The Downside of "Near Nature, Near Perfect"

My widely dispersed neighbors and I watched the baby moose grow up over the last two years. Occasional sightings were shared over the fence or over a beer in the evenings. As it grew it became less awkward and began roaming some on its own preparing for its future in the adult realm.

Then one night its luck ran out as it tried to cross the road. Or, I suppose, it could have tumbled down one of the many small cliffs we have in this bare-basaltic flood-scoured area near Spokane. What I saw early Sunday morning made me sad and dismayed. As it crossed the dirt road near the intersection with the main road I saw it walking with a very wobbly, unstable right rear leg. It could hardly bare weight on the obviously broken extremity. In talking the next day with my neighbor she had thought it was walking strangely the week before.

I called and spoke to a Fish and Wildlife Officer who told me that they normally leave injured animals like that alone as long as they are still able to get about. They have seen elk and deer survive for 2-4 years with only three legs. They only come out to euthanize them if they are unable to get up.

Monday I rode my bike and walked on the trails around our 'neighborhood' trying to locate the moose but to no avail. As I passed near the red-tailed hawk nesting tree I got a scolding and an escort out of there. A reminder, as well, from the natural denizens of the area to not interfere.

(Note; the photo is from October 2008 from our back porch)

Here are some of my favorite quotes from Michael Pollan's book that I just read titled "A Place of My Own; The Architecture of Daydreams:

"With this more substantial shelter about me, I had made some progress toward settling in the world" - Henry David Thoreau; Walden

"If I were asked to name the chief benefits of the house, I should say: the house shelters daydreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace." - Gaston Bachelard; The Poetics of Space

"No good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art." - John Ruskin

"That I had dreamt it and then had a hand in making it a fact was more gratifying than I can say, but now I was looking past that, or trying to , wondering, pointlessly perhaps, about how this building I'd helped to shape might come in time to shape me, where the two of us might be headed." - Michael Pollan

"As Venturi's comment suggests ("the relevant revolution today is the current electronic one"), the relationship between the information society and architecture may resemble a zero sum game. The culture of information is ultimately hostile to architecture, as it is to anything that can't be readily translated into its terms - to the whole of the undigitizable world, everything that the promoters of cyberspace like to refer to as RL (for "real life"). - Michael Pollan

This last quote speaks to my main reason for having this blog in the first place:

""Information overload" is something we hear a lot about these days, and there does seem to be a growing sense that technology, the media, and the sheer quantity of information in circulation have somehow gotten between us and reality - what used to be called, without a lot of quotations marks or qualifiers, nature." - Michael Pollan

Spring....

Big, fat, buttery, creamy Buttercups! Like minature thermonuclear suns brightening up an other-wise dreary day!

Yesterday & Today

It was a weird weather week here in Spokaloo. First there was dense fog, then sun and then drizzling rain but no cold weather to speak of. It is the first week of February and we have had no snow for weeks and weeks. In fact our cold snap was in November before winter even arrived. This winter has been so mild that it really feels like spring. I have been sleeping with my windows open and sometimes driving with my windows down. I've been killing ants in the kitchen all week and even crushed a mosquito on the outside of my car already. Then there was the flock of Canadian Geese flying around in a circle because they were even confused. If we have summer instead of spring I wonder what summer will bring...Hades?

Yesterday it was sunny so I got out the bike and did about 10 miles on the Fishlake to Cheney paved railtrail. It was nice but the lake is still frozen over. There were several groups of walkers out enjoying the fine weather (it was near 50 out yesterday). I saw the kingfisher who lives along the trail. It felt really good to get back on the bike.

Today I just had to get out of Dodge so I went up to Mt. Spokane through the fog and went snowshoeing in the Sunshine! Very nice up there : ) I saw many moose tracks and saw a pair of bald eagles on the way home on the Mt. Spokane Road. I was trekking for 2 1/2 hours total. I turned around when I crested the ridge between Beauty and Kit Carson Peaks. It was much quicker on the way down! Great exercise along trails 100 and 110.

The Miracle of You (dedicated to my family)

EXPLOSION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(14 billion years ago)
The laws of physics exert their power over the young cosmos. Gravity begins to coalesce matter into clumps that ignite to form the first stars.


SOL (4.5 billion years ago)
Our solar system forms including the planet that becomes our future home.


LIFE (3.5 billion years ago)
The first thermophilic microbial colonies form. They exist without much change for 3 billion years. Eventually the vast diversity of life begins to rapidly evolve 500 million years ago.


Looking Forward
Looking Back....

THE PRESENT:
Here each of us stands; Here and Now. Each of us a living, breathing miracle embodying the processes of time, chance, nature and struggle. Think of ALL who have come before...

Your parents' urge to strike out on their own and then... a chance meeting. Your grandparents meeting in a much smaller world, falling in love and then starting families. Your great grandparents or great-great grandparents coming from Germany and other countries on a ship; all of them making the crossing of a vast ocean successfully and without dying of a disease before having children. The Smith's, Olson's, Heck's, Ritz's, Boggs', Phipps', Copelands's, Gilbert's, Thiel's, Peppenhagan's, Wiepert's, Wilde's, Haack's, Schultz's, Peck's, Dorwald's, Blum's, Jarmillo's, Griffith's, Hash's, Boone's, Van Bibber's, Bryan's, Van Cleve's, Maugridge's, Uppey's..George Boone I and Ann Fallace (Anali and Mallory's Great X 11 grandparents). These ancestors cover just 350 years and represent only a partial list of those who came before. If Governor Bent hadn't stalled the Indians long enough, his wife would have been killed too. She would never have lived to re-marry and have more children. If that famous BAER had KILT D. BOONE instead of the other way around then he would have never had children. If disease or accident had felled any of these ancestors before they had sired children the chain that leads to you would have been broken. We wouldn't be here.

Now look further back in time, through wars, invasions and occupations of Norhtern and Middle Europe. Conquests, poverty, eking out a living just enough to survive and procreate, not succumbing to plagues or famine. Having children in sometimes horrible circumstances; rarely out of romantic love like we are able to today. Further back to the days of the Roman Legions and before that into pre-history. Generation upon Generation of our ancestors living, reproducing, dying. For thousands of years living during and before the ice ages in primitive villages. Huddling around fires for warmth, telling long forgotten stories of their ancestors; watching the stars and waiting for the return of the sun. The great expansion of humankind from the golden crescent and long before that the original exodus from Africa; our earliest Human ancestors. It all points, through countless generations, unerringly to YOU.

Now consider the eons of hominid progression and survival. The earliest primates and before that the first mammals; shrew-like creatures in the forest canopy. Their reptilian and amphibious ancestors evolving and passing on their DNA to the next individuals over the vast periods of time that our human minds have difficulty fathoming. Earlier and earlier this scenario unfolds until the earliest life, those mats of microbial cells clinging to a thermal vent under and unnamed ocean on the primordial Earth.

If ANY of those links had been broken YOU, WE wouldn't be here. YOU are the miracle of miracles. The unbroken chain since the begining of Life! Let not a day pass that you do not feel the powerful force of life coursing through your veins. The complete, undeniable special-ness of each of us.

"We are made of star stuff, contemplating the stars" - Carl Sagan

December 21, 2009