let it in.” gail
Gail recently posted..A Wheelbarrow Full of Garden Fun
Gail, May they help you survive the drought and more. It is hardest to pay attention and find the joy when we feel the pain so keenly….
Susan J. Tweit recently posted..Headed for the river, despite myself
more on the effects of global warming as we are living with it now, including the Colorado fires http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/the-fires-this-time/