Francesca G. Varela's Blog, page 17

Trading Soil for Pavement

This was all once alive. The abrupt smell of pavement was once the citrusy soil, the slight tingle of fermentation, undeniably sweetened by aging leaves of hemlock and maple, dark orange and a flat, slippery sort of yellow. Insects, bacteria, the microbiome. Once, long ago, the early evening brought robins together on tight tree elbows. Long, steady whistles, trills like choppy water. No car-herd grumble; no un-crossable freeways, floods, bulky metal replacing the river. Back then, you could walk and walk and this would all have been forest. No blocky retail stores, no red lights, green lights, dismal beige condos; no parking lots. The milky, yellow streetlights didn’t dull the colors of the world, nor mangle the grayness of distant clouds. As I sit in my car, I can’t help but wonder–what kind of an exchange have we made? And… was it worth it?

Tagged: Consumerism, Eco Cities, Environment, Environmentalism, Life, Lifestyle, Nature, Philosophy, Prose, Prose-poetry, Random, Society, Thoughts, Writing

The Truth About Stars and Rivers

There’s this nostalgia I feel when I walk along the river. I feel it also when I watch half-cloudy sunsets, and when I look for Orion and Canis major on winter nights.

The cold sinks through my wool slippers as I stand on the concrete deck alongside my house. I tighten my robe’s sash and squint. Fuzz filling in the empty sky could almost be those missing stars. If I squint long enough I believe I can see them, just faintly, beyond the car-dust sky-scraper skunk-sky, all the hidden ancient lights, hemmed together like light blue thread. I think of the first humans; the ones who didn’t know what the stars were, quite yet. I miss something, I long for something. The few stars that I see are beautiful, but they and I are lost together without their companions.

And the river, too, is beautiful, but it is not whole. When I come down the hill in my car, and turn the corner, the great Willamette River separates oak tree hills. From this distance I can’t see the train tracks, the highway, or the abandoned paper mill along its banks. Just river and sky. Every time I drive past here I think of Lewis and Clark. The water, matte, as though it has absorbed both sunlight and the shadows of trees. This is a landscape like what they must have seen. I think of the Native people who fished on platforms in Willamette Falls. The eternal circle of salmon.

Now the water is toxic. Those factories left their foulness in the currents and the sediment beneath. There’s agriculture run-off, remnants of wastewater overflows, car filth. I want to go back to when the river could be trusted. Even though I wasn’t there, I miss those days when the water was pure. And so each stretch of beauty is tinged with nostalgia, which, of course, is just a more satisfying word for sadness.

Tagged: Culture, Environment, Environmentalism, Life, Light Pollution, Nature, Philosophy, Random, River Pollution, Rivers, Stars, Thoughts, Willamette, Writing

The Autumnal Equinox

The sky is not empty. Not yet, but soon.

Inside the wind is a Turkey-Vulture.

Wings stroked by clouds, against blue that is steady, or moving, or both;

the swishing silence of deep ocean, where perhaps the Turkey-Vulture escapes the songs of smaller birds, songs that writhe in his throat with longing.

What might he himself sing? Of the good, long path back to lifeless animals warmed by sun.

Light is caught here in the trees,

and at night the Turkey-Vultures grieve in their dead tree roost,

unbearable cold on the breath of each breeze,

and they ready themselves for the leaving.

Tagged: Animals, Autumn, Autumnal Equinox, Birds, Culture, Environment, Fall, Life, Nature, Poems, Poetry, Random, Thoughts, Turkey Vultures, Writing

Confessions of a Jobless Environmental Studies Graduate

So much hope at my graduation! So much hope…

When I first chose environmental studies as a major, I envisioned myself in some unknown, fulfilling, dream job. Maybe leading backpacking trips in coastal forests, or lobbying politicians with the Sierra Club, or researching sustainable lifestyles as a world traveler. I loved my classes at the University of Oregon–a mix of science, social studies, humanities, and policy. I had no idea what I would actually do with it all, but as long as my future career was related to the natural world, I would be happy.

And then I graduated.

It wasn’t like getting a science degree, where, when you graduate, you become a scientist. Environmental studies is broad. There are non-profit jobs, government jobs, environmental law possibilities, consulting jobs with corporations, environmental education jobs, academia, or sustainable business ventures. The broadness of this interdisciplinary degree isn’t necessarily a good thing. I didn’t know what to do, at first.

After graduation, I moved back in with my parents. I worked at a Native Plant Nursery for a few months. Then I did an unpaid internship with a local environmental non-profit, Oregon Wild. That was when I realized that that might be my place–environmental/conservation non-profit organizations. And right here in Portland, Oregon–a land of reusable water bottles, bike lanes, and organic food, surrounded by the beauty of wild mountains and dark ocean expanses–it seemed like the perfect place to start a green career.

Six months later, I’m still looking for a job. Non-profits have limited funds, and they need to make sure that the people they hire are a perfect match. In other words, they want people with experience. People they know, who they’ve worked with or seen around. I’ve been told to do informational interviews, attend events, and volunteer. Network. Become a familiar face. Keep up with the news. Be involved.

But, honestly, it’s hard not to get discouraged when I’ve continually been turned down for jobs. Again and again and again I’m turned down with no explanation except that someone else was better qualified. Maybe I should’ve done another internship in college. Maybe I should’ve gotten a part-time job before I graduated, or been more involved with the campus environmental group. I focused on my classes and my writing instead. And, yes, now I’m a published author, but I can’t live off my royalties.

Part of me feels like my degree was for nothing–just go for any job you can get, I sometimes think–but another part of me says never to give up, because I love the earth and the sky and the wild places. Hopefully I’ll find a job that allows me to supports myself while also perpetuating a sustainable lifestyle. I guess I just have to keep trying. And, perhaps, I’ll chronicle my journey along the way.

Tagged: Career, Education, Environmental Studies, Graduation, Green, Life, Nature, Personal, Random, School, Thoughts, Writing

Heeding The Call of the Wild

The poet Robert Service, according to my high school English teacher, has always been considered more of a word-rhymer than a literary artist.

“This isn’t really what we would call quality poetry,” my teacher said when I asked her to approve my choice of poem. Our senior year assignment was to memorize and recite a poem to the class. We were instructed to choose something that meant a great deal to us; a poem we would remember years later, in some dismal adult moment requiring strength and hope.

I thought of “The Call of the Wild”. Not Jack London’s masterpiece, but Robert Service’s obscure poem, which, weeks before, I’d found randomly on the internet using StumbleUpon. When I first read it, I wrote down all the words in my notebook; not because I didn’t have a printer, but because I wanted the poem to weave through me, sticking to my hands and my mind, forever imprinted in my own handwriting. At a time when I so desperately wanted to explore distant, wild places, but was stuck in a suburban high school life, “The Call of the Wild” let me dream of an adventurous future in which I was connected to the Earth.

I had to agree, though; some of Service’s poetry was empty-hearted. It relied on rhyming and boring plot-lines, and asked no big questions. “But this one is kind of different,” I told my teacher. She brought the poem close to her nose as she read it. “It’s a lot better than his other ones,” I added as her eyes moved restlessly behind wire-rimmed glasses.

“You’re right,” she said, and so I memorized it.

And, over the years, I remembered it. I mumbled it as I walked across Ponderosa Pine forest, the moon my only guide in near-dawn darkness, the camp’s bathroom distant and painted gray like the trees. On a backpacking trip up the Oregon Dunes I recited the words in my head, over and over, propelling my tired legs across mounds of heat. And when I slept alone in a bark shelter for a backcountry survival course, I let this poem guide me to sleep, and it reminded me why I was there.

Have you gazed on naked grandeur

where there’s nothing else to gaze on,

Set pieces and drop-curtain scenes galore,

Big mountains heaved to heaven, which the blinding sunsets blazon,

Black canyons where the rapids rip and roar?

Have you swept the visioned valley

with the green stream streaking through it,

Searched the Vastness for a something you have lost?

Have you strung your soul to silence?

Then for God’s sake go and do it;

Hear the challenge, learn the lesson, pay the cost.

 

Have you wandered in the wilderness, the sagebrush desolation,

The bunch-grass levels where the cattle graze?

Have you whistled bits of rag-time at the end of all creation,

And learned to know the desert’s little ways?

Have you camped upon the foothills,

have you galloped o’er the ranges,

Have you roamed the arid sun-lands through and through?

Have you chummed up with the mesa?

Do you know its moods and changes?

Then listen to the Wild — it’s calling you.

 

Have you known the Great White Silence,

not a snow-gemmed twig aquiver?

(Eternal truths that shame our soothing lies).

Have you broken trail on snowshoes? mushed your huskies up the river,

Dared the unknown, led the way, and clutched the prize?

Have you marked the map’s void spaces, mingled with the mongrel races,

Felt the savage strength of brute in every thew?

And though grim as hell the worst is,

can you round it off with curses?

Then hearken to the Wild — it’s wanting you.

 

Have you suffered, starved and triumphed,

groveled down, yet grasped at glory,

Grown bigger in the bigness of the whole?

“Done things” just for the doing, letting babblers tell the story,

Seeing through the nice veneer the naked soul?

Have you seen God in His splendors,

heard the text that nature renders?

(You’ll never hear it in the family pew).

The simple things, the true things, the silent men who do things —

Then listen to the Wild — it’s calling you.

 

They have cradled you in custom,

they have primed you with their preaching,

They have soaked you in convention through and through;

They have put you in a showcase; you’re a credit to their teaching —

But can’t you hear the Wild? — it’s calling you.

Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betide us;

Let us journey to a lonely land I know.

There’s a whisper on the night-wind,

there’s a star agleam to guide us,

And the Wild is calling, calling. . .let us go.

Tagged: Art, Culture, Education, Environment, Life, Literature, Nature, Outdoors, Philosophy, Poetry, Random, Robert Service, The Call of the Wild, Thoughts, Writing

Crater Lake — A National Park Left Unprotected

The first time I visited Crater Lake National Park, the November wind was so cold that my lips became numb. My cheeks soon succumbed to the cold as well and, eventually, so did my entire face. I’d neglected to bring a hat, so in an act of creative desperation, I tied my scarf around my ears and chin. This helped a little. I also wore a puffy down jacket and wool socks tucked into all-weather hiking boots, but I was still shivering. It was just that kind of deep, unrelenting cold. Nonetheless, I remained at the viewpoint, where I stared—mesmerized—into the lake. That velvet-blue water held the mystery of ancient things, much like the Redwood trees, or the silent motion of a shooting star. The silver peaks rimming the lake seemed to funnel the sky down into it. And the reflection of clouds on the water, the empty ripple of the wind against my cocooned ears, the unsteady confluence of blues—it was all worth it. I had no desire to escape the cold.

I’m not the only one who has been captivated by Crater Lake. Visitation to Oregon’s only National Park has been steadily growing over the last three years. According to a survey by the National Park Service, the annual number of visitors at Crater Lake has increased from 447,251 people in 2012, to 523,027 people in 2013, to 619,469 people in 2014.

Visitation has been increasing in parks across Oregon and around the nation. Not only is it good to hear that people are getting out and enjoying our state’s natural beauty, but this is also great news for the economy. In 2014, visitors to the six Oregon parks and monument sites run by the National Park Service spent around $71.6 million and supported 1,224 jobs.

Outdoor recreation has enjoyed a demonstrated surge in popularity, which is especially helpful in providing an economic boost to communities near places like Crater Lake; more tourists mean more money, more jobs, and a better quality of life. And, best of all, this economic upswing is supported, not by exploiting the land for its resources, but by celebrating its beauty.

Of all the breathtaking landscapes Oregon has to offer, Crater Lake is undoubtedly the most iconic. Tourists come from all over the globe to visit it, and, of course, they come bearing money. But what about the lands around Crater Lake? The forests and meadows just beyond the Park’s borders? At the moment, they exist without protection. They could be clear-cut or mined. Logging roads could scour the once fertile landscape.

Tourists come to Crater Lake in search of ruggedness and purity. They’re not looking for bald hills or barren fields of waste. And the wildlands bordering the national park are treasures in their own right; they provide vital habitat to wildlife and they keep our waters clean. Hills, buttes, high-altitude marshes; these are prime locations to expand recreational tourism through backpacking, hiking, snowshoeing, or kayaking.

If Crater Lake National Park and its surrounding lands are designated as Wilderness, they will receive the level of protection they deserve. As a National Park, Crater Lake is somewhat protected, but it’s still in danger of disturbances such as helicopter rides over the park and further development. We can do so much better. In fact, we need to do better. If we designate Crater Lake and its bordering lands as Wilderness, they’ll be preserved for future generations. That will mean a continuing increase in tourism, more money for surrounding communities, and a Crater Lake that forever remains as mesmerizing and wild as it is today. And the value of that—well, it’s simply unquantifiable.

Tagged: Activism, Crater Lake, Culture, Editorial, Environment, Environmentalism, Ethics, Life, Local, Nature, Opinion, Oregon, Random, Society, Thoughts, travel, Wilderness, Writing

Reawakening

As a child, the cool, soil-moist air rising from the creek commanded stillness, silence, and reverence. I often stood in the light of the vine-maple sky, spider webs still glued to the sides of my face, and I watched it all glimmer. For long first moments, I stared. There was my breath, there was the chime of small rocks in the creek; the croaking of birds on the other side of the forest. This was a familiar place, each tree trunk a comfort effused with something deeper, something known and unknowable.

As a teenager I forgot the trees. I spent years ignoring the forest. On a sunny day stirred by spring wind, the owl appeared. His wings were stunningly silent, long and tall as trees themselves–gracile and yielding cottonwoods in a meadow. The first time I looked into his eyes was the first time I felt a wild creature gaze back at me. He didn’t look away. His eyes became blacker, blacker, silky, unfathomably black, until I felt a pulling in my chest between fear and fascination.

I carried this moment with me into adulthood. Each time I see an owl–walking my dog in the park; in the predawn morning on a backpacking trip; on a night hike in Costa Rica–I feel renewed. The trees are once again unimaginably tall, and the Earth is alive again.

Tagged: Environment, Forests, Life, Musings, Nature, owl, Owls, Personal, Philosophy, Random, Thoughts, Writing

Earth Knowledge

Here is what I have realized: if you learn to make fire with nothing but what the forest provides, and you purify water in bowls you yourself have carved, and you spend the night warmly wrapped in a house of fallen hemlock needles, and if you find cattail roots and salmonberries for your dinner among the streamside plants, and if you do all this with maybe only a knife, or a sharpened stone; then you have traded comfort for freedom, and, in return, you have found that all the world is your home.

Tagged: Culture, Education, Environment, Inspiration, Life, Lifestyle, Nature, Outdoors, Philosophy, Random, Thoughts, Way of Life, Wilderness, Wilderness Survival, Writing

Shell Oil vs. The People of Earth

Image Courtesy of 350PDX

When it comes to climate change, we already know what needs to be done. Yet we don’t do anything of consequence; we resist positive action because climate change looms over us as a great, daunting beast, too menacing to actually deal with.

But maybe not. According to Naomi Klein in her book This Changes Everything, we have the green energy technology to run our nation on localized wind turbines, solar panels, and efficient mass transit; we (hypothetically) have the funds needed to make this transition if we implement an egalitarian economic reform; we have an unjust social system that would benefit from these reforms; and we have the dire need to make these changes now.

If you had been told you were in imminent danger of lung cancer if you didn’t quit smoking as soon as possible, why would you invest in a large order of extra-strength cigarettes? Boxes and boxes of them–stiff, stinky cardboard stacked high against the walls of your garage. Why would you put your money into something that would lead you to unfathomable pain? Yes, some damage has already been done, but the first step is preventing new poison from entering your system. Then resiliency will kick in, and healing. Then you will stop coughing so much, and your hair will lose its dullness. So, too, will waters polluted by fracking someday run clean again; so, too, will the soil regain its fertility, and so will Appalachian forests recolonize today’s ghostly mountaintop removal mines.

Despite the grave consensus of the scientific community that fossil fuels need to remain nestled in the earth, our president has permitted drilling in the arctic. Even if we burn only the known fossil fuel reserves (not including said arctic drilling), we are hurtling ourselves toward disastrous levels of global warming. We should be transitioning away from fossil fuels, not sniffing for oil in beautiful, treacherous places. This is not the will of you and I or even the president. Not really. This is the will of profit. Shell needs to expand to stay alive. Shell doesn’t care if the soil aches into dryness, or if the salmon shrivel in the sun, or if Mt. Hood grows gray without snow. Shell doesn’t care if the blue-white arctic is someday blistered with spilled oil. Nor do they care about the smell of ferns after it rains, or the startled honk of a raven.

But we do.

So let’s stand behind the bridge-hanging activists blocking Shell’s ship from returning to the arctic–not fine them. Let us add our voices to theirs; let us all, in our own way, take to the river. Let us fight for the Earth and the sky and the wind over the ocean. Let us fight for the microbes in the soil. Let us fight for the beauty around us, for the bobcats, for the spotted owls. Let us fight against mindless profit. For the future; for the past. Let us fight for our survival.

Tagged: Activism, Arctic Drilling, Culture, Environment, Environmentalism, Ethics, Fennica, Fremont Bridge, Green, Kayaktivists, Life, Local, Nature, News, Oregon, Philosophy, Portland, Random, Shell, Shell No, Thoughts, Writing

Mount St. Helens

How can the vastness of stars be absorbed into earth?

Borne upwards, torn sideways, woven into valleys?

So sings the nighthawk, to whom the air holds no vastness,

only the fragrance of Sitka alder,

of subalpine fir,

and soil drained by steady, cliffside winds.

He surges down, where lupine, yarrow, and bulrush breathe through gravel,

and nighthawk feels the mountain’s stare–

how it is not injured, not blemished,

despite its neck in snowless shards below.

And dusk seeps over each barren hill, and–like rocks from the river–the soft mountain ridges.

And the one thing the nighthawk knows, as he trembles through blue and purple air,

is that whatever is in the stars is in the mountain also.

Tagged: Animals, Art, Author, Birds, Culture, Environment, Hiking, Inspiration, Life, Lifestyle, Nature, Philosophy, Poems, Poetry, Prose, Prose-poetry, Random, Thoughts, travel, Wildlife, Writing