25 February 2024

A Cool Way to End One Year and Start Another

The cold of late fall and winter brought me a warm-weather bird to end 2023 and start 2024.

Late last year, I began encountering a surprising bird on my jogs, and the sightings carried over into this year, giving me the opportunity to add the black phoebe to my list of birds identified in each year.

Historically, black phoebes have avoided the Pacific Northwest in all seasons, preferring the warmer climate farther south. In fact, the fist place I ever saw one was in San Diego. However, as the planet has warmed, the species has moved north. Some individuals even winter over in the PNW. For example, I saw one in western Washington in December 2021 during an especially cold and snowy spell.

Having seen a black phoebe in Washington before, I wasn't totally surprised to see one in November 2023. What stood out about this specimen was how long it stayed in the area. Starting on December 24, I saw it on every jog for six weeks. At first, I'd go out jogging and wonder if I'd see the bird. Then, the sightings became so reliable, I would jog with the anticipation of seeing the streak extended another day. Finally, on February 5, I didn't see it, and I've only seen it once since then. Still, the streak was fun while it lasted, and it allowed me to put the bird on my yearly list for both 2023 and 2024.

In a world changed by global warming, sightings of black phoebes in the PNW might become common, but I will always consider it a special memory how this individual visited in the cold months of the year.

30 January 2024

A Simply Powerful Vision

Habitat connectivity involves so many factors and such large spaces that it is easy to forget how simple the idea is at its core.

The work Conservation Northwest is doing to preserve and restore connections in habitats across the state of Washington certainly involves a lot of challenges and considerations. That's what makes the organization's projects so impactful.

Still, as the video below demonstrates, habitat connectivity is a basic need for wildlife that can be addressed if we make a slight adjustment in how we think about the environment and our place in it.


Figuring out the details of a specific habitat-connectivity project might require strategy and planning, but incorporating the concept of connectivity into our vision for how we live and interact with the other inhabitants of the environment isn't that difficult. No wonder the concept is so powerful: It has far-reaching impacts, but its foundation is simple.

Just look at Conservation Northwest's successes so far and think about how much the simple concept of habitat connectivity has produced.

31 December 2023

A Friendly Reminder

When I heard the news that Forterra had helped conserve a Girl Scout camp in Grays Harbor County, I thought to myself, "I know that place!"

Sure enough, Camp Klahanee, for which Forterra recently purchased the conservation easement, is the camp I was invited to visit by my cousin's Girl Scout troop in 2006. The news of the purchase brought back memories of my trip to the camp and why I had been invited there in the first place.

In late 2005, at my cousin's request, my mom and I gave a presentation to the troop about Finland. It was a fun evening as we shared information about the country and our experiences there. The next summer, the troop invited us to Camp Klahanee as thanks for our presentation. Set in a forest, the camp is beautiful and quiet. We had a great time at the troop's picnic.

As the Forterra press release explains, "Klahanee" means "friendship" in the Chinook language. Thus, the news was a friendly reminder of some happy experiences from the past and of the importance of conserved land in providing space for community building. Through a partnership with the Polson Park and Museum Historical Society, Forterra has ensured that Camp Klahanee will continue to serve as such a space.

A reminder that our environment offers us opportunities to grow and connect is a great way to end one year and look ahead to another.

30 November 2023

Something's Missing, Something's Wrong: A Fishy Situation

Something's missing in Washington state this year. More specifically, lots of fish are missing.

Historically low numbers of coho salmon and wild steelhead have returned to Washington's coastal streams in 2023. The Quinault Indian Nation reported low catch numbers for coho salmon in October. Then, on November 27, officials with Olympic National Park announced low numbers of wild steelhead in their rivers.

These numbers point to serious problems for both fish and people. As the runs of these fish continue to decline, they face the possibility of collapsing. At the very least, the low numbers from rivers that once teamed with salmon and steelhead indicate a distressed ecosystem. Such distress will impact people who depend on the fish for sustenance and their livelihoods.

In response to the troubling numbers, the Quinault Indian Nation closed its fisheries in Grays Harbor and on the Queets River. Olympic National Park took a similar step by closing the Queets, Salmon, and Quinault rivers to steelhead fishing.

With so many fish missing from Washington's rivers, something's definitely wrong in the Pacific Northwest.

31 October 2023

How a Spider Says Goodbye

I've only seen two dead yellow garden spiders, but each one taught me some things about how to say goodbye.

The very first garden spider I ever saw built its web on my parents' front porch when I was 14. I thought it was cool, and I enjoyed seeing it there in the morning. However, I didn't realize how vulnerable it was to cold weather, so I was surprised and saddened to find it dead one chilly fall morning.

I never had the chance to say goodbye to that first garden spider, and I didn't see another until six years ago. Since 2017, I have seen a lot of garden spiders, but none of them built their webs near a house, so I didn't see them after they had died.

This fall, a yellow garden spider built a web on my house. It even placed its egg sack under the eaves. After laying its eggs, it remained on the house for several weeks. Then, late last week, the weather turned cold, dropping into the 30s and 20s at night. Because of my experience with the first garden spider, I knew what would soon happen to this one. After the first cold night, it was still alive, but it was moving slowing, so I decided to say my goodbyes.

As I looked at the spider's egg sack and then at the spider, I realized that the eggs were its goodbye. It had done what it needed to do to fulfill its life (maybe that's why it didn't seem distressed by what I'm sure it knew was about to happen). The eggs were protected under the eaves, promising more garden spiders next year.

I told the spider that she had done a great job securing her eggs, that I was glad she had chosen this house as the place to put them, and that I would look after them. Then, I said I would miss her and told her goodbye. The next morning, she was dead. I was sad, but this sadness was different than the kind I experienced when I was 14. Although I was saddened by her death, I wasn't unprepared this time. I knew that in our own ways, we'd both said our goodbyes. As a result, I felt a loss but not a total bereavement.

We can all learn something from how spiders say goodbye.

30 September 2023

Five Months of Summer

Rain and cool temperatures returned to western Washington this week for the first time since April.

After falling in substantial amounts in April, the rain suddenly shut off when the calendar turned to May in the Pacific Northwest. Temperatures suddenly jumped up too with multiple 90-degree days recorded by the middle of May.

The usual rains of May and early June never materialized. It was as if summer had started two months early. Despite cooler temperatures in part of July, the dry spell continued. Even when rain was in the forecast, we hardly received more than a misting. Eventually, the summer weather reached nearly five months before real rain returned on September 23.

Together with the nearly four months of heat and dry conditions that stretched from July 2022 to late October of last year, this year's five-month summer meant that eight and a half of the last 15 months in western Washington have felt like summer conditions.

How much longer can summers like this go on?

30 August 2023

Necessary Numbness

When reality becomes too overwhelming, a common response is to tune it out, and I think that's what is happening on the issue of global warming.

A friend of mine recently mentioned sitting in a meeting where attendees discussed how people seemed to no longer pay much attention to major environmental crises, particularly those connected to the larger issue of global warming. The flooding in California was an example of this apparent disregard. 

After I thought about what my friend had said, I suggested that the nonchalance about climate disasters was actually a false comfort and a coping mechanism. Polling shows that Americans believe global warming is a problem and that they want action to address it. However, they see a lack of response from their elected officials and feel discouraged about the possibility of change.

That feeling of discouragement grows into a feeling of being overwhelmed as the government fails again and again to address disasters. I noted for my friend how the failed government response and lack of concerned exhibited by the Biden administration in regard to the fires in Maui just before the California flooding was eerily similar to that same administration's response to the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio; the response to the pandemic under the Trump administration; and the response to Hurricane Katrina under the George W. Bush administration.

If people are faced with dire circumstances with no apparent way out and no help on the way, they are not likely to continue paying much attention to the warning signs about those circumstances.

Therefore, what we see when we see people ignoring the impacts of global warming is a necessary numbness.

30 July 2023

The Best Waste of Time Ever

When Project Puffin began in 1973, it was called a "waste of time."

Fifty years later, the project has restored puffins to the coast of Maine. It has also provided a model for similar restoration projects around the world.

The National Audubon Society recently took a look back at the project's history and a look ahead at its future. Read the full article here.

Although Project Puffin still faces challenges, including the impacts of global warming, with a time-tested foundation in place, it seems ready to meet those challenges.

A 50-year legacy of species preservation with more to come on the horizon is certainly one of the best ways to waste time that I've ever heard of.

30 June 2023

A Not-So-Hazy Connection

As I saw reports this week of Midwestern skies filling with smoke from the Canadian wildfires, I experienced the feeling of returning to that area in my mind.

Having spent five years teaching at the University of South Dakota, I remember when wildfire smoke turned the skies of Vermillion, South Dakota, orange-pink in the spring of 2016. That smoke was also from Canada though I think it was from the western part of the country. I remember thinking how wildfire smoke can provide a strong connection between people as we deal with the impacts of global warming.

This year's Canadian wildfires have been sending smoke far and wide for months. In early May, I looked out my window in western Washington and saw that familiar yet strange tint of orange-pink in the evening light. As it turned out, that color was courtesy of smoke from western Canada. Later, smoke from eastern Canada darkened skies on the East Coast of the United States.

When the smoke zeroed in on the Midwest, I felt like I was back in South Dakota. I could see myself looking up into the open, hazy sky of Vermillion. It was a powerful feeling.

Through its impacts on air quality and our senses and health, wildfire smoke provides tangible connections to global warming and between people who are hundreds or thousands of miles away.

28 May 2023

Gordon Lightfoot: The Voice of Co-presence


Some voices resonate with you from the first moment you hear them. For example, I still have extremely clear and vivid memories of singing along to Gordon Lightfoot's "Ode to Big Blue" as a child.

However, to me, Lightfoot and his music represent more than simply happy memories from childhood. I think "Ode to Big Blue" touched a tuning fork that had already been developing in me, and in doing so, it left a reverberating effect that's lasted to the present day. Although the song is not one of his most well-known works, it shares with essential Lightfoot hits like "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzergerald,""Ghosts of Cape Horn," and "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" themes about human respect for and co-presence with the non-human parts of our environment. 

I would even argue that Lightfoot used his music to contemplate his place in the environment. Songs like "Triangle," "River of Light," "The House You Live In," and "Too Many Clues in This Room," while expanding out to address societal and existential questions, maintain a rooting in environmental elements. It's as if, like many artists, including William Wordsworth, Emily Brontë, Henry David Thoreau, Thomas Hardy, and Willa Cather, Lightfoot needed environmental elements to help him process and articulate his ideas. If that was the case, I can certainly relate, and it helps explain why his music spoke to me in such a powerful way.

It wasn't just that Lightfoot sang about the environment though. The way he sang about it also struck a chord with me (probably before I even fully understood why). As a child, I knew I liked "Ode to Big Blue" because it was about whales, which were among my most favorite animals. What I discovered later was that Lightfoot's music emphasized the connectedness and co-presence of humans and non-humans in the environment. In his songs, human action is inextricably tied to environmental causes and effects. If the "lifeblood" of the Canadian wilderness supplied the means for that country's economic development in "Canadian Railroad Trilogy," then the avaricious whaling depicted in "Ode to Big Blue" demonstrated the impacts that such economic development has on the environment in turn. The emphasis on these connections challenges the typical Western understanding of humans being separate from nature. 

Just as importantly, Lightfoot never sugarcoated the connection between the human and the non-human, producing a sense that while often beneficial to humans, the environment demands respect. The personification of Big Blue demonstrates Lightfoot's sense that a whale exists on equal standing with a person. Meanwhile, the power of the natural world and its ability to wipe away human life in an instant runs through "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," "Triangle," and "Ghosts of Cape Horn," leaving a jarring lesson about taking the environment for granted. In some ways, this point of emphasis might reinforce the traditional Western understanding of nature as something to fear. Yet because Lightfoot also sings about co-presence and connection with the non-human, even the scarier non-human elements garner more respect than fear in his songs. If we are part of the larger environment, we must recognize the threats it can pose, but that doesn't mean we have to wage war on it as an adversary.

As it turned out, in my adulthood, my work as a scholar of environmental communication would explore many of the same themes Lightfoot's music did. I learned that he and I shared a worldview, and I gained an even greater appreciation for what he was saying in "Ode to Big Blue." In fact, an unmistakeable line of thought runs from the first time I heard that song to how I perceive and act within our environment today. 

Gordon Lightfoot died on May 1. I am very sad the world lost him, but I expect that his music and his voice will continue to influence the way we think about and interact with the non-human environment for a long time.

Goodbye, Gordon. Thank you for singing my song!