Look up, look out, spring is on the way

Life in the upper midwest is one of fickle weather.  Even more uncertainty lies on the attitudes and understandings midwesterners have regarding the future of their climate.  Now, I am not speaking of global warming, climate change or whatever the current vernacular may be, I am speaking simply of the seasonal changes of the weather.  

As perhaps any midwestern lifer will tell you, the most important of these seasonal fluctuations it that from winter to spring.  In a place where yearly temperature swings can be as much as 120  degrees, with winters chills dipping to -20 F nothing is more tantalizing than the first spring robin, the first thunderstorm, or the first day in which the air smells distinctly of worms.  Though these are all telling signs of a pending change of seasons they often occur as false pretenses, followed shortly by a harrowing barrage of freezing rain, frigid wind chills, and inches of traffic-stopping snow.

Many midwesterners, true midwesterners notable by their Hollywood perfect accents and general “how-ya-doin?” charm, are fooled by these false signs of Spring not by virtue of stupidity but rather ignorance.  

The modern tendency is to count on groundhogs and the local media networks for climatological predictions, unaware of the one reliable sign of an oncoming change of seasons.  No, not the tulip or even the daffodil. Not the tweeting cardinal or the peeping frog. Not even the rummaging, rooting raccoon or the truly odd egg-laying rabbit is quite as dependable.  Nope. No animal or plant is more ominous than the Sandhill Crane.  Glorious, awkward, and prehistoric, these flocking, social buglers each year announce with certainty and reassurance that Irises, Daylillies, and  Duckweed are also on their way.  

As these wonderful creatures traverse the skies from the gulf coast to central Alaska they appear to do everything in their power to convey their message of pending spring.  As they circle the small towns and large cities across the country catching thermals which buoy their travel their cacophonous call resonates with goodwill.  Like trumpeters announcing royalty the cranes rouse each and every ear that is not deafened by city traffic or muted by R-valued insulation.  When examining the technological leaps in human efficiency in the past centuries it becomes apparent that as a race much time and effort has been devoted to finding avenues by which it is possible to avoid taking notice of the natural predictors of life.  Yet despite atomic clocks, satellite imaging, and Doppler RADAR civilized culture remains ignorant of the actuality, and the present state of the season. 

So as you sit idly in your car heeding the call of the radio weather forecaster on your way to work, do yourself a favor.  Ignore the voice in the three-way speakers, take charge of yourself and acknowledge your urges. Roll down your window despite the temperature forecast and instead turn your ear to the sky.  If you tune in your personal audio dial to just the right frequency you may find that the sound you hear is not the commuter behind you honking at the hue of the traffic light.  As you lean forward and peer through the blue tint and the top of your windshield you will recognize that sound at the millennia-old beckoning of the hundreds of Sandhills thousands of feet over head. “Look up,” they say, “look out, spring is on the way.”

There is no "I" in Green

NCPR is nature writing still relevant?

The above link is a short audio clip from North Country Public Radio.  The question posed, "Is American nature writing still relevant in the age of blogs and climate change" raises some interesting questions but glosses over what I believe is the key to the future.

The clip alludes to the notion that current nature writing in America has proceeded in the last few decades to focus mainly upon global climate change and a call to action.  Bill McKibben, author of the book End of Nature discusses how his 1989 best-seller failed to produce the levels of political and social action he had championed for.  It occurs to me, as is mentioned in passing later in the clip, that is not simply the education and public provocation of fear that that is needed.  The goal of modern nature writing should be to help foster not only a societal connection to the natural word but a personal connection, a living, growing intimate relationship with nature.  Without emotional investment by the common-(wo)man the call to global action will simply fall by the wayside, left to the climatologists, glaciologists and tree huggers.

The so-called "green" movement fails in that the campaigns for support of earth-friendly automobiles, cleaning products, and farming practices are focused on society, on the world as a whole.  How can an individual be expected to take action against a global problem when the average individual does not spend enough time out-of-doors to understand the tiny environment of his or her own backyard?  The success of this movement requires a shift in focus from consumption to the discovery/and creation of personal knowledge.  With the future on the shoulders of the present, much can be obtained from the past, from writers like Aldo Leopold, Wallace Stegner, Edward Abbey and other naturally beautiful writers.

It is said that a rolling stone gathers no moss however, I argue that the rolling needs to stop - at least a momentary pause - to allow for inspection the of the green-ness of the moss itself.