Grief

 

My spouse and I decided to go for a walk in the woods this morning. We chose a spot nearby–if the smoke from the local forest fire came rolling in, we could beat a quick retreat. We live in western Oregon, where the climate has been described as 9 months of temperate rainforest and 3 months of Mediterranean summer. Except, in the last 5-10 years it’s more like 7 months of temperate rainforest and 5 months of Mediterranean summer.

The native plants were in bad shape for this time of year–leaves wilted and yellowed from thirst. They have 6-8 weeks to go before they’re likely to get rain. Snowberry, vine maple, huckleberry–even the poison oak was thirsty. Dead douglas-fir spotted the landscape, killed off by a combination of drought and beetle. 

The ecosystem I grew up in is dying. Which means the world I grew up in is dying. It will be replaced by a different ecosystem–something more drought tolerant if current trends hold. I’m planting many drought tolerant trees on my property in anticipation of that future. But my faves–western hemlock and vine maple–won’t thrive in our new climate. They need that temperate rainforest vibe. I plant them anyway.

The woods we walked through were still beautiful and still full of life. But it felt like the writing was on the wall. This will not last. I felt very sad. 

The smoke did indeed close in on us. By the time we were headed back to the car, the light was yellow, and smoke was visible everywhere. Our current fire is at 9,000 acres. That’s fairly small compared to what we’ve seen the past few years. It’s hemmed in by an old fire to the North and an old fire to the South. There’s a really cool mapping system where you can see current and old fire activity. https://caltopo.com/map.html#ll=44.17038,-120.65186&z=7&b=mbt&a=fire%2Cmodis_mp One thing that’s apparent from looking at it is that more recent fires tend to be a lot bigger than older fires. 

There’s a lot of talk these days about climate anxiety. I tend toward precociousness. I feel climate grief. I believe we’ve crossed the Rubicon. It’s not that what we do now doesn’t matter. It does matter. But what we do now will (maybe) influence how bad it gets, not whether it gets bad, and how we adapt to it. For me, that adaptation includes grieving.

(posted by Dan T)