Done with grisly – long live grizzlies. I am rounding out this week which was devoted to interesting aspects of fauna in our lives with a short film clip that truly moved me.
It documents the life work of a man who overcame the trauma sustained as a medic in the Vietnam war by devoting himself to the documentation and protection of grizzly bears in this country. To tell the truth, it made me cry.
Then again, maybe it’s the unusually early heat that has me in a dither.
Since, as you have correctly assumed, I can locate no bears in my photo archives, I will fall back on the words of the film’s subject: “Saving the wild is the mother of all things. That is where we gather life, the potential for wisdom. If we are to have survival, that’s how and where it’s going to take place.”
My “wild” – as wild as it can get a 10 minute drive outside of a metropolitan area – is a daily refuge, a reminder of change and natural order, a place where I can be found photographing, or simply walking, and where I find occasional misplaced pieces of myself. It sustains me, and if it doesn’t bring wisdom, it does have the potential for joy.
Right now it harbors numerous small flowers, in stark contrast to the splashy bloom you see in gardens across the city. Buttercups, blackberry blossoms, woodruff, false Solomon’s seal, coral bells and, if you are lucky, lily-of-the-valley peek out of the abundant green. The water skimmers race across the surface of the brook and the woodpeckers have made their holes big enough to hide in. Ferns unfurl and little white candles are strewn among light green grass, still not touched by dust.
The deer rest here, digesting their abundant meal of columbine, hostas and cornflower blossoms, served nightly in my garden, much to my dismay.
I used to curse the slugs on my morning rounds, now I yell about the deer. But I can’t stay angry. Who has the privilege to live so close to “wild?” It’s only fair to pay a price, perennials it’ll be…..
Music today is an interesting piece by Leonard Bernstein – composed in reference to Plato’s Symposium, in particular about the two speakers Phaedrus and Pausanias. They both talk about love (Eros for one, Aphrodite for the other.) I figured that would do: love (today for the “wild,”for nature,) wherever it comes from, is captured in the music.
Since my recent description of the lurking dangers of fish farms thoroughly soured many of you on salmon, I feel it’s my duty to suggest alternative food sources.
We could take the Bucklands as a culinary guide, father and son both excelling in devouring the most outlandish food possible. William, the father, served hedgehogs, roast ostrich, porpoise, crocodile steaks and even cooked puppies in 19th century England. It seems he liked the notoriety gained by an unusual diet, starting with mice on toast for breakfast, and once eating, it is claimed, the 140ish-year-old mummified heart belonging to King Louis XIV of France. Long story, details here.
He was otherwise a reputed if eccentric scientist and eventually became Dean of Westminster Abbey. His son Francis followed in his footsteps. “Guests were served steaming plates of boiled elephant trunk, boiled and fried meat taken from the head of a porpoise, roasted giraffe necks and rhinoceros pie. Boa constrictor, sea slugs and ear wigs made their way to his stomach, although he ended up hating those last two. When he heard a panther had recently died at a zoo, he had the curator dig up the corpse and send over some panther chops (“It was not very good.”)
Francis was actually concerned with finding alternatives to help stave off over-hunting and over-fishing. He founded the Acclimation Society of Britain; its goal was to find and introduce exotic fauna to the country in order to gain another food source. Well, that would obviously not do for our own kitchens given how many of these are on the endangered species list.
Marmots were among his menagerie, ready to be picked up by cook when supper was needed. It turns out, though, that we should exercise caution before turning to fry, steam or boil rodents, or, for that matter, eat them raw.
I’m sure you’ve heard: the recent demise of a Mongolian couple after a supper of marmot meat was all over the news. And what did them in? The bubonic plague! I know, it should not be treated lightly when people try to find their protein where they can and then succumb to the plague. But really.
If you think you are safe because those rodents are not on your meal plan, though, think again. The disease lurks in Oregon as well and officials here are practicing what to do in case of an outbreak.
In the meantime, this is what the government suggest you do:
Yes, plague can be prevented by controlling rodent populations in endemic areas.
Eliminate sources of food and nesting places for rodents around homes, workplaces, and recreation areas; remove plant material, rock piles, junk piles,and potential food supplies, such as pet food.
Control your pet’s fleas and do not let cats or dogs roam freely.
Do not pick up or touch dead animals.
Wear insect repellant to prevent fleabites and wear gloves when handling potentially infected animals.
I guess it’s back to chocolate pudding and Fritos, for this here diner…
Photographs today are of pica and muskrats respectively. Cute. Rodents. Bubonic plague……
And for your listening pleasure there are rats, mice and marmots on offer!
Good. You didn’t think for a moment that I would write about Kentucky Derby decisions, disqualifications and all. Of course I won’t. Don’t know the rules of that sport, or any sport for that matter.
Instead I am praising science, once again, which has produced some fascinating new insights into the domestication of horses, a feat that revolutionized transport and warfare. You can read about the details here but here are the highlights:
Create an interdisciplinary team of 120(!) geneticists, evolutionary biologists and archeologists and let them figure out how 5500 years ago the horse became servant to (wo)man. Have them generate DNA data from 278 equine subfossils with ages mostly spanning the last six millennia.
Find out this way that in addition to the known two lines, domestic and Przewalski’s horses, there were two more, found on the Iberian Peninsula and in Siberia, now extinct.
Of special interest for these scientists was the fact that selective breeding shaping the look and functions of the horse started about 3000 years ago, most likely in Persia. Making them slimmer and stronger increased the mobility and speed of horses. Europeans picked up on this, and within a few hundred years they influenced the horse genome in more ways than through the previous 4000 years of domestication.
There is still uncertainty where the very first human horse interaction took place, despite all we know about horses. The traditional presumption that it happened in the steppes of Kasachstan was undermined by this current study. The most likely places under discussion are now Anatolia, the Pontic-Caspian steppes in Eurasia or the Middle East. Take your pick.
DNA analysis was also able to establish the recent impact of humans by means of diversity management, selection and hybridization of horses. What they found was not all good:
Most strikingly, we found that while past horse breeders maintained diverse genetic resources for millennia after they first domesticated the horse, this diversity dropped by ∼16% within the last 200 years. This illustrates the massive impact of modern breeding and demonstrates that the history of domestic animals cannot be fully understood without harnessing ancient DNA data. Importantly, recent breeding strategies have also limited the efficacy of negative selection and led to the accumulation of deleterious variants within the genome of horses. This illustrates the genomic cost of modern breeding. Future work should focus on testing how much recent progress in veterinary medicine and the improving animal welfare have contributed to limit the fitness impact of deleterious variants.
And while we are on the topic of DNA analysis, here is something to ponder about what the results of genetic testing in humans can or do tell us: misconceptions abound.
And if instead of experimental science you want some clinical psychology on this Wednesday morning, read this about psychics and the (hurt) feelings of horses.
You tell me if it makes horse sense.
Tilden Horse/ Marc ChagallTilden/ Gerhard RichterTilden Horse/Franz MarcTilden Horse/Paul KleeTilden Horse/Joan MiroTilden Horse/Richard Estes
Photographs today are of horse sculptures made by Steve Tilden and some of my pastiches using more of his work in the style of different painters.
Weren’t you always dying to know about the life cycle of the salmon louse? Well, I have to disappoint you – today’s report is about the problems of aquaculture, among which the louse is one of the biggest, and it will be discussed in this context only.
Why would I even bother? Well, one of the arguments offered in yesterday’s musing on the decline of ocean health and overfishing was the possibility of farmed fish filling our protein needs no longer covered by fish in the wild. Fish farms have, of course, become a huge business. Salmon is one of the biggest products of aquaculture, generating billions of dollars of income for Norway and Chile, the top producers in the world, but also other European countries like Scotland (the US ranks only 16th in aquaculture.)
And now there is a crisis for which we all pay – and I don’t mean with increased prices only for our favorite dinner either. Salmons are farmed in net enclosures that reach up to 165 ft down into the depth of the waters and have a similar diameter. In other words, they are stuffed together for the 2 years until they are slaughtered. They used to be fed with insane amounts of antibiotics, but that was eventually reduced to acceptable levels, because they figured out a way to vaccinate the baby fish against diseases.
(More detailed information can be found here in a publication of Le Monde diplomatique (alas only in German.)
That did not solve other problems, however. Lots of fish escape these nets when they are torn during storms, and then mix with wild salmon, endangering the gene pool with their degenerated genetic make-up. During the 2007 earthquake in Chile alone, 5 million farmed salmons escaped.
In addition, carnivorous salmon require too much other fish to eat. It takes 1,7 kg of small fish made into fishmeal to generate 1 kg of salmon. Attempts to change their diet to soy beans and grains have been not very successful, they refuse to eat it and get diarrhea. More of that diet will also lessen the omega-III-fatty acids that attract us to fish in the first place.
The biggest problem for aqua farming is the salmon or sea louse, however. It has killed 50 million salmon in Norway in 2016 alone. The 8-12 mm parasites glum onto the salmon and eat holes into their skin. They flourish in the conditions of these tight nets and the warming of the waters due to climate change, and now also spread to wild salmon when these migrate close by.
The lice are resistant to many insecticides; what is still in use is Emamectinbenzoat and Diflubenzoron (yes, they are as toxic as they are hard to spell), as well as Hydrogenperoxide (they now use 42 liters of that for every ton of aqua farmed fish….) Traces of these chemicals remain in the fish that land on our plates. And if one country prohibits use of certain chemicals, why, globalization allows the industry to spread to other parts of the globe.
The Norwegian salmon farming giant Cermaq has a sea lice emergency on their Clayoquot Sound salmon farms right now. Documents released through Access to Information indicate Cermaq obtained an Emergency Drug Release to use the insecticide Lufeneron to control sea lice in the Clayoquot Sound UNESCO Biosphere Region (British Columbia). That chemical was not approved by the Norwegian Government (and the application withdrawn with much secrecy.) This very month, it is used over here. And I quote:
“There are human health concerns with use of the drug, which resides in the fat of treated animals. The flesh of treated fish cannot be consumed by humans for 350 days after treatment. This raises questions around how Lufeneron-treated fish will be disposed of in the event of a mass die-off, and in the event of an escape, whether Lufeneron-treated fish might be eaten by a predator which could later be caught for human consumption.
“Lufeneron acts as a chitin synthesis inhibitor; it kills crustaceans like fleas and lice by preventing them from growing a new exoskeleton after moulting. This raises questions about its impact on aquatic organisms in the marine environment—particularly crustaceans like crab, shrimp and prawns”, said Glambeck. “Although the drug will be administered in freshwater hatcheries, it stays in the fish for a very long time. How much will be excreted by fish into the ocean? How long will Lufeneron persist once it settles beneath the fish farm? And how readily will it be accessible to sea creatures?”
The details of all this will be forgotten by me by tomorrow, but the principle will linger: there are no easy solutions to problems that were created by our interference with nature. The idea that depletion of wild fish can be compensated by harvesting farmed fish is only theoretically sound. In praxis the diseases nurtured by close-quarter farming and then the chemical treatment of those diseases generate health scares in their own right and potential longitudinal effects that we have not even begun to understand.
Lousy, indeed.
Photographs taken yesterday of wild carp thrashing in a lake nearby.
Last week CBS news published an alarming article predicting that by 2048 salt water fish might be extinct. Just the kind of news you glance at and decide an already bleak view of the future has become even more dire on a sunny Monday morning.
Independent of our own delight in seafood, millions of people in the developing world depend on fish as protein source and for their livelihoods. Never mind what’s at issue for the larger food chain depending on healthy oceans.
Here’s the problem: it is a story that has perennially surfaced in the news since 2006 when the study it relies on was first published. Never mind that the scientific authors fundamentally revised their findings in 2009 because the study was relying on seriously flawed data and statistics.
You might argue that the criticism comes from the seafood industry and their own data are equally sketchy, driven by the desire to maintain the economic gains from fishing. But it is not an isolated case.
Three years ago there was much discussion of reports by the MacArthur Foundation and the World Economic Forum that by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the sea if we continue dumping plastic in the oceans at the present rate, measured by weight. Note that this claim rests on our ability to accurately measure the plastic and count the fish. Are we able to do that?
Their report certainly didn’t. It relied on plastic estimates derived solely from San Francisco Bay and assumed that was representative for the rest of the globe. The report never stated figures for the expected tonnage of fish in 2050, and cited no research into fish populations. When reporters went back and asked about this issue they were referred to a 2008 study which was refuted by its own author in 2015. (For details go here.)
The problem with these types of misinformation rests with the fact that it gives power to those who want to deny that our oceans are in trouble. Or, more egregiously, want to claim that science can’t be trusted in general. Generally solid reports like this one are then thrown out together with the unreliable ones, in the interest of delaying action and preserving current income.
The WWF report lists the main reasons for decline of fish stocks in our oceans. Overfishing and by-catch are due to illegal fishing and insane subsidies for the fishing industries. As a result we have degraded eco systems and decreased food security. Action is required to create areas protected from fishing and to stop the industrial subsidies that are incentives for expanding fishing fleets.
I leave it to you to judge if clips like this, earnestness notwithstanding, help the cause…..
There is, however, also good news, as reported in the Seattle Times this March (somehow the link is broken, but here is the upshot:)
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is investigating whether new fishing restrictions are needed to help prevent the extinction of endangered southern resident killer whales that frequent Puget Sound. That process is intended to result in fishing that lessens the impact on prey targeted by the whales. Possibilities include restrictions in time and places when fishermen and whales most intersect, or season closures. And not only in the ocean: NOAA is also evaluating fishing in Puget Sound and southeast Alaska to reduce impacts on orcas. The agency already, through the Pacific Salmon Treaty, worked to cut back harvest rates on salmon in Canadian fisheries.
Photographs today are from Puget Sound where I had thrilling views of whales some years back.
Music is a mesmerizing piece by Adams Becoming Ocean that somehow manages to communicate the urgency of required action. Music starts in at 7:35 or thereabouts.
It’s been exciting weeks of travel and blurry re-entry and then, towards the end of this week, another successful attempt at anchoring in the place where I always find solace: Sauvie Island.
A portion of the island that is closed off for winter to allow migratory birds to rest and breed, opens at the beginning of May. All is still fresh and the cows think they own the place.
It gives me pure joy to wander along paths I haven’t seen in 6 months and recognize every tree still standing.
The eagle is re-using the old nest, still in position. The rest of the birds are busy building their own.
Swallows are back!
The forest path is sun-dappled,
the meadows still intensely green,
the oaks in fresh leaf
and small hawthornes in bloom.
And what comes to mind, on a regular basis, is one of Goethe’s poems, the second part familiar to me since I was 5 or 6 years old, that describes the peace trickling down through nature. It is set at night time, but easily converted to my day jaunts as well – a quiet calm descends from the larger realms of our surround to the trees, to the bird population and finally to ourselves, who are still waiting for it.
Here is a version of Wanderer’s Nightsong translated by Longfellow:
Goethe wrote this during a time of grappling with the demands of a new job at the Weimar court during 1776, unhappily in love, and trying to adapt to new-found fame as a writer (his Sorrows of Young Werther had exploded on the literary scene.) He inscribed the second stanza on the walls of a hiking cabin in the nearby mountains – you can actually hike a 20 km trail that links many of Goethe locations including this (rebuilt) hut on the Ilmenau, should you ever visit Thuringia. On my list to do. One of these days.
The trail begins at the “Amtshaus” in the marketplace, where the Ilmenau Information Centre and the Goethe Town Museum are housed. The Museum shows Goethe as a poet, civil servant and naturalist. Along Obertorstrasse, the trail runs to the cemetery first and then continues through the upper Old Quarter on Mittlere and Obere Berggrabenweg. On Schwalbenstein Rock, there is a hut where hikers can take a break. Goethe wrote the 4th act of “Iphigenie” here. Passing the Schöffenhaus, the Goethe Hiking Trail continues across Heidelberg Hill to St Mary’s Spring and the Emmastein Rock. Then it descends to Manebach to the Choirmaster’s House. The trail runs in Manebach through the Ilm Valley and at Kammerberg, the climb to Helenenruhe and the Grosse Hermannstein begins. At a height of 861 metres, the trail reaches the “Goethe Hut”, the highest point on the trail. Descending, hikers come to the Gabelbach Hunting Lodge Museum, which gives an insight into Goethe’s scientific studies of nature. After the Hirtenwiese Meadow, the route continues along the country road to Neustadt down to the picturesque Schorte Valley and Knöpfelstal Pond with a shelter and Finstere Loch with a small waterfall. After 20 minutes, the Goethe Hiking Trail arrives at the “Auerhahn” historic tavern and then leads to another Goethe Museum in Stützerbach.
In the meantime, I savor Sauvie Island, the mountains around us, and the blessings of nature.
Music today are Schubert’s version of both part of the Lied, and then one by Liszt for comparison.
If you need a treat for the eyes, or, for that matter, the soul, I recommend a short outing to Camassia Natural Area which is protected by the Nature Conservancy. The small park, a 15 minute drive from PDX, is at the height of its beauty at this time of the year, when the Camassia bloom as do the blue-eyed Mary’s, an endangered plant of the snapdragon family.
Camassia, also known as Indian hyacinths or squamash, covered large areas of the Northwest before live stock, White settlers and eventually the construction of villages, towns and cities took over. When Lewis & Clark traveled here the meadows reminded them of large swaths of water, in waving blue.
If you click on his description, you’ll get an exquisite botanical description and report on native usage, particularly using the bulbs from this plant from the asparagus family as nutrition.
Many NW place names, like Camas, WA, were derived from the plant which played a substantial role in the diet of Northwest Indian tribes. As migratory foragers they would travel in seasonal rounds, according to where the abundant food was to be found at a given time of year (hence the need for large territories). This migration followed a predictable pattern from permanent winter villages through several temporary camps, nearly always returning to the same locations each year. Before construction of The Dalles Dam in 1957, which flooded this area, Celilo Falls for example was a favored location to fish for salmon on the Columbia River. For starch they relied heavily on q’emes or camas root (Camassia quamash) as a food source; it was gathered in the region between the Salmon and Clearwater river drainages.
Here is a way to prepare the bulbs, if you have the patience….
In fact, you could have a whole meal from the plants you find at Camassia Nature preserve. Camassia as your main dish,
and for desert you can suck honey from the Rosy Plectritis (from the honey suckle family)
or have some wild strawberries.
And should you scrape your knee while getting off that picnic blanket – there is always saxifrage to the rescue, with its antiseptic and healing properties.
And if you need a nice glass of milk to go with all of this and your cow has udder problems, the nipplewort, also prolific in the area, will come to your rescue:
The name itself has an interesting history that originated around 350 years ago when an Englishman by the name of John Parkinson named the plant after he heard that it was useful for topical treatment of ulcers for women on certain areas of their bodies. It was also an herbal treatment for nursing mothers, and was used to aid cows and goats that were having trouble being milked. Another source of the name is said to have come from the shape of the basal lobes and their resembling features. Because nipplewort is edible, its leaves can be cooked like spinach or served raw in only the most hipster of salads.
On my last full day in New Mexico I drove to Frijoles Canyon to explore the Bandelier National Monument. It is located within the Pajarito Plateau which was formed by two eruptions of the Jemez volcano nearby, more than a million years ago.
Each of these eruptions were about six hundred times more powerful than that of Mount St. Helens in 1980. Just saying.
The rocks you are seeing in the photographs are actually volcanic ash, compacted over time into a crumbly rock called tuff.
It can be easily eroded by the weather or human tools – and indeed the Ancestral Pueblo people living here more than 10.000 years ago made their homes in the rocks, enlarging existing holes and caves and building in front of them.
Both petroglyphs and pictographs can be found here
A small, seemingly innocuous creek runs through the canyon, bearing water all year long, so important for human habitation, and even more so in this arid climate. The regular 10 cubic feet per second (cfs) occasionally converts into flash floods.
A horrid one in recent history followed the 2011 Las Conchas Wildfire, that completely destroyed the upper watershed of the stream.
The creek surged with 7.000 cfs of water; in 2013 it got even worse with a flash flood of 9.000 cfs – the piles you see in the pictures are the left overs of the uprooted trees and rocks and other debris that haven’t been cleared by the National Park Service. At the time they came down the mountain in waves reportedly three stories high. The clip shows the flood coming into the parking lot of the site.
These kind of weather-related events probably happened across the centuries but are now increasing in frequency. They would have cost many lives during the times people actually inhabited the canyon. In general, their life expectancy was short, 35 years on average, women regularly dying in childbirth and almost everyone suffering from bad teeth and arthritis. Men were responsible for hunting, constructing and weaving, while women did the farming, (grid gardens and scattered fields all across the mesa in hopes that localized rains would water at least some of the crop of beans, corn and squash), took care of the children, cooked, made pottery and regularly plastered the outer walls of the buildings.
I fiddled with my own life expectancy by deciding to dare climb into the restored cliff dwellings. It was worth it, but, honestly, a challenge. Some kind woman spontaneously offered to take a picture of me, so here is factual evidence in case you don’t believe me.
You had to do several of these, some longer than others, interspersed with staircases
I envied the ravens and the swallows who sail seemingly without efforts between the canyon walls.
Inside the cliff dwelling looking out into the canyon
Not much bird life to be seen, overall, although I did luck out with two owls, closer to Albuquerque, one sitting on the nest and her partner guarding them from across the path.
Her head is peeking out of the hole
Also spotted were quails, a curved beak thrasher and an occasional woodpecker. And here you thought you’d get away from bird pictures…
The first humans to come to what we now call the United States got here on foot. They crossed the Bering Land Bridge from Asia some 20.000 years ago, perhaps even 30.000 – 40.000 years ago. They made their way up and down the coast by boats, nomadic tribes often driven to new places by changes in climate. Scarcity of food led to various intertribal fighting for resources, a culture fostering warriors, but also to tribal migration to climes where they could eventually settle.
The North American Indian people who live in permanent compact settlements in New Mexico are known as Pueblos, descending from the pre-historic Ancestral Pueblo people (Anasazi). The eastern Pueblo villages are in New Mexico along the Rio Grande and comprise groups who speak Tanoan and Keresan languages, comprised of Tiwa, Town and Tewa, as well as Athabaskan.
At the time the Spanish conquistadors arrived in 1539, the Pueblos had autonomously governed villages, where decisions were made in subterranean ceremonial chambers called Kivas. Hunting and gathering was supplanted by farming of corn, squash and cotton – the only crops available. Complex irrigation ditches were constructed and lined with clay to preserve water (the latter giving archeologists a leg up in mapping the water systems.) Plant plots were sheltered with gravel to prevent evaporation. Societies were matrilineal (inheritance went down the female line) and matrilocal (boys married into the villages of the girls.)
Hunting was communal, including the hunt for rabbits – up to 60 people at a time would cut their hair and weave it into hare-nets, enormously long structures that snared the bunnies, some persevered from 11.000 BC in the museum where I learned all the rest of it: the MUSEUM OF INDIAN ARTS AND CULTURE in Santa Fe.
I had gone there to explore their exhibit Beyond Standing Rock which highlights encroachments and violations of Native American sovereignty, many of which have impacted Native health and sacred lands and describes what led up to the DAPL protests. http://miaclab.org/current&eventID=4044
As luck would have it, I was invited to a practically private 2 hour tour of the museum with an incredibly knowledgeable docent, who taught about the archeological finds, but also the bloody history the Pueblo people had to endure. Although they managed, after 90 years of Spanish colonization, to unite in rebellion and reclaim their land and independence (as well as the horses, sheep and fruit trees introduced by the conquistadores,) that success didn’t last long.
After the reconquest in 1691, villages adapted to colonial rule by incorporating some aspects of the dominant culture necessary for survival while maintaining the basic fabric of traditional cultured in some instances converting to Christianity.
Skip forward to the appropriation of land and treatment of indigenous peoples by the US government and military, with forced relocations, death marches and concentration camps that claimed every 2nd life of those displaced in the 19th century. Less deadly but psychologically equally damning were the more recent attempts to Kill the Indian in him and save the Man, which was the motto of U.S. government forcing tens of thousands of Native American children to attend “assimilation” boarding schools in the late 19th century. https://www.history.com/news/how-boarding-schools-tried-to-kill-the-indian-through-assimilation
Judicial decisions by the Supreme Court managed to weaken protections for the sedentary Pueblos wherever they could.
The United States Supreme Court, in the 1876 United States versus Joseph, declared that the Intercourse Act of 1834 was not applicable to the Pueblos of New Mexico. The Court viewed the Pueblos as having a settled, domestic existence and therefore were not subject to laws which were passed for the protection and civilization of “wild Indians.” The ruling denied the Pueblos the protection of the federal government and placed them within the jurisdiction of the local courts and officials. The Court did not define the Pueblos as citizens, and thus they did not have the right to vote, nor did they have the right to hold public office. While the Court excluded the Pueblos from participation in political life, it opened up the way for their lands to be appropriated for private enterprise by non-Indians.
In a most interesting bit, my docent added to descriptions of these politics a terse report on HUD, our Housing and Development Administration. HUD is actively building and distributing housing for descendants of the Ancestral Pueblo people. These dwellings, however, are rigidly restricted to sizes accommodating only a core family. The previously common multi-generational living situations are thus disrupted; this has the consequence that transmission of ancestral language, culture and religious practice by daily interactions with the elders is no longer happening. A sly mechanism to force acculturation, in the guise of guaranteed electricity and indoor plumbing.
I was trying to digest all this during a somewhat challenging hike at Kasha-Katuwe National Monuments (Tent Rock) within the lands of the Cochiti Pueblo. The canyon trail is a one-way trek into a narrow, “slot” canyon with a steep (630-ft) climb to the mesa top. One scraped knee and a head bursting with pride of my stamina later I enjoyed the excellent views of the Sangre de Cristo, Jemez, Sandia mountains and the Rio Grande Valley.
And here are some interesting voices from a different pueblo.
And here are some photos taken by E. Curtis in the early 1900s in New Mexico – these are postcards, I was not allowed to photograph in the museum itself.
To round out this week devoted to the natural beauty around us I paid a visit to the tulip farm. It ain’t Keukenhof, the Dutch garden, but it ain’t shabby either. Jumping from puddle to puddle, dodging rain clouds, trying to argue with yet another shower threatening my camera, I had a grand time.
It’s still early, more than half of the fields not yet in bloom, and the place going to be open for almost another month. But the foliage alone was thrilling, and what was open did not disappoint.
Neither did the perennial viewing of humanity; some dressed to match the flowers, or at least their color;
some ignoring the weather and appearing in apparel more fitting for July;
some clutching their unicorns, or shivering in their cow mobile,
and the workers on break happy to rest those muddy limbs and heavy rain coats.
Did I mention it rained? It surely made for beautiful light. And it felt like spring, a riot of soft, muted color, and pastel air.
Some new sights,
Short-stemmed, nestling like Easter eggs
and some names that made me smile.
My intention to post Sylvia Plath’s Tulip poem evaporated upon re-reading. It is just too depressing, written from hospital when she was undergoing surgery and on war-footing with those gorgeous flowers that disturbed the waxen peace of the ward. I will attach a link all the way at the bottom where she reads it herself only for those who need a dose of downward comparison.
It shall be William Wordsworth instead (and I just happened to photograph daffodils as well….):
Daffodils
I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazed – and gazed – but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.
So much dancing in that poem, so much dancing in my very own grateful heart from the joy that is spring in Oregon, dark skies or not.
And here is the perfect garden-in-the-rain music….
