Foxglove, the flowering tower that rises out of the ashes of forest fires, bursts up from bare earth. (Carlyn Yandle photo)
The 91-year-old CEO of the Commonwealth did not deem 2016 another annus horribilis but it was one for the political history books.
It seems only fitting that these dark days broken up by unfathomable acts of insanity have unfolded in this part of the watery world against the backdrop of a record-breaking dark, bitter-cold West Coast winter and freak snowstorms followed by the soggiest spring in memory.
We need to get out from under the sky booming with construction cranes, beyond the billboards promising freedom through technological mobility, away from the toys that hold what American social critic Chris Hedges calls the mind-numbing pop-culture “spectacle” that distracts us from understanding the pretty heavy political reality in his country and the world at large.
What we need now is to get outside and breathe in all the evidence that shows that from destruction and turmoil inevitably sprouts new life, new understandings and revelations. It’s there in the cracks of the sidewalk or the muddy tracks of machinery, and in our own devastated hearts: renewal.
The natural world gives us hope. After a long winter of discomfort and disbelief we are no longer asleep at the wheel, no longer assuming, reacting or over-reacting. We are thawing out and waking up.
We are becoming.
It seems only fitting that these dark days broken up by unfathomable acts of insanity have unfolded in this part of the watery world against the backdrop of a record-breaking dark, bitter-cold West Coast winter and freak snowstorms followed by the soggiest spring in memory.
We need to get out from under the sky booming with construction cranes, beyond the billboards promising freedom through technological mobility, away from the toys that hold what American social critic Chris Hedges calls the mind-numbing pop-culture “spectacle” that distracts us from understanding the pretty heavy political reality in his country and the world at large.
What we need now is to get outside and breathe in all the evidence that shows that from destruction and turmoil inevitably sprouts new life, new understandings and revelations. It’s there in the cracks of the sidewalk or the muddy tracks of machinery, and in our own devastated hearts: renewal.
The natural world gives us hope. After a long winter of discomfort and disbelief we are no longer asleep at the wheel, no longer assuming, reacting or over-reacting. We are thawing out and waking up.
We are becoming.
A dead tree limb is grounds for a pale green patch of lichen. (Carlyn Yandle photo)
A baby huckleberry erupts from a massive stump, remnant from an old clear-cut. (Carlyn Yandle photo)
