Month: January 2023

It’s a rainy day, no snow, in January!

We are the first generation to feel the effect of climate change and the last generation who can do something about it.

-Barack Obama

From slabs of ice and temps in the negative regions, we go, in December, mind you, to temps in the mid-fifties with rain.    And now we’re in January and the temp is 34℉ and it’s raining again.  Rain.  December is supposed to be the month when Massachusetts gets most of its snow.  This year, what did we get?  Rain.  And more rain.  Gaia must be sicker than most of us realize.

It’s not raining hard today – really more of a drizzle.  Waldo and I, although wet, are not soaked.  There’s water running down the drainage trenches next to the trail, but it’s not spilling over onto the tarmac, like it does when it’s really pouring.  Waldo doesn’t seem to even notice, except, on rare occasion, when he shakes the rain off his sable coat.  Other life stirs in the damp mild temps.  Some grasses seem to have shaken off their hibernation as there are definitely dark green blades tucked in amongst the usual yellow-brown of winter sleep.  The garlic mustard is easier to find and the mosses are thick and fuzzy.  It’s wet and warm enough that the wooden fence posts and rails are green with algal growth too.  I wonder if these rousing living things are confused by the weather, or maybe they’re just taking advantage of what’s offered as they can.

Waldo and I don’t mind the rain.  We’ve been in worse and I have been in much worse.  And warmer rain too.   I remember once, when I was in Bangkok, Thailand, I was riding in a bus and it started raining.  The water was as warm as what you have in your shower.  I didn’t know that was possible, but Gaia will smash your preconceptions, given the chance.  Today, the rain is definitely not warm, but at least we’re not growing sheets of ice on us like we have in the past.  I’ll never forget watching icicles growing down from my hood as we walked along this same stretch of trail a couple of years ago.

We need this water, there was quite a drought this summer.  The problem is, when it comes down as rain, the water drains off into the ocean and is gone.  As snow, it sticks around for several months, only slowly releasing its moisture and slowly enough so the water can soak into the ground.  Fortunately, there is snow up in the hills, so maybe we’ll be okay this year.  And winter isn’t over yet.  These disturbed weather patterns certainly give strong immediate evidence for climate change.

I don’t understand how the deniers can continue to try to refute the facts of global warming.  But I guess, for thousands of years, there have been people denying what science tells us.  I’m reminded of Aristophanes’s, The Clouds:

Strepsiades: By the Earth! Is our father, Zeus, the Olympian, not a god?

Socrates: Zeus! what Zeus!  Are you mad?  There is no Zeus.

Strepsiades:  What are you saying now?  Who causes the rain to fall?  Answer me that!

Socrates: Why, these [the clouds], and I will prove it.  Have you ever seen it raining without clouds?  Let Zeus then cause rain with a clear sky and without their presence!

Strepsiades: By Apollo!  That is powerfully argued!  For my own part, I always thought it was Zeus pissing into a sieve…

[Source: Thomas West, translator, Four texts on Socrates, Cornell University Press]

There are, it would seem, even today, way too many Strepsiadeses walking around.  They may not think rain is Zeus-piss, but they still turn a deaf ear to what science has to say about our climate with an equally ridiculous prejudicial ignorance.

Waldo’s not worried about climate change.  Of course, he’s not significantly contributing to it either.  I wonder if he even notices the warming trend we’re experiencing.  His focus seems to be on finding the perfect stick (I recently decided to give him an Amerind name: Čháŋ WaktéktekA [Lakota], which roughly translates to “Stick Stalker”).  However, he, for sure, doesn’t do well when the temps get into the 80s, 90s and above in the summer.  He doesn’t have much choice; he just suffers along as best he can with whatever the day has to offer – as does the rest of nature.  We human beings can do something about it, though, and we’d better start doing it fast.

Well, Čháŋ WaktéktekA and I will be back here tomorrow, spending a few hours walking and stalking without significantly contributing to our carbon footprint.

Whatever the weather.

Running water where it is usually dry, no snow and no ice.

The long shadows of winter — even at midday.

Ice has a social life.  Its changeability shapes the culture, language and stories of those who live near it.

-Robert Macfarlane

The bomb cyclone hit the US, followed by the frigid temps of a polar vortex heading south.  Though western Mass got quite a bit of snow, all we got was rain, then the vortex brought with it temperatures down into the negative numbers.  I can dress for that, but Waldo can’t and I was worried about taking him for long walks.  In the past, when it’s been that cold, he’s had trouble with ice growing between his pads.  But there is no snow on the ground and that didn’t happen.  Just the same, I decided not to go for the rail-trail when it was that cold.  I needn’t have worried.  Waldo spent the entire day out on his throne, the balcony, keeping watch on his dogdom.

Today, it’s warmed up to around ten degrees and I decide to go for it.  My cheeks and forehead are a bit numb, but the rest of me, except my hands, are toasty.  My hands, I can easily deal with by alternating the leash with a warm pocket, except when I have to deglove to pick up what Waldo leaves behind.  Then they get very cold.  I keep an eye on Waldo, but he’s out prancing, sniffing whatever it is he can smell, and searching for stick upgrades.  I know he’s comfortable, not only by his eagerness to keep going, but also because, every once in a while, he drops back to where I am and pokes me with a stick.  He seems to think that’s strong temptation to get me to play with him.  I try to comply, but I’m not at all sure of the rules.  I do know it involves keep-away, then tug-of-war if I can grab the stick, followed by, if I win, a stick toss to somewhere within leash-length.  He’s having a good time.

We haven’t gone far and the path is blocked by a very thick chunk of ice.  It’s about ten or fifteen feet wide, too wide to step over, and it’s a good three inches thick.  It continues off-trail, so I have to cross the ice — very gingerly, but uneventfully.  Waldo didn’t try to avoid it and the cold didn’t seem to bother his feet, but he did slip and slide a little; his four-paw drive kept him upright, though.  The trail before and after the ice is clean and dry.  I know it wasn’t formed from the freezing of standing water because it’s in the middle of the path and stands up above the level of the tarmac.  It appears layered, as if a slowly moving shallow pool of water flowed out onto an already frozen sheet of ice, got stuck there, and then froze.  Something like that must have happened four or more times because there are that many layers.  As we walk along, we come across half a dozen similar glacial flows, so whatever caused them is not unique to one place.

I’ve never seen anything like it and I’m intrigued – I can’t help but wonder how they were formed.  During the rain, the temps were in the mid-fifties with strong winds.  Within twelve hours, the rain stopped and temps dropped to the negative single digits.  I know the freeze happened after the precipitation stopped, because there is absolutely no accumulation of snow.  So, somehow, the rain stopped, the temperature dropped and whatever standing water there was must have frozen.  Then flowing liquid water (which doesn’t freeze so easily), perhaps wind driven, must have accumulated on top of the ice where it stopped and froze.  Then the process repeated at least four times — sort of like how stalagmites and stalactites are formed.  Fascinating.

Waldo and I are intrepid walkers, for sure.  But we are not alone.  Despite the low temps, we pass several joggers and a few other walkers who aren’t inhibited by cold or ice.  There are no bikes or other dogs, though.  As we pass by, we say hello (Waldo usually has a hard time resisting a short greeting with wagging tail and gentle nuzzle) and everyone comments on what a nice day it is.  It’s a bit nippy, a bit blustery, but that only makes it different from the days before, not any less of a good day.  And we share amazement at the thick blocks of ice.

I pay close attention to the English ivy-covered tree as we pass.  I half-expected it to be withered and drained of green, but it’s not.  The leaves are just as plump and green as they were when the temperature was in the fifties.  The garlic mustard is still green too, although some of their leaves have curled up on themselves.  Some blades of grass and all of the moss is still green as ever, clearly ignoring the frigid cold. We didn’t see any squirrels, though, and what birds are left must have decided to spend the day at home.  But there are a few members of nature, including some humans and at least one dog, who are happy being outside, communing with Gaia, regardless of the weather.

And you never know what you’ll find along the way.

It’s colder than it looks…

English ivy adorned oak tree, mid-winter.

The Earth created magic to protect the magic that is the Earth.

-Sarah Warden

Today, I communed briefly with Gaia, and listened carefully to what she had to say, but she had no dramatic news to report, so it didn’t last long.  Winters are like that, for me anyway.  Nature slows to a crawl – what’s vibrant with life during the rest of the year is quietly slumbering during the frigid months.  Even the noonday sun only barely raises itself from the horizon, casting cold long shadows even when at its zenith.  One day seems so much like the last, and the next, that the season seems to last forever.  But one year is not like another.  Some years, I’m trying to walk with Waldo in a foot or more of snow.  This year, the ground is still snow-free, and the temperatures are in the low forties, yet it’s already the winter solstice.

I’ve noticed some surprising things because of the lack of snow.  One day, I’m walking along the rail-trail and I notice there are still a few small autumn olives sporting green leaves, then a hard freeze comes along, with temps in the high teens, and they seem to disappear.  The same thing with the small bunches of garlic mustard.  The temperature rises, a rain comes along, and low and behold, a few autumn olives with drooping leaves reappear and the garlic mustard pokes its leaves through overlying dead leaves.  Maybe it’s just that I haven’t noticed they were there because their numbers have decreased.  Except for the garlic mustard.  Just the other day, I didn’t see any, now there are places where it’s easy to find, not in great abundance, but it’s there.

This spring-like resurgence of leafy green has made me more observant.  Today, I notice a few fronds of intermediate wood fern poking out from beneath tawny fallen oak leaves.  Ferns in the last days of December.  Who’da thunk?  With all the rain we’ve gotten recently, and the warmer temperatures, the gametophytes of the mosses alongside the tarmac have grown tall (for them), giving them a thickened fluffy appearance.  Noticing all this heightens my curiosity and awareness.

Now what is this?  In the periphery of my vision, I spot a large mass of dark green.  It stands tall and is definitely not a conifer.  I move closer and stare in wonder.  Healthy dark green leaves of English ivy densely cover the bole and branches of a tall dead oak. The vine winds its way around the trunk and limbs of the tree like tinsel garlands surrounding a decorated Christmas tree.  Everything else around (except for the white pines) is beige and boney.  Yet here’s this vine, in the cold winter temperatures, sporting verdure the like of which I’ve only seen in the warmer months.  It boldly stands there in stark contrast to its surroundings and I’m in awe that I haven’t noticed it before.  Maybe all the rain we’ve had recently has infused it with new life, causing it to burst forth with plump foliage.

Waldo and I have been walking nearly daily on this trail for almost four years and yet this is the first time I’ve noticed anything like this.  It forces me to wonder just how observant I am.  Familiarity may breed contempt, but it also breeds ignorance – when I’m familiar with something, I tend to ignore it.  And yet, I know, from prior experience, each day out here, in any season, bears something new and different if I just look for it.

Waldo, of course, knows this well.  He is constantly trotting along with his nose less than an inch from the tarmac, seeking and, no doubt, finding new and interesting things to sniff.  And when he finds them, he spends long moments carefully smelling them out, and their surroundings, in order to discover all the nuance they have to offer.  I can tell he is truly fully engaged in the search.  Oh, he misses stuff too, not because he’s not paying attention, but because he’s so focused on what’s new right before his nose.  I don’t know, but I’d bet he’s sad about the lack of snow, though – he’s so enamored with rolling around in it and making snow doggies.

So, maybe my feelings about winter being merely a time when the natural world waits for spring is simply wrong.  I think it more likely that I’m suffering from seasonal complacency disorder and just miss a lot that’s happening.  There is a lot going on, it’s just not conspicuous, especially when much of it is buried under a thick blanket of snow.  Today, there’s no snow out here, so I can see it, I just have to look.  One thing for sure; I’m keeping my eye out for that dead tree and its English ivy tomorrow.

You know, Gaia is talking to me even when I’m not paying attention…

Garlic mustard, mid-winter.

There are green trees, but they’re mostly white pine.

If you wish to know the divine, feel the wind on your face and the warm sun on your hand.

-Buddha

Again, today, I’m going to make the effort to listen to what Gaia has to say.  She talks all the time, but I’m usually too busy ruminating over this or that to really pay attention.  Today, though, I vow I will.

Waldo and I are out on the rail-trail; it’s cold with temps in the high twenties, colder when the wind blows.  The skies are blue, nary a cloud in sight, which ensures little heat will remain down near the ground where we are.  It’s cold enough that the skin on my face gets a little numb.  I wear gloves, but they aren’t thick enough to keep my fingers warm for very long.  I leave one hand in the pocket of the parka I’m wearing and the other I use to hold Waldo’s leash handle.  When the unpocketed hand starts to ache from the cold, I switch them out, coiling the frozen one in a ball.  This lasts for fifteen minutes or so, then I have to exchange them again.  Everything else stays quite toasty, buried as it is under down and cloth.

Waldo is prancing around, seemingly undisturbed by the chill.  In fact, he seems to like this temperature.  When it gets below 10, he’s prone to get ice between his toes, forcing him to stop and bite at his feet.  I’ve never seen him shiver, but I do watch for that and other signs that he might be uncomfortable, like lying down and not wanting to continue.  Today, he seems to be in his element, happily sniffing, picking up sticks, and roaming around, looking for God knows what.

Around us, the tawny, spindly landscape remains deathly still, except for the few dead, shriveled leaves that still tenaciously hang onto their branches as they shudder in the breeze.  Even the autumn olive has given up the ghost – the only green left is from the white pines that are intermingled with the rest of life and are now clearly visible through the naked remains of the other plants.  The tarmac is covered with the remnants of a skiff of snow from the last storm.  Originally just deep enough to leave footprints, the subsequent thawing and freezing has produced an uneven patchwork of snow and ice that, in places, is difficult to navigate.  There are, as well, spots where the tarmac is dry and some that are slippery with black ice.  In the deep woods are places where fallen leaves peek through their white icy coverlet, giving the ground a mottled look.  In the distance, through stands of tree trunks and denuded brush, I can see patches of wind-blown beige fields not yet blanketed with deep drifts.

That’s the milieu.  I open up my perception to receive all this and whatever Gaia has to say.  I relax my mind, defocusing to the point where I don’t label, I don’t define, I don’t evaluate.  I’m simply here, taking it all in.  I don’t try to resist the cold, I don’t wonder how far we have yet to go, I don’t intellectualize what’s happening.  I just let be whatever is in my mind.  I just “listen.”

I can’t hold this mental posture for long, it fades in and out.  Most of my cognitive brain, I can shut off for short periods, but the labeling, defining and evaluating are so engrained in the way I habitually live and think, that I can only avoid them for seconds at a time.  But I can maintain a mental posture where I never go completely back to how I usually experience the world.  I do my best to just tread water in the middle of Gaia’s ocean, letting the waves of her discourse bob me around as she wills.

As a result, I not only experience what is happening at the moment, I also reexperience what’s happened in the past.  These aren’t memories; I don’t remember what happened, I experience it as if it were happening now.  It’s like what I’m experiencing is a spaciotemporal whole.  I’ve been cold like this before — skiing in the Uintah Mountains, or hiking at the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, or walking to grammar school in the middle of winter.  One experience flows into another and into now as if it were all one.  I’m sensing the continuity of my experience of nature as it flows from past to future, beyond what I can conceptualize, without slicing it up into then and now.

All this produces a kind of precognitive, unemotional sense of the universe that is bigger than me, but of which I am a part.  There is a message there, but to try to put it into language would destroy its content.  What Gaia says, she says in subtle suggestions that are not chopped up into words, objectified into things, or conceptualized into discrete thoughts.  Her message is continuous, flowing and experiential.  I reach out and touch Gaia’s heart and she responds with a playful, tender, loving whisper that shimmers through my being.

I have to believe that Waldo communes more regularly than I with Gaia.  With his x-ray nose and his intense interest in everything that’s around him, how could he not?  And, although he does understand some language, I’ll bet his mind is not filled with a distracting, constant stream of language-based thought, leaving him more open to experience nature as it happens.  It makes me wonder what Gaia is telling him…

I have no doubt that there indeed does exist emergent properties of nature.  I also know, from personal experience, that nature does speak to us, if we would only listen.

And what she says is full of awesome, magical beauty.

Most of the forest are bones.

The rain has just started, more is coming.

Forever — is composed of Nows –

-Emily Dickinson

It’s wet and rainy today.  Not the kind of rain that comes down in sheets, soaks through my boots and clouds my glasses with wind-driven beads of water that run down the lenses, but more of a light drizzle that, over the two plus hours it takes us to do our trek, gets my rainsuit thoroughly wet, but I stay relatively dry.  Waldo’s hair is soaked to the skin, but he only shakes it off every half hour or so.  Visibility is just slightly impaired and the temperature is in the low fifties, so it’s not cold at all.  Except for the rare jogger, dog walker or dedicated exerciser out for their daily constitutional, we are alone.  Tuning out the spatter of raindrops on my clothes and ignoring the sight of the constantly falling misty rain, everything is remarkably still.  Insects have packed it in for the season, rabbits and squirrels are holed up somewhere dry and birds have either gone south or decided this isn’t the day to venture out for a flight.  I put my gait on automatic pilot and leave Waldo to do his Waldo thing at the end of the leash.  With nothing else to do, I can’t help it, my mind wanders and I’m soon thinking more about emergence.

I’m struck by an entertaining thought.  If human consciousness is the emergent property of lots of interacting neurons adapting to their milieu, what would the emergent property be, let’s call it the Uber mind, of lots of people interacting with one another?  I don’t think you could call this Uber a super-consciousness because that would suppose there would be significant overlap between what we experience as consciousness and what Uber experiences.  I would think it would be as difficult for us to imagine what Uber’s experience is like as it would be for a neuron to guess what our awareness is like.

The emergent quality of nature, let’s call her Gaia, might have qualities that are at least as difficult for us to understand.  In the movie, Avatar, the writers invented a guiding force of life, on the planet Pandora, they called Eywa.  The natives, the Na’vi, could speak directly to Eywa through the Tree of Souls – a tree that they could use to get “hardwired into” Eywa.  Here on Earth, we are all part of nature and we interact with all other parts of nature.  Maybe if we thought of Mother Nature as Gaia, something similar to Eywa (I’m sure that was intended by the writers), the paradigm shift would be insightful.  Maybe Gaia doesn’t have a human personality, or maybe she doesn’t have intelligence, the way we think of intelligence, but she does “speak” to us and we don’t need a Tree of Souls to “hear” her.  All we have to do is pay attention.

I open my awareness to the world around me; today, the slanting rays of a winter sun ooze diffusely through clouds, mist and the bare branches of trees, to shine weakly on dead leaves that cover the ground.  Looking at all this in an unfocused sort of way, I can get a sense of something bigger, Gaia in her entirety, rather than my usual narrow perception of nature being merely a collection of trees, bushes and so on.  Gaia “speaks” to me as obliquely and indirectly as the winter sun shines on the ground.  If I’m willing to still my constantly running mind and my never-ending internal dialog, and just listen, look, feel, taste, and smell what’s happening in the moment, I can sense how she affects me.  I feel a cold breeze chill and numb my face, see the tan and beige sleeping forest and fields with their skeletal dormant remains, listen to the droplets of drizzle hit my rainsuit, smell the musty, rotting dead leaves at my feet and I react to it all.  My reactions are more feelings than thoughts, something precognitive, yet profoundly moving.  The texture of what I experience is constantly shifting, flowing, like a river.  It’s nuanced and subtle, yet prolific and deep.  If I dwell there, in the world of how I feel being emersed in Gaia, rather than run away to somewhere more intellectual, I learn something important from what she “tells” me.  Something that cannot be expressed in language because it is precognitive, yet has a profound impact on my experience.

Waldo breaks my reverie with a gentle tug on the leash.  We’re almost back to the car.  I turn to him and report, “Well done, Waldo.  Another day, another six miles.”  He wags his tail and makes for the car and home.  Uber or no, Gaia or no, we are here on the rail-trail.

Being aware of that is what’s most important.

At first, it’s more of a mist than a drizzle.