Take the Log Out

This morning I found myself thinking about Jesus' teaching about taking the log out of one's own eye. It struck me as significant that he said to take it out, not just be aware of it. Really, if this was just the popular "live-and-let-live" idea, he could have said something like this:

Before you mention to your dinner partner that there's a crumb in his mustache, be aware of the week-old sandwiches in your beard.

But no, he said to take the log out of your eye. It's affecting the way you see the world. When you go to take that speck out of your neighbour's eye, with that timber swinging around in front of your face, you just might blind him.

I think that's why I appreciate Eleutheros so much. He is not just talking about a dream of a better path, and what it might look like. He is describing what he sees, because he is there.

He's been writing a lot lately. I won't likely be writing at all this week, but I highly recommend Eleu's recent posts, if you haven't discovered them yet, or his archives - even a second or third time through.

Change

"How are the hazelnuts?" I asked.

"Terrible," was the reply. Mom and Dad figured that, with so little berry and seed production generally this year, anything that did grow had been snapped up.

We were chatting over lunch. I had spent the morning helping Mom in her seed gardens, in exchange for her listening ear, while James helped Dad lay some laminate flooring, in exchange for some spending money. Through the early afternoon, I played Dad's guitar with half my attention, and chewed over my favourite dilemmas some more with Mom. When the temperature outside was peaking, I decided I really needed to spend some time just walking the land. In hindsight, I think Mom probably needed some time to shake herself free of my burdensome talk.

As I climbed the trail behind the house, I thought of the camera I didn't bring. Just as well, I told myself. This time is for me, not for the blog.

I went first to the summit of Anemometer Hill, perhaps the highest point of our little highland, which is itself the highest land within the surrounding several miles of hills. I stood a few minutes just soaking up the vista to the west. And I heard myself discussing that view with blog readers, debating the definition of a hill.

The landscape is very striking these days, with the grass on the ridges dry and bleached pale, while the aspen and shrub areas are still a rich dark green. There was no water visible in all those miles of view, but I knew where I would find it.

I moved on, away from the usual routes along mowed trails, and into the bush. The cattle-and-deer trails have shifted a little since the days when I did a lot of roaming, and I spent some time weaving from one hint of a trail to another before I found the main thread of the path I remembered, and emerged onto the tiny grass area that faces northwest just off the crest of the same height of land.

I was surprised to see a large patch of blue on the neighbour's pasture to the north. That slough must be holding up well in spite of the recent drought. Maybe the rain on Tuesday brought the level up some.

Down the north slope I went, watching my footing and still slipping a little, pausing to gaze up and around at the birches and the forest canopy stretching away, and to wonder if I could capture the sense of this place in a picture. Ah, the blog had followed me here, too.

There were hazelnuts. Some were ripe already - I've never seen them that early. Twila and I used to pick them around the first weekend in September. As I moved down the slope, my path unravelled into fading threads in the hazelnut understory. A bit of colour off to the right caught my eye - high-bush cranberries! Turning red, here in the second week of August.

I cast about for the best offer of a trail, and then, noticing a brightness that might be an opening, I went sideways. What I found was more than an opening; it was the mowed trail along the toe of the north slope, and I'd have been on it in only a few feet more, if I had just pushed straight ahead.

I let it lead me west. At the edge of the hay field I paused to enjoy the return of the breeze and the last of the shade. Not a spectacular view at that spot. Dad had said something about the view I could get from the house site I'd mentioned to him - the latest dream site in a long series. I asked myself: do I need a good view? That's what walks are for. Too good a view, and I might just sit at home.

I took a few swallows from my too-small water bottle, and set out across the sun-burnt hayfield, moving gently in the heat. When the truck trail turned south, I continued west on a cattle trail toward the dam.

The ravine here used to be densely forested, like most ravines in these hills, but now there is not a large tree anywhere near the dam. It was the death of the trees, that dam, because it brought the beaver.

I remember how I used to analyze the landcover as I roamed, noting all the ways that previous tenants of this land had changed things. Now when I wander, I notice new changes, wrought by my own family, and sometimes even by me.

I wonder if Mom and Dad would have put that dam in, had they realized what the beaver would do. The first few years of impact were the most obvious, as that swath of forest fell. I might have thought that it would end there, after the beaver ran out of trees within a reasonable radius of the water. Yet now - how many years later? ten? fifteen? - the beaver's work goes on, mostly out of sight, unless you take the time and effort to walk the ravine downstream.

I crossed the dam, pausing to admire butterflies puddling on the damp mud, duckweed stippling the water surface, and a robust sedge that's new since my last visit, growing on the seepage areas of the downstream side. At the dry spillway I hesitated. I wanted to walk the bottom of the ravine, but I knew the beaver had wreaked havoc with the cattle trail down there, drowning it under a series of small pools created when they built one little dam after another below our big dam. From what I could see from my high vantage point, the problem hadn't resolved itself yet.

A new option beckoned, though: beyond the spillway, the cattle trail continued up and across the north bank of the ravine. I followed.

It was a good trail, much better than I remembered from the last time I wandered here, and taking an unusual course across the midslope. Cattle tend to drift to the bottom of slopes like this. Midslope trails do exist, winding (like this one) along where the bush ends and the grass of the upper slope begins, but on a steep sidehill, they are rarely so well travelled. I suspected that this was an effect of the beaver's work below.

Finally the trail plunged down into the thick forest, down, down, driving my toes painfully into the fronts of my boots. When the ground flattened out, the understory opened suddenly into a magical grassy place overarched with great old trees. The confluence, I realized - the place where the dammed ravine joins the Deep Ravine. This deep ravine was a dark, mysterious barrier to much of my childhood wanderings, and it poses such a restriction to westward movement that it forms a sort of boundary of our farm, though the cattle do use the thin wedge of upland pasture that lies beyond. For some years there was no fence on the west, and the Deep Ravine functioned as a real boundary, as our cattle kept mostly to the east of it, and the neighbours' stayed mostly west. (By the way, I'm calling it "our farm" for convenience - our farm, our dam, our cattle - but it's really my parents' farm. I just use it freely.)

Now I took a cattle trail south along the bottom. I had gone only a few steps though, when the scene changed dramatically. Great trunks of felled trees lay at angles across a bare mud hollow, bright with sunlight falling through the broken canopy. It was a beaver pond, now dry. I crossed its margin easily enough, but southward beyond its low dam I found a confusing jumble of very uneven ground, branches and logs, tangled vegetation, and haphazard trampling that never resolved itself into a reliable trail. The banks of the old winding streambed were carved up by frequent beaver "runs" (narrow deep ditches) and tunnels which had collapsed in places. As I ducked under a felled tree that hadn't fallen all the way, I realized with a shock that this was no longer a place where you would want to ride a horse. Was my memory reliable - did we ride here sometimes? I felt a guilty twinge at the thought that others may have ridden here sometimes, unconcerned about property lines, comfortable in traditions of use much older than my family's ownership of this place. If they did - and they certainly could have come here often without our notice - what did they think of the beaver works that we brought with our dam?

As I struggled on, past more dry beaver ponds and over more low dams, I noticed hoofprints in the mud and trampling in the grass, and still no trail. Suddenly I understood its demise. The problem was the pace of change. Trails shift, always, as trees fall, as soil slips, as shrubs grow up; when a new obstacle arises, the cattle and deer just push around it, and one animal follows another until a new path is formed. But here, the new obstacles were thrown up thick and fast, faster than the trail could weave itself around them.

Ah, I thought: the pace of change. This beaver problem was, at its root, no different than many, if not most, environmental problems. Nature responds to change; life goes on, and springs up new and different and wonderful all the same; but when the change is rapid, the response from nature can seem chaotic, inhospitable, or even violent.

Humans are certainly not the only living creatures that create rapid changes in their own environments. Obviously, beavers do. I found myself thinking about disease organisms, too, and how some of them bring about their own swift demise by killing their hosts. There is no need - and probably no advantage - to think of humans as uniquely self-destructive. Quite the opposite, I mused: it might be worth noticing how the consequences fall on any living thing that tips the gentle flow of its surroundings into a freefall. Being a part of the web of life is no guarantee of a safety net.

All the same, as I slowly picked my way southward, I marvelled unhappily at the long reach of the effects of that dam. Who would have guessed it? I might have imagined subtle changes in the moisture regime, and maybe some differences in the way tree seedlings got established, very slowly changing the downstream forest. But I never dreamed of changes so swift, so large, and so far.

I tired of my sad journey. I wanted to find the place where high-bush cranberries grew, to see if they were as abundant and advanced here as where I'd seen them earlier. But even that desire wasn't enough to keep me pushing south; not when I noticed a trail leading up the east bank. I gazed up it, trying to decide if it was trustworthy. Could it be just a beaver trail? Inviting, those trails, but fickle, petering out at the limit of the beavers' logging operations, with half the slope still to be climbed and nothing but dense hazelnut on every side.

I risked it. Soon I was standing, panting, heart pounding, leaned against a smallish black poplar, looking at the expanse of hazelnut understory above. No more trail.

Last time I made this mistake, I had a group of Mom's relatives with me, and we pressed on, crashing through that understory. It might have been the same beaver trail. It wasn't fun, at least not for me. I think some of the folks I was guiding astray actually enjoyed it, being so thoroughly out in the bush, and showing each other how rugged they were.

This time I turned back down. Partway, I was drawn to a great old tree. I leaned against it, and suddenly, awareness of its history washed over me. Here it had stood, through storms and snows, through the stillness of frozen winters and the pulsing riots of - how many springs? I moved in close against it, grateful for its strength. For a moment I could relax from my struggle with gravity on that steep slope. I wondered what it meant to the tree, if anything, to feel my weight against its trunk. I wrapped my arms around it, my fingers finding fitting places in the deep grooves of its rough bark. Never had I felt like this - well, never towards a tree! I laid my cheek against it, and stretched my neck to feel more of that bark touching my skin.

After a while I shifted my weight back onto my own feet, and looked up the trunk, trying to decide which kind of poplar it was. There were lichens at eye level, and just above I noticed the tiny delicate spore capsules of a moss. How very tiny they looked, against the bark of that great tree!

At last I moved on down the beaver trail, back to the bottom, back to the jumble of logs and branches, bush and rank grass, beaver runs and bits of old trail. I rationed my water and let my mind wander over a life that seems, these days, just as jumbled and tangled as that ravine bottom.

Suddenly one of those bits of old trail seemed to grow firm and smooth and familiar beneath my feet. That is what I noticed first: the smoothing of my footing. So striking was the change, that I dropped whatever thought I had been busy with, and looked around for the reason. I saw it at once: I was south of the beavers' work.

A few steps further, and a hawk streaked by above, moving with easy skill among the closely-spaced trunks of the poplars. A Cooper's hawk, perhaps. And only a moment later, a flurry of motion and sound on the path ahead resolved itself into the oddish outline of a ruffed grouse living up to its name. It occurred to me that this sudden abundance of birds was no accident. I could feel the difference in the forest here; the canopy was closed above, and the understory around me was slightly more open and variable. It was a friendly place.

A good path up out of the ravine soon presented itself, but I passed it by. The walk along the bottom was a joy again, a joy that reached all the way back to my teenage ramblings, untouched by disappointment.

I found the high-bush cranberries, laden with berries still mostly white. I came to a richly grassy place, and just below it, water trickled out of the gravel and flowed a little way along the streambed before sinking out of sight again.

Now I was ready. A little below the spring, a very good path led up the east bank, and I climbed, satisfied. My gaze lifted to the ridge high above, and I realized that this was Mom's ridge, the place where she says she'd like her ashes scattered.

I pictured that final moment of goodbye, and saw with wonder how happy and peaceful it could be. Mom's ashes would come home to a place that she loved without demanding anything of it, without aspiring that it become anything other than just what it was. There would be no distracting symbols of things that she accomplished, no sad unspoken thoughts of things she could not finish. Just her love, her freedom, and the beauty of this place.

I wondered if God approved of these thoughts. Before I even framed that question in my mind, I felt a rush of loving presence, seeming to say that approval really didn't enter into the matter. God was there embracing me - no, not even that far away. Looking out through my eyes and taking in my view with wondering love.

Yet close behind that feeling was a thought of suffering women, unspeakably suffering, trapped in a world of war and violence, of torture and rape and hunger and fear. I hardly noticed the rest of the climb. At the ridge-top, in the delicious breeze, I turned back to marvel at the great green trough of forest canopy below, but soon I turned away down a gentle grassy slope to the east, my mind full of the vague and awful plight of nameless women. I stopped and prayed for someone, that the living spirit might strengthen her to lift her broken body from its torment - to lift it, or to let it go, or to let it be. The prayer felt right and powerful at that moment, and yet now I cannot seem to put even the gist of it into words, and even the idea of it feels somehow false and contrived.

But after that point, my gaze and my thoughts were free again, and I enjoyed the simple satisfaction of reading the landscape in a not-so-familiar corner of the pasture and knowing just where to look for a trail through an aspen bluff. I crossed an area of tame hay, moving back towards the highland of our home quarter. Something on the steep slope above the hayfield caught my eye: a doe, moving swiftly downhill, but not in flight. The wind was towards her, and it amazed me that she came on down the slope, apparently unaware of my presence. She was moving almost directly towards me, but slightly to my left, and as she reached the lower ground, a low knoll hid her from my view. I resumed my walk, and when I came past the knoll, she was nowhere to be seen.

I climbed the ridge she had descended, but slowly, pausing often, drinking up the last of my water a few swallows at a time. It occurred to me that this was the ridge where Garth and I had sat, some years ago, at one of those times when things were particularly rough between us. Did we decide anything? The memory didn't offer any answer to that; just a vision of Garth's sadly earnest, hopeful face.

The saddle behind the crest of the ridge had nearly closed in with trees since then. I was moving faster, more purposefully, aware of the approaching supper hour. My thoughts became more purposeful, too, and I asked myself what I need.

My answer: I need a clear and simple path. No, I thought, not clear and simple.

Strait.

Notice the spelling: no "gh." Strait is a different word, and it has nothing to do with the shortest distance between two points.

It means "narrow."

As I imagined blogging about "strait" versus "straight," I found myself grinding my teeth. I couldn't be sure, but I suspected I'd been free of that tense habit for most of my walk.

I thought about one of my recent sermons, in which I explained my discovery that the "straight and narrow way" is not biblical. The way that Jesus spoke about was narrow, yes, but he never said it would or should be straight.

I need a narrow path, a deer-and-cattle path, just wide enough for my feet as I pass along my way. Anything more is a distraction, extra maintenance, a temptation to go sideways.

Now all I need to do is find that path.

Don't Miss the Music . . .

. . . like I missed Forget. I hear it was great. But I won't miss the Kenosee Kitchen Party! Here's the concert line-up (scroll down past the old news about Forget). See you there!

We Got Rain!

A big storm went through - six tenths in a hurry. The whole driveway was running half an inch deep. Five miles north in the hills, I hear they got over an inch. Hallelujah! Everything looks better now. That drought was drying out my very soul. Now I feel like singing!

There was a lightning strike very close. Tzz-BANG! B's phone is out across the street, so maybe it was that close. I hear there was also a strike at an oil well south of town. A couple of trucks went tearing out that way. I hope all is well.

In the lull after the first five tenths, I went out to check on things and found hardly any water in the rain barrel. I got up on the stepladder, with all that lightning blasting around, and unclogged the downspout. Now the barrel is mostly full - not quite, but I can't complain. Hallelujah again!

Hope, Heartache, and Hoodoos

Light and shadow.
Chance and millenia, layered.
The sad beauty of barrenness.

I was surprised to find that that gray layer I'd been seeing in the valley banks was not clay, but sandstone. Some things are more solid than they seem.

*******

James and I happened on these hoodoos east of Drumheller by accident, after he decided he didn't want any more sightseeing and picked the shortest road back to the ranch house in the sandhills. We had been to Penhold, near Red Deer, Alberta, to see Ruth's graduation from her music program at the Air Cadet Summer Training Centre. The plan was to pick her up from there, but she was asked to stay on for another three weeks. Then we went to Calgary to put Garth on the plane to Nepal, and visit with Cathy and John and their boys. The bunch of us made the short trip out to Calaway Park, and I had some fun there in spite of my aversion to the whole concept of a piece of land dedicated to parking lots, power rides and junk food. I still like a Ferris Wheel. I took it easy, letting James decide when it was time to go, and then we headed for Drumheller, back to the badlands where we had camped overnight on the way out. I thought we would camp again, and see the dinosaur museum, and play on the elaborate splash-pad, and climb up to the lookout in the jaws of the giant T.-rex statue. But in the end, all we did was eat and drive on. The hoodoos were a fortuitous treat along the way, and then we drove and drove, with James lapsing into sleep, and me enjoying a classic country station on the radio, and a thunderstorm leading the way across those wide, high plains.

What's the title about? Hope and heartache?

I'm not sure, but it has something to do with the time away, and the coming home. And something to do with my morose musings today, over at The Daily Bed. This post started out as just a link to that one, and then it needed something, so I went looking for a picture, and found the hoodoos.

And now I remember a song.

Longing for the Badlands
© Laura Herman 2002

This little private lawn,
screened from all beyond,
and rich with all the perfume of the flowers
where he led me on his arm,
smiling full of charm,
and told me all his treasure would be ours...

Oh, the fountain flowing free,
the arch of ancient trees,
the hedges round the stately formal garden.
It's a lovely place to be,
or so they all tell me,
but here I stand, longing for the badlands.

I come to meet the dawn,
calling from beyond;
I watch the distant cloudbanks turning golden.
Those tints of rose and grey,
they look so far away
like the morning light on claybanks in the high plains.

Oh, the fountain flowing free,
the arch of ancient trees,
the hedges round the stately formal garden.
It's a lovely place to be,
or so they all tell me,
but here I stand, longing for the badlands.

The fountain and the stream
whisper in my dreams.
In my heart I hear the wind across the badlands.
Though I stand beside a pool,
there's a desert in my soul
and his footsteps on the cobbles bring no gladness.

Oh, the fountain flowing free,
the arch of ancient trees,
the hedges round the stately formal garden.
It's a lovely place to be,
or so they all tell me,
but here I stand, longing for the badlands.

Sand Hills

Mule deer on a dune partially revegetated with lance-leaved psoralea or scurf-pea (Psoralea lanceolata)

Alright, here's a bit about where I've been lately: the Great Sand Hills, in southwestern Saskatchewan. I find it fascinating that you can see the outline of the sandhill area on satellite imagery and on landcover maps derived from it. So much of southern Saskatchewan is in cropland that the major native grassland areas show up in contrast. One of these areas is the Great Sand Hills, where the soil is too sandy for annual crop production, and much of the topography is stabilized dunes, too choppy for any sort of cultivation. To me, the outline of the area looks a bit like a chess knight, or the upper part of a seahorse, in profile, facing right. See if you can see it on the landcover map when you zoom in on southwestern Saskatchewan. Look for a pinkish area south of the big bend in the South Saskatchewan River west of Lake Diefenbaker. Once you see it on there, try it on Google Earth.

I joined the Plant Team, doing rare plant searches and range health assessment as part of the Great Sand Hills Regional Environmental Study, for ten days in the latter part of July. The team, with somewhat shifting membership as knowledgeable people were available, had been living at this rented ranch house in the west central part of the sandhills since late May.


I took the last available bedroom. Hmmm - am I going to like this? Maybe once I take over the bed.

At least I had my guitar along.

Actually, I abandoned this room partly through my stay, and rolled out my sleeping bag in the basement rec room. Others did the same, and soon somebody commented about the refugee camp in the basement. It was just too hot upstairs in the early evening, when we were trying to get to sleep so that we could wake up and look lively at 4:30 a.m. At first we tried to leave the house at about six, but we gradually worked it back even earlier, so that we were arriving on our sites at about six. By eight o'clock in the morning, you could already feel the heat, and by the time we finished our last site of the day in the early afternoon, we were really needing some shade. Or an air conditioned truck. The drive back to the ranch was good for that. Often it was forty-five minutes; for some sites it was double that. "Oh, I drive a truck for the environment . . ."


At least I got to hang my laundry out to dry. I was amused and disturbed by the inconsistencies of our situation. At home I haven't even got around to putting up a clothesline, but I drive a tiny car, or bike, or walk. Out at this ranch, the plant people had brought along eco-friendly cleaning products and strung up a clothesline, and someone objected to the plastic sandwich bags I bought in the convenience store on a trip into town because I had forgotten to bring a reusable sandwich box - and we spent our days driving monstrous trucks all up and down the countryside. (Well, that and walking all up and down our sites.)

There were reasons, of course. We had to have vehicles with high clearance, to keep from dragging bottom or starting the crispy-crunchy-dry grass on fire. And part of the study design involved spreading the work over the whole area through the season, to avoid bias, so we couldn't just start at one end and camp our way across the area to save on driving.

Couldn't we just skip the study altogether? One team member was keen to see this study help to "keep them out" - to protect the sandhills from gas development. I reminded her that most of us depend on this gas to heat our homes each winter. As we discussed it further, she was shocked to learn that gas and oil development is often unwanted by landowners, but ultimately there is nothing they can do to stop it. If they refuse the developer's offer for a surface lease, and try to fight it, then an arbitration board will step in and tell them what they will be paid for the surface lease. They have no choice about giving a lease. Stepping back to look at the bigger picture, if some ranchers and environmentalists and concerned citizens band together and get some tighter planning restrictions on gas development in the sandhills, how long will it last? Eventually the pressure to get that gas will be too great, and the restrictions will be lifted.

But maybe the study will suggest some ways to do the development better, with less impact. I don't know. That wasn't my reason for being there. I just had fun wandering up and down sandhills, seeing the 360-degree vistas from the crests of dunes, bantering with my teammates. More than once I said I would do this work for free. When W saw me struggling up the side of a blowout, throwing the quadrat frame ahead of me and then lunging upward on all fours, he asked if I still felt the same way, or if maybe they weren't paying me enough for this. But I was still happy, just a bit embarrassed that I had tried to scramble up the steep and sliding sand instead of taking a long way around where the slope was easier, and feeling foolish with him standing up there watching me.

I meant to take the camera along on one of our workdays, but I was always too focussed on the stuff I needed for work. Even at that, I forgot my lunch one day. W and S gave me parts of theirs, and it was the best lunch I had in the whole ten days! Anyway, the only pictures I have are from the immediate vicinity of the ranch house where we stayed. They'll still give you some idea of what it was like.

The work involved a lot of walking, back and forth in a set pattern across a site, while scanning all the vegetation in a 5 m wide swath for rare plants. Sometimes the site was flat open grassland, but sometimes it looked more like this.


Or this.


One site I recall had mostly creeping juniper at ground level, plus waist- to shoulder-high wolf willow (silverberry, Elaeagnus commutata) throughout. Then there was a site down in a broad low area where water table supports poplars and water birch - making it very difficult to see our flags to keep on track with the search pattern.

Once, while filling out a site form, W asked for my estimate of the % cover of a speargrass, Stipa comata. I said the estimate varies depending on what the botanist is wearing on their ankles.

I loved it all.

Some views of the dune north of the ranch house:




And looking back from the dune toward the ranch house:

I noticed a lot of terrain like this, where there is a low flat, bordered by higher, very rough land, known as "choppy dune." The ranch buildings seem to huddle at the edge of the flat, taking shelter from the sand ridges but staying out of them. The loneliness of the place was very appealing to me, as long as I didn't start thinking about what it would take to survive there, independently.




One night I stayed alone at the ranch. At the end of the ten-day shift, some of the team members were finished, and some had a four-day break before returning for another shift. All left for their homes or holidays, except for me. I stayed on to wait for Garth and James to pick me up so we could travel on westward to see Ruth's graduation from her three-week music program at the Air Cadet Summer Training Centre at Penhold, Alberta.

Something woke me - perhaps the wind slamming a bedroom door upstairs.

Soundtrack: crickets.


Look away from that yard light, and what do you see?

I see a glint on the horse trailers. Nothing more. No distant traffic, or yard lights, or glow from a town - nothing. Just the dark of the sandhill night.

Clutter

It was a disturbing homecoming. For that matter, it was a disturbing time away. Many revelations, as people newly met asked about parts of my background that I hadn't bothered or dared to think about in a long time. Between conversations, there were hours of quiet pacing through the grassland, searching the vegetation for rare plants. That activity demands a certain level of attentiveness, allowing self-reflection to percolate gently below the surface, but preventing the conscious mind from barging in on the process with a lot of willful direction.

I came to a better understanding of a conflict in a work relationship some years ago. I realized that those I worked under had mistaken my perfectionism for competence, and put me into a leadership role that was beyond me. I didn't have the experience to recognize competence in my team members - I didn't even know what competence might look like in that kind of work - and my perfectionist approach turned into obnoxious hounding when I tried to take responsibility for the work of others.

I could do that job a lot better now. If I wanted to.

Another thing I noticed in those hours between conversations: my conversations include a lot of complaining about Garth. I don't like to hear myself talk like that. What is wrong?

I already knew that we need more time together. I've been working on that. Him being on the other side of the planet makes it tougher, right now - he's back in Nepal for three weeks. But in his email today, he suggested a plan for a mini-holiday on my upcoming birthday. He's working on it, too.

But there was another revelation that emerged from the first day or so of being home. The place was a mess. An abnormal mess. Or maybe not so abnormal, but ever so noticeable in contrast to the spacious, uncluttered feeling of that big ranch-house in the sandhills where we all lived with just what we needed for the short time we were there, and did our best to keep our stuff out of one another's way.

I wanted my home to be clean.

For the first time in years, that was at the top of my mind. Maybe because my mind had been reset by the two-week break from any habits or obligations here. Maybe because I'd done a bit of cleaning at the ranch house and found it very satisfying. I felt like a new person, eager to make a home, instead of nodding a grudging acknowledgement to that duty while hurrying on to something else.

Now other needs and tasks and habits (like blogging) are rising up again, and I'm becoming resigned to the mess. No! Don't give in! Clean the bedroom, today! (You have to realize that cleaning the bedroom doesn't mean dusting the light fixture and running the vaccuum through. It means facing countless sideways-tipping and intermingling piles of who-knows-what, piles that take up more floor space than they leave empty. It means sorting, dealing with, throwing out, storing . . . you see, the bedroom has been my place to put what I can't leave lying around the rest of the house. But to leave it in the bedroom is probably even worse.)

Blogging. It feels like a chore, like an impossibly huge chunk out of every day. I have pictures and stories and ideas for posts even from before I left, but there are times when I just want to shove it all sideways and do something real. Not to have to listen to myself for a while.

And so I come to realize that a good deal of my complaining about Garth is really just a symptom of all this mess. There is a problem between us, yes, indeed. A big sprawling jumbled problem, and there are only so many times you can step over it all for a hug, before somebody trips and grumbles.

So if I seem preoccupied and quiet these days, you can smile and imagine me cleaning. Picture it as clearly as you can, and maybe you'll help it happen!

And in the back of my mind, I have a victory project. With the clutter out of the way, I can tackle refinishing the hardwood floors. I've been dreading that project, because I just couldn't see a way to keep the dust out of all my stuff. The idea of moving a lot of the stuff out, permanently, is a help. But the breakthrough was a comment Eleutheros made somewhere, about using scrapers instead of sandpaper. I boldly wondered - could you do that for a whole floor? Absolutely. I've never sharpened anything, so the prospect of sharpening my scraper after every ten square feet is enough to make me tremble a bit, but I know how to steady myself and carry on. No dust! Now if I can just think of a way to keep that cleanly scraped floor clean while I finish the whole thing bit by bit . . .

A Food Shortage for Thought

Lester Brown looks at the accelerating contest between cars and people for food.

I'm not sure I share his optimism about wind electric alternatives.

And I notice he doesn't mention the option of leaving the car parked.

But it's one more wake-up call, anyway.

Setting the Record . . .

. . . flat.

View northward from the TransCanada Highway between Regina and Moose Jaw.

This is the baseline, folks. No hills.

Early Tomatoes

Wow - I grew these! (With thanks to Mary Milligan for the excellent tomato plants from her greenhouse.) Picked yesterday, August 1st. Delicious.

I'm Home!

. . . and there is so-o-o much to do. Tales and pictures will have to wait a bit.

Arcologist Comes Full Circle

One year ago today, I made my first post on this blog.

Earlier today, I posted "Hills" (below) as a special feature to celebrate. It seemed finished, and I was late for a date with Garth, so I published it even though I had a few pictures and thoughts left over.

Now, in the comments, I hear that some people are still unconvinced (wink). Well. Everything is relative. In the farmyard where my husband grew up, there is some place that they call "the hill." I know where it is because they talk about storing equipment "on the hill," and I've seen the equipment. I haven't seen the hill.

At least "hills" is more honest than their proper name, the Moose Mountains. Hummocks? Shall we call them hummocks? The Moose Hummocks. (giggle - I actually sort of like that as a name. That may give you some insight into my character.)

Ever notice how a camera flattens hills? Try it. This is my meme challenge: show me your hills.

And here are just a few more pictures from mine.

Taking a cue from Madcap Mum, for comparison purposes: here are some views from just outside the farm gate.

Looking north - looks flat, doesn't it? Except... that horizon is awfully close.

Looking south.

Looking home.

Hills

Some hills tend to cradle you.

These hills lift me to the sky.

I took this view for granted.

All those years growing up on my parents' farm, I could walk out to this hill just across from the house, just about any time I wanted. Almost looks like an aerial photo, doesn't it? But when I took this picture the other day, I was sitting on a rock. A small one. With my feet on the ground.

We kids used to go out to "the South Slopes," as we called this spot, in late winter when the sun was getting stronger and starting to melt the snow off a few small patches near the peaks of the biggest hills. I still remember the thrill of standing on that bare brown grass and earth, reconnecting with the ground for the first time in months.

We'd come out here to look for the first crocus buds, too.

When I walked out onto this hilltop a few years ago, when we had just moved back to the farm after fifteen years in the city, I was struck with a sudden realization. This view shaped the person that I am.

The other day, with my camera, I tried to capture a sense of the place, but it was quite beyond me. Perhaps if I'd had enough digital memory left for a video, I could have given you a glimmer of it. As it was, I got stingy with the pictures and didn't even zoom in on Arcola, so all you get is a blow-up of part of the scene above. This is my childhood view of the town where I now live.

It's just that band of dark green with some buildings showing in it, stretching across most of the width of this view of the distant "flats." I sometimes worry if I'll offend someone by saying "the flats," but our Arcola-Kisbey history book is subtitled "Mountain Hills to Prairie Flats," so I guess it's okay.

Arcola is about half a mile wide, I'd say. The road you can see in the middle distance is running from north to south away from the hills, and the next north-south road, one mile east of it, runs past the left end of the dark green area.

To give you a sense of how steep this hill is, here is another picture looking across its slope from a bit further east. You can tell by the horizon line on the flats - I didn't tilt the camera. (Okay, maybe a teeny bit. It's hard to stand up straight on that slope.)

And if you're thinking that's not steep, try climbing it. Or try browsing through some pictures of foothills. Most of the steeper slopes that you see are supported by rock formations. This is just glacial till. Here is a view of the "South Slopes" from the meadow below, looking west across their face.

If geology and ecology and botany bore you, skip along to some more pictures below.

I've been told that the Moose Mountains are a dead-ice moraine. When the last continental ice sheet was retreating, a chunk of the ice sat here and melted, dropping all the clay, sand, gravel, and boulders it contained in a great hummocky heap. If I recall correctly, the hollows are places where pieces of ice remained longer, so the earth materials settled around the edges of these lingering ice blocks, forming hills, and when the ice blocks finally melted out, they left holes that softened into hollows. All along the foot of the hills there are sand and gravel deposits, where streams running out of the melting ice slowed down as they entered the glacial lake to the south. The sand settled out of the water as it slowed. The silts and clays took much longer to settle out, so they were more-or-less evenly distributed across the lake bed, forming the flats.

But we're still up in the hills, cradled in a meadow. I'll tell you a little bit about it. The crop in the foreground above is blue grama grass, a native species of short- and mixed-grass prairie, found most abundantly in dry upland areas. (Mom and Dad grow it for seed, for prairie reclamation projects.) This meadow was once a tame hayfield of yellow sweet-clover and smooth brome grass. Smooth brome was widely seeded as a hay crop and as a stabilizer for road ditches, and has taken over most of the "edge" area between grassland and wooded areas in our parklands. Any natural "edge" area - or "ecotone" as the biologists call it - is very important habitat to many wildlife species. My dad remarked that we probably don't know what "edge" used to be like here; brome grass has changed it, everywhere. In the photo above, you can see the extent of the brome grass, as the bright green area beyond the blue grama field, reaching to the edges of the trees and well up the slope of the hill.

Ah, but it's a part of who we are. I have a song about that, called "The Whispers in the Brome." Maybe some other day. I still have lots more pictures. Here's another view in the meadow.

And on the other side of the meadow, south of those "South Slopes," we have "The Big Woods."

It's not the deepest, darkest view I could get, that's for sure. I love to thread my way through the bush and peer through beneath the understory for tiny flowers and mushrooms and such, but when it comes to taking pictures, I'm always drawn to the light. Besides, I was in the perpetual hurry that seems to haunt me these days, so I mostly kept to the not-so-natural trails.

The cattle had just been put into this pasture the day I rambled through it, so they hadn't grazed and trampled out the trails yet. Give them a few days. Then you can breeze through without having to dodge the stinging nettles, and maybe come away with only a couple of woodticks.

The "Big Woods" are a bit unusual in this landscape. They cover a broad low area that probably has water table fairly close to the surface, supporting black poplar (or balsam poplar, Populus balsamifera) and willows. Usually these species are found in smaller areas along the margins of sloughs and the bottoms of ravines.

This is a view from the upper slope of a ravine at the west end of the "South Slopes." I didn't go down to the bottom. You can see a little bit into the shadows, but we're looking mostly at the crowns of the trees. The ravines are a different world. If it's hard work climbing the South Slopes, it's an ordeal climbing straight up through the tangle of thick underbrush on the side of one of these ravines. I've only done it a few times. Usually I seek out a good path before I start up. There is always a path along the bottom, where the cattle and deer and elk and moose follow the way of least resistance. There is good grazing and browsing there, too, even when the hills are dry, and in some of the deeper places there are springs.

Back up at the top of that slope, looking southwest, you can see the ravine running away through the center of the photo towards the flats. In the middle distance at the right side of the photo, you can see an area of more uniform grass cover. Again, it's an old field, now in tame pasture. Notice the contrast with the more diverse vegetation east of the ravine.

Time to turn for home. I did use a deceptive camera angle for this shot, getting down on elbows and knees to look through the needle-and-thread grass (Stipa comata) among the harebells (Campanula rotundifolia).

Oh, I still have more pictures, but it's time to go.

Don't Ask

Thus Spake Garth

"No. I don't need to [go to the hospital]. It's just a scrape that gushed a bit."

Me: "We're going."

Two stitches. The ER staff said it was "debatable," whether to suture it, but they had fun bantering about whether it was a laceration or a scrape. He fell off his bike, you see, when the dog he was exercising decided to go sideways, just as he was using both hands to pull a loose brake lever back into position. When he got home, I was at the computer (guilty) and he didn't say anything, just spent a moment in the washroom and then went to lie down. An hour or so later, he took off his shoes and discovered a problem.

I became aware of it when I turned from the computer to call him to the phone, and I could see a thick pile of bandages on his ankle, and little squirts still leaking out. After eight bandages, he hobbled off and put his foot up, insisting that he was fine. I cleaned up the bathroom a bit while fretting and fuming and repeatedly getting his brother's busy signal - I figured maybe Brian could talk some sense into him.

It would have been different if ER were open in Arcola. From our driveway, we can look across the slough and see the ER doors.

It would have been different if it had been my ankle instead of his. I am a very willing patient. I've been to ER here, when I swallowed wrong and dislocated a tonsil or something. They figured I just had a muscle in spasm after too much time on the phone, but I still think something was out of place, because after a while I tried swallowing with my chin tucked, and something slipped back into place, and I was fine.

Anyway, when I had nothing left to clean, I worked up my determination and phoned the HealthLine. Since Garth hadn't cleaned the wound or even looked at it well enough to describe it, the nurse advised me to take the bandages off, clean it, and check if it might need stitches.

Well, that took some doing. There's no point in attempting something like that without Garth's cooperation. He was stubbornly stoic; I was in a small flap. But once we got the bandages off, I was the calm one. Finally I could see what we were dealing with and know what needed to be done. Garth, meanwhile, was looking off into the corners of the room and wiping his brow.

Cleaned it, covered it with a smaller, neater pile of bandages (one bandage probably would have done it), and drove him off to Weyburn. The ER doctor was a delightful little lady from Northern Ireland. I mentioned Garth's upcoming trip back to Nepal (for three weeks in August, to test some software that was developed as part of his project). She told us about friends of hers who went climbing there. She had given them lots of information about altitude sickness. The husband decided he was feeling the symptoms and needed to go back down, so a guide took him, while the rest of the group carried on. He and the guide were both very fit, and perhaps pushed it a little too hard. He made it. The guide died.

Just before we left, the nurse drew the doc's attention to a second injury, this one on Garth's hand. Standing with his abraded hand palm up in hers, she looked him in the eye and said, "Now that's a scrape."

Summer Music in the Southeast

Remember Forget! The Forget Summer Arts Festival is coming up fast, July 21 and 22 (a week from Friday), just up the road in - you guessed it - Forget! The line-up includes Eileen Laverty, Jack Semple, the WhistlePigs, and many more fine musical acts. Not confirmed yet, but the Arcola Community Band may put in an appearance, and you can bet there will be other local musicians showing up as "tweeners." Camping is included in the gate price, and what a deal it is! Check it out.

And if, like me, you have to (gasp) miss that one, here's another chance to get your toes tapping without driving halfway across the country: the Kenosee Lake Kitchen Party! Concerts every evening for a week! Michele Amy is organizing a camp for students of guitar, fiddle and piano, and while we've got all those fine instructors here - of course they'll play for us. For everyone! I've copied her announcement below. The location (Kenosee Boys' and Girls' camp) is out at the west end of the lake (with the Mother Theresa Centre); follow the main road west and then turn south where it says "Group Camps" or something like that. Then watch for the camp sign.

Just some information about a concert series in the Park that you might be interested in. We'd love for you to come and join us, and to help us spread the word.

The Kenosee Lake Kitchen Party is presenting a concert series featuring renowned musicians between August 14 - 18, 2006 at the Kenosee Boys' and Girls' camp at 7pm.

Cost is $5 for non-camp participants, and spectators should bring a lawnchair.

Children under 12 are free.

Concerts will be followed by a jam session, and spectators are welcome to bring instruments and join in as they please

The concert lineup is as follows:

Monday, August 14 at 7pm: J.J. Guy (fiddler) Ray Bell (guitarist/singer) Shamma Sabir (fiddler: eldest member of the Sabir Sisters, and a Grand Master finalist. She's also a dynamic performer!)

Tuesday, August 15 at 7pm: Trent Bruner (pianist from Norway), Cammy Romanuck (fiddler.. provincial Grand Champion and 5th place winner in Canadian Grand Masters), and Anthony Bzdell (guitarist, singer and key member of the Rotators)

Wednesday, August 16th at 7pm: Lucas Welsh (fiddler, one time Provincial Grand Champion and accomplished bluegrass guitarist, singer, mandolin player as well!) Shannon Shakotko (pianist / singer with a powerful voice) John Arcand (world-renowned fiddler and the master of the Metis Fiddle)

Thursday, August 17th at 7pm: Camp Pig 'n Whistle: Band scramble and talent show, followed by square dancing with an accomplished caller

Friday, August 18th at 7pm, Students' final show, instructors' performance, old tyme family dance with cash bar.

Hope this helps with your calendar! The music this week will be phenomenal!

...Michele Amy

As a student, I'll be in the final show (gulp) so come clap along for me! I dare ya to try to make me laugh . . .

Klein's Breath in the Grand Scheme of Things

Alberta Premier Ralph Klein admits a connection between humans and global warming:

I don't argue with the science that all of us - as we exhale, as the population grows, as there are more vehicles on the streets and more carbons produced - that we contribute to global warming.

I wonder how terrifying it was for him to admit that to himself, given that he thinks his own breath is part of the problem. Really, Mr. Premier. The natural functioning of a human body only contributes to global warming after breathing stops. Up until then, you're a carbon sink. Carbon in, when you eat - remember carbohydrates? Carbon out, when you breathe. More carbon in than out, as you grow. Wait - it just occurred to me - dieting contributes to global warming! Somebody call Hollywood!

Relax, though. While some people shrink, others grow.

By the way, Mr. Premier, on your second point - population growth does not absolutely have to be a contributing factor. If the existing population were living with carbon uptake and emissions in balance, and the additional people didn't upset that balance, no problem.

On the other hand, we don't have to have "more vehicles" to have a problem. The existing vehicles have contributed to the existing problem, and will continue to add to it.

Let's get this very clear. A human being can exist within the carbon cycle, in balance. In fact, if we're out of balance, we can't carry on indefinitely, because we're using up a carbon sink - whether it's a forest being burned up in cooking fires (and not replaced by new growth), or the oilsands being mined out, or soil fertility being exhausted growing biofuel feedstocks. At some point we will be forced to resolve the imbalance.

We might want to consider resolving it early. Wouldn't it be nice to have some oil left in the oilsands after it becomes fabulously valuable as an industrial feedstock? Wouldn't it be nice to have some options about how we make the transition to a different lifestyle?

Yes, a different lifestyle. That's what I said.

Most of humanity currently has - or aspires to - a lifestyle that is beyond any possibility of balance within the carbon cycle. Since it comes down to lifestyle, each one of us has the choice: do we want the imbalance resolved or not?

It would be nice, though, if our politicians could help to make this clear.

Little Miss Muffett

A tiny spider is zipping up and down a silken thread about three inches in front of my monitor. I tried pointing the digital camera at him but I couldn't stand the flicker of the two refresh rates interacting, certainly not long enough to find the spider in the viewfinder. I wish he'd show up on a screen capture. He looked very funny in front of Wayne's full-screen dragonfly.

Thus Spake Garth

"It's better to do something illegal than to do something immoral."

Rain, Rain, Where Did You Go?

When we left town on Friday morning, it was raining. We drove westward, into the weather that we assumed would be heading our way, and it rained and rained, harder and harder. Garth remarked that he hoped it wasn't raining like that at home, or our garden would be flattened. I had more confidence in the plants than that, and I was very glad that they wouldn't want for water while we were away. As we got close to Weyburn, we saw water pooling in the fields from all the rain.

As we drove south from Whitewood this afternoon, we passed through some showers and saw lots of lightning.

When we got home, I glanced at the garden and saw that it definitely hadn't been flattened. The pumpkin plants looked like they had doubled in size. But when I walked into the garden, I noticed that the flour lines on the yang side hadn't been washed away; in fact, they seemed as clear and bright as when we left.

And the ground was dry.

And the rain gauge was empty.

I phoned my mom, out at the farm just five miles north, and she said they got over an inch. They had been to Oxbow on Friday, and it rained all the way. Oxbow is south of us.

I guess the clouds must have parted over Arcola.

Upcoming Around Town

Almost forgot to do this post this week. Too much upcoming around home. Don't expect to see me out much, but here's what I've heard is happening:

Uh...

Oh, yes.
Canada Day Celebration at Ed Hanna Park - cake and ice cream (check the posters for the time, or call the Town Office), and then fireworks at dusk.

Other than that, if there's something happening, I don't know about it. Drop a note in the comments if you're better informed than I am. Church (United Church, that is) is out until September. School is out, too.

So, keep cool, enjoy the sun if you like that sort of thing, happy gardening, and if you have to work, well - is it worth it?

Wrigglers in the Rain Barrel

I was filling up my cordless hose* by dipping it in the as-yet lidless rain barrel, when I noticed the wrigglers. I'd been watching for them. Time to water the whole garden, instead of just the new seedlings, and empty the barrel.

As I got down to the last few inches of water, I noticed some red flakes swirling on the bottom of the barrel. It took me a moment to realized that these were bits of paint from the 50-year-old wooden shingles above. I don't know how old the paint is, but I'm hoping it's not old enough to have a lot of lead in it. I'm sure the roof has been shedding paint for many years, but lately it's been shedding shingles too; just single narrow ones so far, but enough to get me thinking renovations again.

Back and forth I go with the watering can, and round and round go my thoughts. Are we staying here? Moving to a farm? If we're moving, do we try to leave this place a little better than we found it? Or just fix the worst things and get on with our own lives?

And here I am with the first garden I've ever cherished. Must I give it up already?

***

*cordless hose: a watering can - much more convenient than being tethered to a faucet

Kids in the Labyrinth

Sorry, no picture.

James's class from school came to see the yin-yang garden today. They all tramped through in single file behind me, and several of the boys seemed to think it was cool. Then they continued on their tour with Arcola's area historian, Adrian Paton. They paused at the end of the yard and I listened in while he told them about the brick ponds. Apparently there were drying sheds just south of our place, and kilns beyond that, close by the tracks so the finished bricks could be loaded onto rail cars. I wonder how far they went.

I may have mentioned this before, but if you know of some old Arcola bricks that could be had, fairly close to here, please let me know. I only need about a thousand . . .

Tai Chi Labyrinth Update #2

If you're following the development of my Tai Chi Labyrinth garden, you might want to check my latest post at the Daily Bed.

Contrary Goddess has dubbed it a "yin yang garden," and I'm thinking that's a much more comfortable name for it. Thanks, CG.

Driving Stories

A vital piece of news, from the Kidman-Urban wedding in Australia:

Australian movie star Hugh Jackman was the first guest to arrive, though his black European sedan almost missed the entrance. The car stopped and reversed back to enter the venue.

Aren't you glad we have such diligent reporters on the scene?

Here's an equally vital vignette from my own past.

It was early winter of my Grade 12 year. Our class and the Grade 11s went to Regina to see a Shakespeare play at the Globe Theatre. I don't remember what play it was, but I can still see in my mind several short pieces of the journey home.

I was driving my mom's K-car, with my friend Twila on the passenger side. In the back seat were Grade 11 student Gord, and our English teacher Mr. Burland.

Somewhere in those mind-numbing miles of straight flat highway between Regina and Stoughton, we noticed a car pulled off on the shoulder. Thinking it was another carload of Arcola students, we decided that I should pull in behind to see what was wrong. When my headlights illuminated the student standing partway down the ditch, we decided I should just pull back into the driving lane and keep going.

The resulting bit of levity shortened the miles remaining before Stoughton. At the second turn there, where we would finally reach our homeward Highway 13, that other carload caught up to us.

As I pulled out through the left turn, I looked down and noticed the engine light glowing red. With an inexperienced driver's rather grinding thought processes, it took me a moment to decide that I should stop and check what might be wrong. Meanwhile I had gathered a bit of speed.

I signalled right, and pulled onto the shoulder. A little too sharply and too far, it turned out; my wheels caught in the snow on the roadside and pulled toward the ditch. I'm sure if it happened today, I would just hold the wheel steady and stop, but at that time, with my head full of all the cautionary tales about how easily one can roll a car at the edge of the road surface, I played it by the book. I drove down the ditch.

Gord immediately took command from the backseat, urging me to keep it moving, pick up some speed along the bottom of the ditch and drive out again. There wasn't very much snow, and I accomplished that task without difficulty.

Back on the pavement, rolling along, I checked the dashboard. The engine light was off.

I signalled left, pulled into the driving lane, and carried on.

It must have looked pretty funny to the carload of students behind us.

It wouldn't have been funny if we'd got into trouble on that bitterly cold night. Back in Arcola, I stayed overnight with Twila. The next morning I found a blistered spot on my arm, where I must have frozen it against some cold steel while reaching under the car to plug in the block heater. It wasn't a bad wound, and yet the scar lasted for many years.

The story has stayed with me longer. At my graduation the next year, Mr. Crump introduced me with words something like this: "With all her practice driving up in the hills, Laura has become an excellent driver. I hear that she even signals to go into the ditch."

Climate and Energy News Coming Thick and Fast

Here is a report (pdf) released Wednesday by Canada's National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, about "one way that Canada can reduce energy-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 60 percent by 2050."

My mom is pretty excited. I'm still in my fey mood, not nearly so eager to be positive about new directions as I was a few days ago. Maybe when I get a chance to read it, I'll be swayed again.

The Turning of the Tide

I wrote this song one week ago.

Today I was able to get through it. It's still a little raw, and you may need to turn up the volume, because I didn't try any correction on the levels.

The Turning of the Tide
© Laura Herman 2006

There's a ship
and she waits out in the bay.
Where she goes,
no-one knows,
and they don't come back to say.
You and I, we never talked about the sea.
I never thought about
you rowing out
and leaving without me.
But there's a knowing
growing
here inside.
I see you yearning
for the turning
of a tide...

There's a stoop in your shoulders
like you're rushing to get older.
Oh, I wish that I could hold you
from this down-hill slide;
take your hand, and still the tremor;
still the rush of time - remember -
oh, remember me
and don't you be
in a hurry
until the turning
of the tide.

Oh, they talk
of a sunrise far away;
of a dawn
far beyond
all the griefs of our brief day.
And you know I'd never want to hold you here.
Still, I wish that you
could hold me through
my loneliness and fear...
I know you're leavin'
even
as you bide.
I see you yearning
for the turning
of a tide...

There's a stoop in your shoulders
like you're rushing to get older.
Oh, I wish that I could hold you
from this down-hill slide;
take your hand, and still the tremor;
still the rush of time - remember -
oh, remember me
and don't you be
in a hurry

until the turning

of the tide.

A Fey Mood

Ouch.

I hadn't thought about the consequences coming on so fast.

(found at A Payne Hollow Visit)

James has been admiring and praising my garden. Just wandering through to chat with me about something, and then he drifts off with a comment or two about how cool it is, or how it's the best garden in Arcola. Here I stifle something between a giggle and a snort. I know of a few gardens he must not have seen yet.

Still, praise from my kids is heady stuff.

Today he declared that he liked the carrots best, because they're so perfect, or orderly, or something like that. They're like a field, he said, and the onions are like shelterbelts.

It took me a moment to come up with a response that wouldn't knock his enthusiasm. I don't remember how I said it - something about tidiness not necessarily making it the best garden.

He assured me that the plants would like it. "They like a clean and tidy home."

I thought about a garden that would suggest otherwise, but he was wandering away, so I left it at that.

An Enormous Step Forward

Here is an interesting read. Canada's Environment Minister, Rona Ambrose, is saying much the same things that I have been thinking about the way the climate change debate has been paralysed over Kyoto, and "polarized by skepticism and political ideology." What's missing from her speech, of course, is an acknowledgement of what real action on climate change would mean in the lifestyle of individual Canadians. I can't blame her - she has votes to keep. But there are hints in her speech that it is up to all of us.

More importantly, by presenting climate change as an urgent challenge requiring a global solution, she and her government have taken an enormous step forward: they have moved beyond discussions of the science (whether it be skepticism or cheerleading) and focussed on what we are going to do about it. If the debate now focusses on what is being done and how much (or little) difference it will make, the challenge to us as individuals will become increasingly clear.

Upcoming Around Town

Thursday June 22nd evening - lawnbowling at the Curling Rink (as far as I know).

Friday June 23rd - rehearsal CANCELLED for Arcola Community Band.

Saturday June 24th - Arcola Fair - the 100th anniversary of this fair. Parade at 11 a.m. - and if you want to be in the parade, right up near the front, come join the band! Call me or Don Stewart or Brian Herman for more info. We meet at 10:30 at the south end of Main Street, on the east side by those trees (near where the kids assemble with their decorated bikes). I hear that there is also a pancake breakfast, a lunch, a fashion show, kids games, a heavy horse pull, a light horse show, trade booths, exhibits, musical entertainment, a dance...

Sunday June 25th - St. Andrew's United Church is holding an outdoor service of communion, its last service before a two-month summer break. The service is at 10:45 in the backyard of the manse (next to the church), weather permitting. A potluck dinner will follow. All are welcome.

"No Wrong Notes"

Today I got to play - a Strumstick.

I'd never heard of one before. And just like that, I played it.

Literally, just took a hold of it and strummed a couple of times, put my fingers in a few spots on one of the three strings, and a tune came out.

And it's tiny. And it makes a big, likeable sound.

Wow.

Not for Gore's Sake, but for Your Sake (Updated)

Kate has quoted Tom Harris's critique of Al Gore's movie (An Incovenient Truth). Not having seen the movie, I can't say whether this critique presents Gore's arguments fairly, but I'm not concerned about defending Gore. I'm concerned about defending climate change science from the skeptical bias that builds up when people read only the critiques - only the articles that point out various apparent problems with climate change science - and not the science itself.

"Defending climate change science" sounds too grand and dramatic. I don't mean it that way. I have no delusions about saving the world, but I do have a sense of responsibility to speak up when the discussion comes around to me, and to stand up for the priorities that I have come to believe in after much thought and consideration of the range of arguments.

I say "the range of arguments" because I don't like to think of this topic in terms of two sides. Harris presents it as a choice between extremes: ". . . either the end of civilization, if you believe Gore, or a waste of billions of dollars, if you believe his opponents . . ." Statements like this create the illusion that there are two and only two theories about the planet's future, each one clearly defined, and each one totally incompatible with the other. This illusion can harden into a belief that there are actually two well-defined models of the planet's future, both models strongly supported by a body of science, but one model containing some fatal flaw and the other (quite naturally) being true.

If you come to this topic in search of evidence to help you choose a side, you may find exactly what you are looking for: a lot of information that seems to pull strongly one way. You may also find a lot that seems to pull strongly the other way. You may get frustrated, or cynical; you may simply choose whichever side makes you feel better; or you may just go back to what you believed in the first place.

There is another alternative.

Instead of looking at each piece of information as evidence to be assigned to a side, try looking at it as a jigsaw puzzle piece to be fitted into a picture of a landscape.

Your picture. Your map, with paths for you to choose (or forge alone) across it.

Take the pieces of information that Harris mentions in his "small sample of the side of the debate we almost never hear." These are not nuggets held by one side and unknown to the other. They are pieces of information seen differently by different people. One by one, then, let's have a look.

Harris quotes Tim Patterson saying that "when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years."

This piece of information is new to me. I will keep an eye out for direct comments on it from people who know more than I do. However, I did try a Google search of "450 million years ago" together with "CO2," and the first result was intriguing. This date is given as the approximate time when the ozone layer had developed enough to allow the beginning of terrestrial life. Clearly, we are talking about a time when the influences on Earth's climate were vastly different than they are today. Why should I assume that CO2 would have played the same role at that time as in more recent climate cycles which included feedbacks with terrestrial plant cover? If it didn't play the same role, then why should it show the same relationship with temperature? Just because there wasn't a relationship under those circumstances doesn't mean there can't be a relationship under current circumstances.

While looking for a place to fit this first piece into my jigsaw puzzle, I read an article at Spencer Weart's website on the Discovery of Global Warming, which gives a historical overview of the development of climate change science. I happened upon some information that addresses Harris's next point. Harris mentions Patterson's further testimony that "on all time scales, there is very good correlation between Earth's temperature and natural celestial phenomena such changes in the brightness of the Sun." Weart's article discussed these same correlations, which involve tiny cyclical changes in solar radiation reaching the Earth. I was surprised to discover that much of early climate change science had focussed on a perceived problem with these correlations. How could these tiny changes be translated into large changes in climate? When scientists hit on the idea of CO2 acting as a greenhouse gas, amplifying small changes in climate due to solar radiation, it was the missing piece they were searching for. It made Patterson's preferred explanation plausible. Isn't that interesting? We are not looking at competing theories at all, but rather at complementary explanations of the workings of different parts of a single system.

Next, Harris explains how "Dr. Boris Winterhalter . . . takes apart Gore's dramatic display of Antarctic glaciers collapsing into the sea." Was Gore trying to pass off footage of a natural, millenia-old process as evidence of global warming? I don't know. Whether he was or not, his tactics are not the topic of discussion here. The fact that glaciers have been calving icebergs for millenia is not news to global warming theorists, and it doesn't present a challenge to their theories.

Staying on the topic of glaciers in Antarctica, Harris refers to Dr. Wibjörn Karlén's assertion that "the 'mass balance' of Antarctica is positive - more snow is accumulating than melting off." An extremely detailed recent feature in Physics World gives a much more uncertain picture of the mass balance, with different techniques of measurement giving results that range from positive to negative. The uncertainty discussed in this article is in sharp contrast to the figure given in Harris's article, which, although qualified with the word "possibly," nevertheless gives the reader the impression that mass balance is well understood.

In his next point, Harris alludes to this uncertainty. He calls Gore's assertion about "a precipitous drop-off in the amount and extent and thickness of the Arctic ice cap," "misleading." I would have to agree. Harris then quotes Tim Ball, discussing a difference in methodology between two surveys of Antarctic ice. Without more context, it is impossible to use this little bit of commentary as evidence for or against global warming theories. It may be evidence against getting your science from Al Gore. So?

Harris moves on to a discussion of temperature changes in the Arctic. He cites Karlén citing another scientist, Igor Polyakov, to argue that there is "no overall temperature rise" threatening polar bears in the Arctic. I read the article by Polyakov and got a very different impression. Polyakov wasn't questioning whether there was warming. He was questioning whether there was "polar amplification of global warming." In the scattered and incomplete temperature records available for the Arctic, he did not find evidence that the Arctic is warming more than the rest of the planet. One thing he did find, though, was "a general warming tendency over the entire record."

Harris also quotes Dr. Dick Morgan discussing ice thickness in the Canadian Arctic. Notice that, while Morgan says there is "no melt down," he still acknowledges "some decrease in ice thickness." If you're still trying to take sides, where will you slot this piece of information?

Harris gives another quote from Morgan, claiming that the IPCC's use of the Mercator projection to calculate global average temperature "doubled the area of warming in Alaska, Siberia and the Antarctic Ocean." I haven't heard this argument before, and I find it very hard to believe that in all the fine tuning of temperature calculations to compensate for things like urban heat-island effects, scientists would unanimously overlook something so simple as this. I spent some considerable time combing through Google search results for more information, but got tired of finding only repetitions of Morgan's claim and no discussions of its validity. I'll keep my eyes open.

UPDATE: Like I thought: of course the global average temperature calculation allows for differences in area between grid squares at higher versus lower latitudes. From the FAQ's regarding temperature datasets available from the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK:

Why do global and hemispheric temperature anomalies differ from those quoted in the IPCC assessment and the media?

We have areally averaged grid-box temperature anomalies (using the HadCRUT2v dataset), with weighting according to the area of each 5° x 5° grid box, into hemispheric values; we then averaged these two values to create the global-average anomaly. However, the global and hemispheric anomalies used by IPCC and in the World Meteorological Organization and Met Office news releases were calculated using optimal averaging. This technique uses information on how temperatures at each location co-vary, to weight the data to take best account of areas where there are no observations at a given time. The method uses the same basic information (i.e. in future HadCRUT2v and subsequent improvements), along with the data-coverage and the measurement and sampling errors, to estimate uncertainties on the global and hemispheric average anomalies. The more elementary technique (used here) produces no estimates of uncertainties, but our results generally lie within the ranges estimated by optimum averaging.

Emphasis mine. Note that although the IPCC technique is different, it uses the same basic information, and gives results similar to those of this "more elementary technique." [End of update.]

Finally, Harris says that Gore made a misleading point, "that 200 cities and towns in the American West set all time high temperature records." I don't know if Gore gave any context for that point; if he did not, I'll agree that it is misleading. If he was using it as an example of things to come, I might give him some latitude, but generally, discussions of local or regional high temperature records are a distraction. There will always be regional fluctuations. More convincing evidence for global warming is in the fact that overall average temperatures show warming, in spite of these fluctuations.

According to Harris, Gore is predicting "the end of civilization" on the basis of "junk science." Maybe so. But the existence of a bad argument for an extreme scenario does not in any way weaken the good arguments for reasonable - and still serious - scenarios of global warming.

It doesn't weaken the arguments, but it can certainly weaken their influence. Just look at all the bloggers linking and quoting Harris's piece.

Harris says:

We should listen most to scientists who use real data to try to understand what nature is actually telling us about the causes and extent of global climate change.

I could not agree more.

The Daily Bed

This is an invitation to visit my new blog, The Daily Bed.

I can hear you giggling.

Go on, check it out. It's family friendly. Jim, you've been waiting for the garden pictures - you'll find them there. You might want to start with the introductory post.

Walk with me down the garden path . . .

Finally Green

At last. The land south of our place looks green this week, instead of the patches of green mixed with large areas of pale brown where last year's grass still stood tall.

The dull brown time seemed to drag on, this spring, and I couldn't figure out why. I thought maybe it was just that I was impatient, since I was seeing so many pictures of lush growth and flowers on southern blogs. Finally I realized what had happened: there wasn't enough snow last winter to knock down the grass. Usually the colour change goes quite quickly from white through a muddy black-and-brown phase to green, but this year the brown lingered. In the brick ponds, it hung on for months.

Ah, green. I feel better now.

Look at those Wings!

I'm not even going to venture a guess as to what this creature is. (Okay, it's an insect.) It was on my kitchen window yesterday afternoon. Please pardon the lack of scale and the surrounding grime. If I remember correctly, it was about 2 cm long.