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Environment
My Climate Change
Personal Perspective: I want nature to be on my side. Reality doesn’t care.
Updated October 22, 2023 Reviewed by Gary Drevitch
Summer 2023: The air is hot, and my mood is dark. Days of rain. Rain. Raining for days. Now stories of burst dams, vegetables rotting in flooded fields, food drowned, unharvested. Every day more heat records broken.
I want to stay aware of what's happening, both here and everywhere, yet knowing often brings dismay. To flee bad news, despite the heat, I seek relief in my small backyard. I slide the glass door open and step out.
Under a gray sky I pause for a deep breath, inhaling heavy wet air, before I descend the deck stairs onto the grass. This is where I go after an argument or to put off an unpleasant phone call, when I’m stuck in an essay I’m writing or beset by the state of the world. Being outdoors changes the subject; it gives me a fresh start. I check on what’s growing and think about life.
Alas, these days mosquitos make it difficult to enjoy anything outdoors.
ZZZZZZZ! They’ve found me already. Mosquitos have multiplied in our rain-swollen rivers and streams, in puddles on fields, roads, and driveways, in water pooled around uncovered construction sites: No one can escape. Because of my tough dry skin, I used to be someone mosquitos passed over, especially if a tasty soft-skinned partner was nearby. But there’s no reprieve these days. ZZZZZZZ! That unmistakable high-pitched whine—they’re in my hair, my eyes, on my arms and legs. They’re in my eyes!
Yet I can’t resist the call of the outdoors. I add a broad-brimmed hat, long-sleeved shirt, and long pants and try again.
I see a thistle growing tall above the grass. It’s blooming! And a hummingbird's hovering over one of its purple flowers! Had I encountered one of its spike-leaved early shoots even a year ago, I’d have yanked it out immediately. This year I let it be. Now it’s almost as high as my chin.
They say a weed is any plant that grows where you don’t want it. I’m chagrinned to think of how many plants I used to consider vegetable riffraff that I’ve come to respect as valuable support for bees and birds, butterflies and bunnies—a gift from the earth. I no longer pull up odd shoots or mow over everything in the yard without thought. Now patches of colorful flowers—white and red clover, purple fleabane, pink yarrow—rise above the motley greens of assorted lawn grasses. Wanting to encourage pollinators has led me to change my relationship with all of the plants in my yard, and with the very concept of weeds.
It’s just too hot. My coverings work up to a point, but the oppressive heat and humidity mean long sleeves aren’t sustainable. I retreat back into the air-conditioned house.
I’m reminded what a privileged life allows me this joy: time to wander the yard, air conditioning, having a house and a yard at all. Adding to my privilege is a small screened-in gazebo, where Will and I used to love eating dinner, savoring cool evening air, watching the sun go down, safe from mosquitos who always appeared at dusk.
Our love for dinners in the gazebo also came from watching pairs of house finches gather grass and twigs to build nests in its eaves. Eating our pasta and pesto or cold salad on the old card table in the center, we watched them construct and then occupy nests, later adding two or three tiny eggs. We saw parent birds take turns sitting on the nest or flying off and returning to feed their hungry chicks, who waited with open beaks, eager for dinner.
Toward the end of August last year, I discovered one nest torn from its ledge, lying in broken pieces on the ground, with no evidence of the chicks I‘d seen just days before. After a flash of dismay, I sighed, then shrugged. I assumed a hawk must have found it. Neighbors had complained of hawks taking their chickens. I did wonder briefly how a hawk would see past the branches of the nearby spruce tree — they almost touch the gazebo — but then I moved on.
This year I watched finches build two nests. One began early in June in a spot not far from the previous year’s. I checked every few days, first for eggs and then for evidence of hatched chicks. Not long after I saw the first tiny chicks I discovered the nest ripped apart on the ground, downed the same way as last year. “Bad hawk!” I asserted to no one in particular.
Meanwhile, another pair began a nest from scratch. First I noticed blades of grass set on the ledge of an eave on the other side of the gazebo. Soon, along with small leaves and twigs the grass had been woven into a nest. Again I watched the birds take turns sitting on it. A few weeks later, I invited two members of a Quaker committee to meet in the gazebo. We were delighted to see three tiny fuzzy-headed chicks wildly chirping, waving beaks at their parents, who took turns feeding them. We kept interrupting our conversation to stare, enchanted.
The next day, as I emerged from the back door onto the deck, I noticed a gray cat stretched up against the screen of the gazebo, his forepaw reaching for the nest. “No, Moose!” I screamed, racing down the stairs. “Bad cat!” I shouted, pounding on his back until he let go. But the nest was already in pieces, half of it lying on the ground. Holes in the screen from his claws showed where he’d climbed. I stood back, trying to process what had happened. I recognized the same pattern of tears in the screens below what remained of each of the three nests he’d destroyed. The "bad hawk" was our neighbor’s beloved and well-fed cat, Moose.
Sometime later, returning from a walk, I passed Moose. He’s just a cat, but I felt awkward greeting him, “Hi, Moose.” My voice sounded flat. I wanted to be friendly, but I was angry. As usual, he ignored me and continued in his own direction.
I think of the yard and my feelings about the earth and the future, and hope and despair. I see hummingbirds—at least two, maybe a third—darting about the multitude of rose-of-Sharon blossoms on plants that have become small trees beside the house. Watching plants and birds grow makes me feel lighter. The fulsome life force embodied in their flowers and their chicks fills me with joy. I turn to nature for hope when I see profound problems in the world that grow more frightening every day.
There’s no doubt mosquitos are part of nature, even as they ruin my own experience. I know cats often kill birds, despite being housed and well-fed. I’m grateful to have made peace with many plants I used to call weeds and gleefully ripped out of the ground, although I still rant at Japanese knotweed and patrol for any signs of it in the yard. I’ve long accepted that hawks kill birds.
My town survived our most recent heavy rain storm. Others were devastated. The same nature that offers blue skies and sunshine brings hurricanes and wildfires, too. Perhaps I’ll always be tempted to characterize weather and the natural world as a force for good, equating life and hope. However, regardless of what I might feel, it’s arbitrary.
So I resolve to buy a bottle of mosquito spray and take time to smell the flowers, acknowledging that nothing is pure and uncomplicated or, these days, even predictable. Carpe diem, I’ll remind myself. Do your best to cherish the good moments. And pack an emergency bag.
