The Mountain Summer Moon
Friday gratefuls: Alan. Tom. RMCC. Rocky Mountain Cancer Care. Radiation Consult. July 18. CBE. Donating money. Great Sol. My Lodgepole Companion. Ruth and Gabe. Paddleboarding and kayaking on the Lake in Evergreen. Barb. Memory Care. Heat. Altitude cooling. Mini-splits. Parkside. Breakfast. Evergreen. Shadow Mountain
Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Human Experience
One brief shining: Saw a squib about a guy with a frying pan and an egg on the sidewalk in front of the Death Valley Visitor center in Furnace Creek, California which sent me to the weather app I use, Willy Weather, to see what local forecasts were and found Denver at 102 for the next three days, sending our 13-16 cooler temps into the mid-80’s, hot for us, but that guy with the frying pan was counting on close to 130, hotter even than Palm Springs at 124.
I can’t imagine living in those conditions, in hot places, any of them. Phoenix. Death Valley. Palm Springs. I like extreme weather, but I like extreme cold and lots of Snow, high heat makes my soul shrivel. Don’t imagine I’m very different from any other human in that regard.
Of course we’re temperate creatures, evolved for seventy degrees, sea level, and shaded environments at this point, but the norm has never appealed to me. Why I live in the Mountains always hoping for colder than normal. No matter the season.
The problem though. Climate change. Already sea level rise. Already migrating plants and animals. Already extreme heat. Already more and stronger hurricanes, typhoons. Life will look and feel different in the near term future. As it already does along coastal areas, in unshaded areas, in large cities, in the Caribbean and the western Pacific.
Just a moment: Biden digs in. Biden says he’ll beat 45. Biden says he’s all good. I say, humbug. An extraordinary moment that requires an extraordinary response. Not a pull in the foxhole over my head, fingers in my ears, saying nah nah neh nah nah response. We need a transfusion of political energy and will. I don’t know if Kamala Harris is that transfusion. Don’t know if she isn’t. This is meet the devil at the crossroads time, Robert Johnson might have a clue. We’re all of us on the left singing the I don’t know what happens next blues. Imagining the thin red line of MAGA wrapping itself around our flag and squeezing like a boa constrictor. There is still time. Yet how might we use it? Throws hands in the air. Shakes head.
A slow weekend approaching. Shabbat. Reading. Eating. Talking with the ancientbrothers. Just right.