I love summer songs. Listening to Sly and the Family Stone belt out Hot Fun in the Summertime, makes me completely READY for the party to get started. Bill Withers’ buttery Lovely Day is the sound summer makes when sung by a human. The Young Rascals’ words make NO sense whatsoever, but it doesn’t matter. I’m always ready for duty when they sing those warm, breezy Groovin’ lyrics that require my presence:
“We'll keep on spending sunny days this way.
We're gonna talk and laugh our time away.
I feel it coming closer day by day.
Life will be ecstasy, you and me and Leslie.”
(Don’t say a word or you’re going to spoil it for my six-year-old self.)
And so it was, a few summer days ago, that my daughter and I were at the airport waiting for a flight to Montana to take us to an annual summer reunion in tiny, almost-a-ghost-town Pony. This reunion is drenched in really good music. My second cousin (or is that third, or once removed) married a musician and each year a mix of families and friends gather to set up lawn chairs in Pony Park and dance, laugh, and sing along while my cousin’s musician friends share their miraculous Missoula sound. (BTW, whenever you need dance music to bust a few “tectonic dance moves” to, Shakewell will do the job.)
Flying always gives me dissonance. There’s no reconciling the 2,300 pounds of CO2 Terrapass.com calculates I contributed transporting my body from St. Paul, Minnesota to Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport in Montana and back. The merits of purchasing offsets feels fuzzy as the CO2 is in the atmosphere once I have moved from Point A to Point B and back. Paying to plant the 26 urban trees of undefined caliper size Terrapass states I should do in order to declare this trip “carbon neutral” feels sleight of hand.
Normally I just feel badly when I fly and then get over it all too quickly. But the day we traveled the view outside the airport looked like this:
An eerie sky stained white with the particulate matter of innumerable burned Canadian trees (in my part of the country). Until days ago, these trees sequestered CO2. While a milky sky may be business as usual in New Delhi, India, it isn’t in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The day this picture was taken, the air quality index (AQI) in New Delhi was 85. A moderate rating. In Minneapolis it was 159. Unhealthy. In fact, this was the worst air quality ever recorded in Minnesota. Looking around the airport, I notice fellow travelers aren’t much noticing the jaw-dropping disturbing real world outside the glass windows. Gazing at other glass is capturing most peoples’ attention.
This has been another summer of fires, millions of acres burned around the world. With the microscopic tree particles floating in the air I have been breathing in for months, I can only guess how many cigarettes a day my body now thinks I’m smoking. And as trees burn, die from climate stress, drought, pests, disease, and development, I wonder how they will all be replaced and replanted. I know we need to pivot quickly from burning fossil fuels to keep the last card of the ecosystem house of cards from being pulled. Buying 26 trees to try to do something about the damage my trip caused in order to visit family is a fool’s errand. But I do it anyway. After perusing my options, I decide to buy trees from TreeSisters.
It is another tree sister, Suzanne Simard, who teaches me that trees are so very important. In Fantastic Fungi, The Magic Beneath Us (on Netflix), the brilliant Simard explains how trees and fungi miraculously sequester CO2:
“CO2 is our biggest greenhouse gas. As plants photosynthesize they literally inhale CO2 while exhaling oxygen. CO2 is what plants photosynthesize and they take that carbon and they put it in different places. They put in their leaves and their trunks but they put 70 percent of it, we are finding, below ground. And the root systems trade that carbon for nutrients. The carbon ends up in the fungal cell walls where it’s stored. This fuels the microbial community and all the other parts of the food web like the mites and nematodes. And they start cycling nutrients through the eating process. So the fungi are really important in stabilizing carbon in soils. Once the carbon is stable, it can stay there for thousands of years…. If we maintain the plant, the forest and the natural fungal community, we’ve got a natural engine that’s just strong in carbon below ground. So, it’s essential. You know, it’s there for us. Right? It’s all in front of us.”
Stable carbon in soils, sequestering CO2 for thousands of years gives my purchase of 26 trees more meaning.
Traveling to Montana has given me both joy and dissonance. How do I manage the monkey chatter in my brain that squeals at me for flying, yet, at the same time tries to tell me “it’s okay”? I have no answers. I am irritated that there is no such thing as “clean flying.” The Anthropocene is not orderly. All too often, nice endings don’t exist. When I feel frustrated by the frayed unknown of living in the here and now, I find solace and comfort in one of my favorite poems by the inspiring wilderness guide, poet, and Earth warrior, Chris Heeter. It perfectly sums up my feelings about living in the Anthropocene.
For the Earth Warriors…
It used to be that weather was the thing you talked about–
at least in the Midwest–
when there was nothing else to say.
It followed ‘Hello’ and a mumbled ‘How ya doing’
with no expectation of a lengthy reply.
It quickly moved from there to temperatures, wind, or rain fall.
Something you could really sink your teeth into.
It had to do with altered outdoor plans
or rain needed for crops and gardens.
Here in the northland it was about wind chill
and how the old timers used to walk to school
in inclement weather without whining.
That sort of thing.
But these days, talk of weather has changed.
What was once unusual has become the norm.
Hurricanes, droughts, high and low temps—
all are off the charts we’ve faithfully kept all these years.
Indeed even habitats have changed.
What once supported moose, for example,
has shifted as temperatures climb
expanding the range of deer
bringing parasites and heat stress.
You know this already…or are quickly catching on.
What are we to do with what we know?
At best we feel a dull ache and concern
other times full on foreboding.
Most of us channel this into action of some kind—
at large or at home, we do what we can
and try to do more.
It’s frustrating and terrifying
but there is no temptation to look away.
We feel this in our bones as beings on this planet.
It is a deep inner knowing of something profoundly out of balance.
If this were a pretty poem, it would wrap up now
with something tidy and neat
about how we will find our Weh.
But this is a gritty poem that knows better.
It joins the chorus of millions upon millions
of voices, hearts and souls
that cry out and will not look away.
So here it is, what I can offer is this…
in your darkest places and times
when your love and actions on behalf of all things Wild
feel not nearly enough,
remember you are not alone.
There are countless like-minded Wild souls here with you
also aware, also not willing to look away.
You can take heart in that.
We are a crafty lot.
And when you need to sigh or cry or fall apart
there are others here to help you pick up the pieces
and begin again. And again.
Until we tilt the circumstances
or die trying.
This beautiful world is worth it.
And you, Earth Warrior, are part of that beauty.
Thank you to Chris for giving permission to include her poem in this post.