Apocalypse Now is more than a movie title. The list of present dangers is long and getting longer: deserts spreading, wetlands lost, habitats shrinking, oceans overfished and choked with plastic, dying coral reefs, one million species at risk of extinction, record floods, extreme hurricanes, oil spills in sensitive areas of the oceans, air pollution killing nine million people a year, deadly wildfires, half the world living with severe water scarcity . . . . Scientists have been warning us about this for decades. Now we are beginning to hear from other quarters. In a recent speech on ‘The State of… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Peace of Wild Things
The Peace of Wild Things Wendell Berry When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I… Read More
Continue ReadingFlourishing and The Endangered Species Act
“Men still live who, in their youth, remember pigeons; trees still live who, in their youth, were shaken by a living wind. But a few decades hence only the oldest oaks will remember, and at long last only the hills will know.” (Aldo Leopold, “On a Monument to the Pigeon,” 1947) Carl Safina has been a loud voice for the natural world, which, of course, needs to be heard through human channels. Not that nature does not speak to us, literally. Even in the densest human habitations, we can hear the small voices of our pets, birds, rodents, and, in… Read More
Continue ReadingNatural Fireworks
This photo was taken about an hour before we watched fireworks from our porch. It provided the real fire for the evening. The setting Moon is just visible in the upper left. We don’t get one as spectacular every night, but do have more than our share during the summer. Our cottage is on the western side of a roughly north-south peninsula, offering us a rare view of sunsets over a small piece of the Atlantic. Every year Freeport has a show that is visible from our house. The bursts come over the trees about halfway between the setting Moon… Read More
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