I walked out onto the porch last night with a container of bird seed, leaving a trail of seed where the birds congregate each morning for their breakfast. It was nice to imagine the dawn’s cooing and chirping and fluttering, the bustling among one another, and the boisterous synchronized departure. I’m always especially proud of the one or two birds who remain, not following the crowd.
Yesterday’s temperature reached 100 degrees, which meant that last night the darkness on the porch was still deliciously warm. A gentle breeze blew through the trees and bushes, and as it brushed my skin I imagined the birds feeling that same breeze brushing their feathers. I wondered for a moment how many other plants and animals and insects also felt that very same breath of earth. There was something very unifying in that thought.
I walked past the wonderfully intoxicating scent of a heavily blooming jasmine bush and made my way out to our fig tree. I stayed there for a moment, enjoying the air, the darkness, the stars, and the companionship and connection with everything around me.
While I stood there enjoying the warm night air it occurred to me that the air inside our home had been artificially chilled. The machines that performed this task for us use an enormous amount of energy, despite being “efficient” models, and their use means that my family is less acclimated to the climate that we falsely believe we live in. Our house is truly the one acclimated to the desert; we are merely acclimated to the house. We spend the majority of our lives in a variety of temperature-regulated, humidity-controlled, air-filtered environments which are very often quite different than those outdoors. Rather than living with nature we shield ourselves from it. Without realizing it we have literally ended millennia of climate-related adaptation and evolution.
I wonder what people will do as water becomes more scarce, temperatures continue to rise, storms become more intense, and petroleum and natural gas become more expensive? Perhaps laws will be passed regulating how we use resources, and new shelters might be built, but that would amount to little more than shielding ourselves from a changing world that is simply asking us to adapt.
We adapt to other changes all the time, and of course we can adapt to a changing climate too. Like other things we adapt to, like a new child or a new job, changes in lifestyle need to be made. These adaptations don’t make our lives worse, they make our lives different. And as with so many other things we’ve already adapted to, we often find that adapting opens new doors in our lives – new happiness, new opportunities, new dreams, new directions. In this way, we could look at climate change as a huge gift, a chance to re-assess our priorities, adjust our actions, and begin setting things right in each of our corners of the world.
Pinyon Springs 