climate change – Susan J Tweit

Where’s Susan? (Part 2)

Posted on September 22, 2019 | by Susan Tweit | Leave a Comment

The cloud-wreathed Teton Range from Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Since I left Ring Lake Ranch two weeks ago after a teaching sojourn that was simultaneously restorative and stimulating, Noche’s tires have hummed another 1,200 miles. First west to Grand Teton National Park, where I waved at that familiar wall of peaks as I drove by. (That’s the Tetons at the top of the post.) I didn’t stop to explore the familiar park because I was on a mission, headed north to Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone NP, where I spent a week working at eradicating non-native, invasive weeds.

For the past four summers, I’ve spent at least a week, usually three or four, in Yellowstone doing what I call my “weeding mission.” Which is about as much like weeding a garden as running a marathon is like my twice-weekly half-hour run on a treadmill. They’re both exercise, but running a marathon and eradicating invasive weeds are both long games: each requires patience, strategy, and as much mental toughness as physical toughness.

As I’ve written in other contexts, including this blog post for Off the Beaten Path, what leads a non-native plant to being called “invasive” is not a prejudice against immigrants:

Tens of thousands of non-native species call the United States home without causing harm. But not every species belongs everywhere. Invasives are those relative few who don’t play well with others, the species who behave badly, a detriment to us all.

The invasive weed I was digging in my time around Mammoth in Yellowstone is spotted knapweed, known to science as Centaurea maculosa, a perennial plant native to Eastern Europe. Here on this continent, spotted knapweed so does not play well with others that it wrecks the neighborhood. When spotted knapweed moves in, its roots exude poisons into the soil, “discouraging” (aka, killing) the roots of the native species around it, so that eventually, the knapweed takes over.

Spotted knapweed, Centuarea maculosa, quietly engaged in killing the Indian ricegrass and other native plants that songbirds and pollinators depend on, so its progeny can colonize the area.

But, you protest, it’s got such a pretty purple flower! Surely knapweed attracts bumblebees and other native bees, and perhaps its seeds are edible by wintering songbirds and small mammals, so it does actually benefit the community of the land?

It’s true that bumblebees do gather pollen from knapweed, though I’ve never seen other native bees visit the flowers. I don’t know if knapweed’s seeds are sought out by any of the seed-gathering birds or mammals as winter food, but I’d guess not because they’re dry and chaffy, rather than plump and nutritious.

What I do know is that knapweed lacks the rich web of relationships with other plants and other species that sustain a healthy landscape. And by replacing the native plants, knapweed disrupts those relationships–between pollinator and flower, between bird and the insects they feed their young, between mammal and seed, between those that shelter and those sheltered.

Worse yet, if unchecked, spotted knapweed can kill off the shrubby overstory of basin big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata var. tridentata) that Mark Twain recognized as the “forest canopy in miniature.” These century-old plants, growing as tall as ten feet with twisting stems as big as the bicep of a muscly man, shade the soil, collect rain and snow for moisture, drop a fertilizing layer of leaves, and provide food and homes for hundreds of species of wildlife, from flashy black-and-white buckmoths to speedster pronghorn antelope.

Grandmother big sagebrush in the area I’ve been digging knapweed; the tallest plant is about ten feet.

Without big sagebrush as the sheltering canopy, these drought-challenged grasslands will turn inhospitable indeed, losing species diversity, richness, and their rugged beauty. I remove knapweed as a way to honor the diversity of lives they support, and to restore their wild community to health.

Digging my plant knife into the soil to pry out the spreading roots of a spotted knapweed plant is my personal resistance to climate change, my way to give resilience to the landscapes I love.

My plant knife next to a knapweed I have freshly pried out of the clayey soil, being careful to not disturb the sagebrush roots.

And dig I do, kneeling on the soil, carefully inserting the seven-inch blade of my tool into the soil, and applying enough leverage that the roots come free. Then sitting back, taking a deep breath, stretching my back and my arms, before thrusting the blade into the soil to pry up another knapweed. And another, and another. In some places they are so dense that it takes me an hour or more to clear a meter-square area (that’s a bit bigger than a square yard).

By the end of three or four hours, when I am worn out for the day, I usually have two or three 30-gallon bags filled with knapweed. (I bag up the plants to be taken to the dump so that no seeds are dispersed, and so the decomposing plants don’t continue to emit their mite of poison to the soil.)

Weed bags stuffed into the micro-camper where I sleep in the back of Noche, my Toyota Highlander Hybrid.

While I’m digging weeds, I keep my ears and eyes alert for wildlife. Sometimes a grizzly bear mom wanders by with her almost-grown cubs (yes, I carry bear spray). Or the resident bull elk herds his harem of two dozen or so cows and calves right through the area where I’m working (I move safely out of the way until they leave!).

Romeo in elk form, serenading his Juliets (that’s “Juliets” plural, because of how many females he was wooing).

Or, like the afternoon I was working with filmmaker Beth Davidow, I stop in awe to watch a nearly six-foot-long bullsnake glide past, hunting silently just a few feet from where we stood. (I’m sure Beth, a talented photographer, got a much better shot!)

The hunting bullsnake–her body was as large around as my upper arm.

In my time in Yellowstone, I worked hard, rested well, and found, as a friend put it, “balm for my soul.” It does my spirit good to contribute positively to this Earth, especially in a time of crisis.

Now I’m home, working on restoring wildness and resilience to nature right around the condo complex where I live, including the strip of pollinator habitat with the gold flare of flowering rubber rabbitbrush (Ericamera nauseosa) and rubberweed (Hymenoxys richardsonii), and purple fall asters (which I haven’t yet identified) in the photo below. Not only are these native flowers beautiful and drought-tolerant, they provide fall’s final banquet for pollinators of all sorts, including bees, beetles, and butterflies. And come the hungry months of winter, their seeds will feed bushtits, juncos, and other small songbirds.

Pollinator habitat provides a bit of high-desert wildness right in the city.

You don’t have to journey to Yellowstone and dig knapweed to make a difference.

We can all restore the health of nature around us, by removing invasive weeds and planting native species in yards, parks, and nearby landscapes. In a time full of bad news, returning health, resilience, and beauty to nature nearby is good news for us all. Join me in giving back to the Earth that gives us so much!

Books: Horizon, Desert Cabal, and Flight Behavior

Posted on July 7, 2019 | by Susan Tweit | Leave a Comment

One of the things I love most about starting the long process of working in a new book (long for me anyway–I’m a ridiculously slow writer) is that it’s a license to read widely. Since my new memoir, Bless the Birds, went off to my agent for her read, I’ve been clearing off my desk to make literal and also metaphorical space for the next project. And reading.

I have several books going right now, including Barry Lopez’ deep and thoughtful new book of memoir/essays, Horizon. Barry’s book is hefty at over 550 pages, so I’m taking it slowly, dipping in and reading a bit, and then savoring what I read. I’m not ready to say much about it except, Wow.

As an example, here’s the quote from Horizon that I’m using near the end of Bless the Birds:

We are the darkness, as we are, too, the light. (p. 42)

I am deeply grateful to Barry for the gift of his thoughts and words over these many years, in whatever form. (He writes amazing fiction too.) His work and the letters we exchange sporadically have stretched and enriched my understanding of the world and of my life’s mission. Barry never fails to reaching deep into my core; sometimes when I turn inward, feeling hopeless, he quietly but firmly turns me back toward the rest of life, too.

In contrast to Horizon, Amy Irvine’s Desert Cabal: A New Season in the Wilderness is a deceptively small volume, coming in at just under 90 pages. The book’s size is not, in any way, a reflection of its impact. Irvine’s extended conversation-essay-dream is an frank and frankly feminist look at today’s West and the part that Ed Abbey and his classic of western nature writing, Desert Solitaire, played in shaping it, an appraisal that is long overdue.

Irving writes in the form of an extended conversation with Abbey on a visit to his grave in the desolate stretches of the Sonoran Desert somewhere not far from the Arizona-Mexico border. It’s fresh and sometimes funny magical realism in service of understanding where we are and what the heck to do about it. Her forthright, fearless, and honest words offer a much-needed breath of female air and thought, in a field of writing that still models itself on men’s voices, men’s achievements, men’s way of telling stories. There’s nothing wrong with being male, but as Irvine points out (without saying it directly), women shouldn’t be expected to be the same. And our voices and experiences matter. Especially now.

With Abbey’s beloved desert in danger of being loved to death: “Every where you look there are these hyped-up, tricked-out, uber-fit, machine-like humans that pump, grind, climb, soar, and scramble through the desert so fast they’re just a muscled blur. The land’s not the thing; it’s the buzz.”

With public lands under a different kind of assault, as well, “endangered in ways we never conceived of….” by our current president’s push to revive fossil fuels extraction. Including two of the national’s newest national monuments in Utah, which “our so-called Commander-in-Chief has filleted…, leaving only the stark bones in custody.”

With the inhumanity of that same president’s border policies, the increasing hatefulness of our society, and of course, the catastrophe of global climate change. Irvine’s conversation with Abbey is at once fierce rant, affectionate address, and courageous speaking-truth-to-power, airing the flaws and prejudices in one of the canons of western literature:

You should know up front that I’m admiring, but not starstruck. You got some things right, but you got other things wrong. Like calling the desert “Abbey’s country.” Can you imagine, in my own book about Utah, if I had called it “Amy’s country”? I could have justified it; my family has been there for seven generations and counting. Yet even with such credentials the clan of my surname doesn’t get to call it ours–because it’s all stolen property: whatever the forefathers didn’t snatch from the region’s Native Americans on one occasion, they took from Mexico on another. But that’s what the white man does. He comes in after the fact and lifts his leg on someone else’s turf. You, sir, were no different.

I ripped through Desert Cabal, nodding appreciation, laughing, or smiling ruefully on each page. Irvine speaks my truth, and I imagine that of a lot of other women, in this slim but mighty–and classic–work. I LOVE Desert Cabal, and am reading the book again, slowly this time.

Big thanks to the ever-gracious and forgiving Andy Nettel of Back of Beyond Books, who gifted me with a signed copy of Desert Cabal on my quick stop in Moab on the long road home from my Wyoming and Washington State road-trip, and to Torrey House Books for publishing Desert Cabal with Back of Beyond.

Barbara Kingsolver’s novel, Flight Behavior, has been on my to-read list for too long. I have no excuse for not reading it sooner, except that it came out a year after Richard’s death. I didn’t read much for several years, mostly because I was working so hard to keep my head above financial waters, and to make a home for myself. Oh, and to figure out who this solo “me” was and is. (I’m still working on the latter. Like life itself, it’s a process, not a destination.)

Flight Behavior was published in 2012, when (incredibly now) most American’s hadn’t yet grasped that climate change wasn’t in some distant future; the catastrophe was an is on us now. Reading it today, Kingsolver’s poignant and compelling novel of what happens when the entire population of Monarch butterflies that usually winter in the Oyemel fir forests of central Mexico relocate to a single valley in the Appalachians, is even more gripping and prescient. As always, Kingsolver’s writing lifts even the most elementary of stories right off the page to take glorious flight. As in this single sentence describing the winter sky:

Whoever was in charge if the weather had put a recall on blue and nailed up this mess of dirty white sky like a lousy drywall job.

(With experience in construction and renovation, I especially appreciate that metaphor!)

Not that Kingsolver has ever told an elementary story, and Flight Behavior, which traces both the perilous winter the monarch butterflies spend far north of their usual temperate refuge, and the effect of their climate-change-propelled relocation on the local residents, especially the main character, one smart, flame-haired Dellarobia, mother to two young kids, married at 17 years old to Cub, the mild-mannered son of a farming family, and desperate to drag her life out of the rut it is in. Those butterflies, which Dellarobia first sees without her glasses on and takes to be some kind of fire flickering over the steep hillsides above their farm, do the trick, but not easily or kindly or without heartbreak.

This is a cautionary tale of what happens to each of us, to whole communities, to ecosystems, to the earth itself, when pushed beyond what we can bear. And Kingsolver lets it unfold at the personal and planetary levels simultaneously and beautifully believably, showing us, not telling us, what happens when we lose our way, lose our ability to care, lose our trust and love for even ourselves. (The thread on science and how badly scientists communicate and how cynically journalists sometimes exploit that absolutely nails both of my fields.)

Flight Behavior is a gorgeous and compelling novel told by a master storyteller who can and does find the redemptive possibilities in even the most tragic of times. Dellarobia and her world–as well as those glorious monarchs, some of whom survive that calamitous winter in the wrong place–will stick with you long after you finish this soaring and searing story.

****

On to more books in my ever-growing reading pile…. What books hold you in thrall right now?

Navigating in the Fog

Posted on November 30, 2018 | by Susan Tweit | Leave a Comment

Sometimes life is like the drive I took recently on my way home from Santa Fe to Cody. It's 775 miles from place to place, and no, I don't make the whole drive in one day. I left Santa Fe on one of those glorious late fall days in the high desert of northern New Mexico, with warm sun melting the night's frost off the silvered leaves of the rabbitbrush and big sagebrush, and the piñon pine and juniper needles crisp against blue sky.

Dawn warms up the arroyo I often walk near where I stay in Santa Fe.

The weather gods were kind as Red carried me north through northern New Mexico, up the wide expanse of the San Luis Valley in Southern Colorado (Colorado's wildest and most magical desert region, and one I wrote a book about with photographer Glenn Oakley), and then on north up the Arkansas River Valley where Richard and I lived for so long.

Even 11,000+ foot high Fremont Pass wasn't bad, considering the time of year. (Okay, it was snowing, but the pavement was partly clear.) From there on, we had smooth sailing until Rawlins, Wyoming, where the wind began to howl from the west in great walloping gusts.

Still, the roads were clear, so I got cocky, thinking I'd get all the way home without hitting really bad conditions. Red and I tacked sideways to the wind across the Great Divide Basin, where the Continental Divide splits in two, following the ridges that surround this in-draining bowl of salt-crusted desert. If the gusts were a mite strong, I thought nothing of it, even when we turned west directly into those galloping waves of air.

The sun was shining, I told myself, and the roads were clear. And we were four hours from home. What could go wrong?

When Red and I dropped over Beaver Rim into the Wind River Basin, the wind quit just as abruptly as if switched up. The air was still as glass. As we headed downhill into Riverton, the temperature dropped too, from the low 40s into the teens. Hoarfrost coated every surface, sparkling in the sunshine.

I'd like to say I had the first uh-oh thought then, but I didn't. I was tired and eager to make it home before dark, so I kept Red going, her tires humming as the miles sped past. I didn't read the weather-signs until we crossed the frozen, snow-covered expanse of Boysen Reservoir, about two and a half hours from home. I looked north toward the low ridge of the Owl Creek Mountains and the v-shaped gap of the Wind River Canyon, where we were headed.

Boysen Reservoir

A gray layer of cloud hung along the lower edge of the Owl Creeks, muffling the canyon itself. Uh oh.

Red and I turned north at Shoshoni, and soon drove under that cloud. Within a few minutes, the sun's warmth vanished, ice crystals formed on Red's antenna, and even with the heater blasting, cold seeped into the cab.

High desert landscape with hoarfrost on snow

A few miles later, the cloud–which I now realized was ice fog–closed in around us and visibility dropped to half a mile (the photo at the top of the post), and then only a few car lengths. (I quit shooting photos then.)

I slowed Red and crept on, hoping no one came up suddenly behind us, or wandered into our lane from the other direction. Ten slow and icy but mercifully accident-free miles later, the fog began to lift, and we approached the winding canyon.

The winding canyon lies ahead, but at least I can see…

The black ice lessened, and I began to think things might improve. Through two dark and icicle-hung tunnels carved in the ancient rock at the core of the range, Red and I emerged. And voilá!

I could see blue sky ahead. Around the next bend, the fog and ice cleared away entirely.

By the time Red and I wound our way out of the canyon and crossed the Bighorn River, the sun had warmed the truck cab and we were whizzing along again.

Exiting the canyon, the snow and ice behind us…

From there on in, it really was smooth sailing, and I pulled Red into the driveway just as dusk deepened to darkness, having avoided hitting several hundred mule deer and a larger number of pronghorn on the last segment of the drive.

My life right now feels very much like I'm still creeping along in that ice fog, hoping it lifts soon and I will see sun and blue sky ahead. (And be able to see the road I'm on!) The fog is partly the events in our country (although the mid-term elections brought a glimmer of smoother sailing ahead) and around the world, where climate change is now enough of an in-your-face catastrophe for humans and other species alike that perhaps we'll take it seriously.

The fog is also personal. Back in late summer when I finally finished the house and put it on the market, I got cocky and felt like the road ahead was clear: the house would sell quickly, I would pack up and hit the road in my tiny, energy-efficient motorhome, and winter in a warmer climate. Then Dad was diagnosed with lymphoma, and my path turned to helping care for him, sorting out his legal and financial affairs, and serving as his personal representative to implement his will after he died.

My time at The Mesa Refuge earlier this month came as a real blessing. Those days with no charge but to write reminded me that no matter what is swirling around me, I have things to say that need to be said now. (Special thanks to my Mesa suite-mate, Syrian-American writer and human rights lawyer Alia Malek, for her thoughts and questions clarifying my thoughts.)

And now, here I am back in Cody and in the fog again. It snowed today. My house hasn't sold, and I am still working on implementing Dad's will. I am also writing.

I think I can see a blue cast to my personal ice fog, as if it will clear. Or at least lift a bit. What is clear is that I am moving south to Santa Fe in a few weeks to get out of Wyoming's winter before it impacts my health again. I'll return this glorious sagebrush country come spring, and in the meantime, I hope someone buys this beautiful house. It's ready for someone new to love it, and I'm ready to let it go.

And I by then I will have a new book well under way, one about plants and gardens and climate change. So each day I write my way onward into the fog, in the faith that I am going where I need to go, clear roads or not.

Weathering Change and Grief

Posted on November 4, 2018 | by Susan Tweit | Leave a Comment

Outside, California Quail call from the garden in plaintive voices, "Chi-CA-go! Chi-CA-go!" Mounds of Mexican bush sage bloom with stalks of plush purple velvet flowers, along with starry yellow bush sunflower, and scarlet pineapple sage. It's late afternoon and the tide is going out; I can smell the briny musk of the estuary below the bluff in the back yard of The Mesa Refuge, near Point Reyes Station on California's foggy north coast.

I'm here thanks to the Alice Dorrance Spiritual Writing Fellowship and the generosity of those who support The Mesa Refuge, particularly its founder, Peter Barnes. The house I share with two other writers, Syrian journalist and CUNY professor Alia Malek, and writer and divinity school professor Fred Bahnson, is open and airy, with large windows and high ceilings, a tribute to its beginnings as a painter's studio.

Perched on a bluff that traces the path of one of North America's great fault systems, The San Andres, where one plate of Earth's crust slips slowly past the other, Mesa is literally on an edge. That continuing creep of two segments of Earth's shell creates stress and pressure, and the occasional herky-jerky displacement of earthquakes, appropriate for a place that nurtures writing that is figuratively on the edge as well, writing with the aim of changing the world.

The gathering room at Mesa, lit by the gorgeous golden light of a coastal afternoon.

I am here on an edge in my own life, a time of changes both positive and not-so, a time when I am called to look both back at the recent past and forward to a future that despite all, I sense great promise. This month marks seven years since Richard Cabe, the love of my life and my husband for the greater part of three decades, left this existence, killed by the same kind of brain cancer that recently took the life of Senator John McCain.

Nearly a month ago, on October 7th, my father died, after he turned 90 years old in July, and then being diagnosed just a few weeks later with an aggressive form of non-Hodgkins lymphoma (cancer of the lymph cells). Dad was looking forward to voting this November, taking part in what he hoped would be a wave of civil, fair-minded politics that would turn the country to a more positive direction. May his hopes be borne out!

His death leaves my brother and I the elders in our small family. We aim to model the kind of love and generosity that Dad and Mom showed us, along with their abiding curiosity about the natural world and deep commitment to using their skills and resources for the greater good of all. Eldering is a big responsibility, but it's a joy as well, because we get to watch our kids and their kids grow and find their own ways to give back to the world. (And we get to nudge and help as we can.)

Dad (far right), and my brother, Bill Tweit, with Bill's middle daughter, Sienna Bryant and her family, hubby Matt (far left), and their kids, Fiona and Porter

At the same time that I feel optimistic about the generations to come and their dedication to making a positive difference in the battered world we are leaving them, I also feel a deep grief for the planet I love, as climate change destabilizes not just our weather systems, but the myriad of interconnections between species large and small–from bacteria to blue whales–that maintain the health of whole watersheds, continents, air masses, and the oceans. I am working on a book about restoring nature at home to help us unlock our paralysis about climate change and take seemingly small actions that can stem that tide, and also restore beauty and health to our own lives.

Even as that work gives me hope, I find myself grieving in a selfish way, because I am weathering these changes–personal and political and planetary–on my own, without Richard, the partner who challenged and inspired and nurtured me. Whose company helped me be a better and stronger and wiser version of myself. At this time of year, I feel the loss of his steady love and companionship most acutely. I have built a happy and fulfilling life on my own, and I have no desire to change my femme solo status, except for this stubborn and illogical wish that Richard were still here, with me.

So up and down I go, bobbing on the stream of changes that are the only constant in this existence, the journey we call life. Weathering those changes is part of being human, of being alive.

I believe we can turn in a more positive direction. As a sign of that faith, here I am, writing with determination and hope. Writing the change I want to see.

Dilla, a Oaxacan dream armadillo, keeps me company and brings a smile as I write.

A Personal Response to Global Climate Change

Posted on August 19, 2018 | by Susan Tweit | Leave a Comment

In late July, I set out for western Washington to celebrate Dad's 90th birthday with my family. It was a gorgeous day when Red and I pulled out of Cody: sunny, blue skies, and the temperature in the mid-seventies, unusually cool. As we headed north and west across Montana, the temperature soared into the high 90s, and forest-fire smoke hazed the views.

At eight-thirty that night when we stopped in Missoula, the temperature was 94 degrees F. The full moon rose in an eerie sky tinged orange by smoke. As I stretched out atop my sleeping bag in Red's topper, I checked the temperature for Olympia, our destination: the next day's high was forecast as 96 degrees, unusually hot.

I thought about global climate change as I drifted toward sleep, and made a resolution to make changes in my daily life to contribute less CO2 and other greenhouse gases to our planet's atmosphere. No matter that our leaders seem determined to fiddle while the world burns, I want to take what responsibility I can for providing a positive example. I'm going to be the change I'd like to see…

Starting with my travels. I love hitting the road in Red and wandering the West. I watch the landscapes as I go, thinking about geology and botany and the myriad interconnections that animate this planet. "Windshield time" is creative time for me.

By sleeping in Red's topper instead of staying in motels as I go, I save money and also energy (no A/C, no washing of bedding and towels each day, less water heated and treated, and so on). But Red burns gasoline and I use the interstate highway system, with its high speed limits (and drivers who routinely drive much faster than the limit). So I resolved to slow down.

Gas mileage and speed are inversely linked above your vehicle's optimum speed, usually between 55 and 60 miles per hour. The faster you drive above that optimum, the more your gas mileage decreases.

For example, if your vehicle gets 33 miles per gallon at 55 mph, by the time you go 80, your mileage drops to around 20 mpg (here's a graph illustrating the relationship), making it 28 percent less efficient, with a corresponding increase of CO2 to the atmosphere. Run your vehicle's air conditioner, and the mileage drops even more steeply.

The next day, all the way across the rest of Montana, Idaho's Panhandle, and the hazy heat of eastern Washington, I drove five miles under the posted speed limit. I still got to Olympia in time for dinner–delicious fresh Chinook salmon my brother had caught. And I filled Red's gas tank less often.

The time with Dad and my family was sweet. We celebrated his birthday with another great dinner and a delicious cake, plus a family gathering to hear my sister-in-law, Lucy, play cello with the Olympia Symphony at their annual outdoor concert on the state capitol grounds.

Duane Roland, my eldest niece's husband, in the front with Heather, middle left looking down, and their two younger boys, Liam (looking at his dad) and Colin (head hidden), between them. Dad (with the sun-hat) is behind them, trying to figure out where I am so he can look toward the camera (he's legally blind), and my brother, Bill, in the ball-cap beside him is looking at the symphony program. Lucy is in the tent with the orchestra.

It was also stressful and hectic. Dad's health is failing, and he wanted me to take over managing his finances (Lucy handles his day-to-day care). So I did paperwork, made calls, and filled out forms (online when I could to save paper and energy). By the time I set out for the long drive home on Monday, I was tired. Still, I resisted the temptation to rush.

I headed north to Bellingham to visit my youngest niece, Alice, and her boyfriend Dan and their two dogs, Riley and Jaxon. Red and I took the back route on two-lane roads instead of the congested I-5 corridor through Seattle, which yielded a lovely drive up Hood Canal, and gave Red her first ferry ride between Port Townsend and Coupeville on Whidbey Island.

Our ferry making the crossing.

The next morning, I headed east, taking the winding and two-lane North Cascades Highway and then following Highway 2 across eastern Washington instead of the faster interstate route (I-5 to I-90 east). The alternate route took only an hour longer (9 hours instead of 8) and saved me half a tank of gas. Plus I got to admire mountain wildflowers in the North Cascades.

Western red columbine, valerian, senecio, and other wildflowers crowd an avalanche chute in the North Cascades.

I still made it to Missoula in time to take a long walk and stretch out the road-kinks before retiring to Red's topper for the night.

Back at home, I worked on another part of my personal response to global climate change: Readying my restored mid-Century Modern house and yard to sell. I'm downsizing and thus shrinking my use of Earth's non-sustainable resources.

In renovating what was a very dilapidated house, my contractor, Jeff Durham, and I have saved everything we could, re-homed what we couldn't, and used new materials as efficiently as possible. The house is now much more energy-efficient than it was when we started, and the yard, my personal project, needs less water and almost no pesticides (I've used careful spot applications of herbicide to kill some persistent invasive weeds).

While Jeff worked on renovating the final bathroom, I hauled and spread 80 wheelbarrow-loads of pit-run, local gravel to finish the paths and sitting areas in the back and side yards. This "hardscape" reduces the lawn area, reducing the resource use, and also makes the yard an inviting place to stroll and sit. Eighty wheelbarrow-loads is enough gravel to fill Jeff's dump trailer one and a half times, or about 5,600 pounds of gravel–close to three tons.

Filling the first wheelbarrow load. Seventy-nine more to go….

I worked from Thursday night to Sunday afternoon, with a break on Saturday to meet a writing deadline. (Once I get going on a yard project, I have a hard time stopping. And Jeff needed the trailer back by Monday.) I was partway through when my friend Kate and her two small daughters stopped by for a visit.

The side path connecting front yard to back yard.

As the girls foot-propelled their Stryder bikes around by the east-side path, I heard Iris, all of four years old, say, "Let's follow the fairy path!" And then when she came around the corner into the backyard, she gasped: "Mama, Susan made us a fairyland!"

The backyard fairyland, complete with bridge for bikes large and small…

That may be the best yard-design compliment I've ever gotten.

Now the backyard is complete but for a bit of rock-work on the dry stream-bed, that final bathroom is light and bright and beautiful, and I'm contemplating what belongings I really need to keep and what I can give away and sell as I trade this wonderfully restored house and yard for something much smaller.

Glass blocks now break up the shower wall, adding natural light. A glass vessel sink on a simple steel counter brings the colors of the outdoors into everyday life.

My resolve is to continue to learn how to live more lightly on this Earth, and free my time to write and weed, speaking up for the planet and the species we share it with–working to restore beauty and health for us all. Being the change I'd like to see…

Tag: climate change