Random Wanderings of the Mind

It has continued to be a cold month. It may be the year that spring forgot. Yesterday's high was only 57 degrees F. which is 15 degrees below normal. The low temp was down near 40 for two mornings in a row. If we hadn't had clouds last night we might have had frost here in southern Minnesota because the dew point was 32. What has made it worse is when spring has shown up we ended up with the tornadoes around here including an F5 in Iowa. No, it isn't the coolest May on record I am sure, but it isn't one I wanted after the seemingly endless winter we had.

Then imagine my sadness last evening when I got to the coffee shop and looked across the street at the flower garden. And all the tulips were gone. The bed was empty. They had been really pretty, too. Well, tonight there are things planted over there that offer the hope for summer. Notice I said hope and not promise. I will not accept any promise made about a summer of 2008. The only way I know spring has come is the orange barrels marking the road construction.

But in truth I have very little to whine about as I have been watching the destruction from tornadoes here in the Midwest, the devastation in Myanmar followed by the insensitive paranoia of the government there, and the destructive power of the earthquake in China. Listening the other evening to a report from there on NPR they were talking about the fact that China has had a general one child per family policy. They pointed out that many of the children killed in the earthquake were their parents' only child. I hadn't even thought about that. As a parent of an only child I stopped just before it got to that place where a parent's mind can't go. Yes I can feel some of the pain, but unless you experience it, it is only a deep pain you can't allow to come to its full fear. Nature is not as benign as we sometimes romanticize it to be. And yes it is true that life really isn't fair.

Lightning and Ash

Reuters

After looking at this picture of the volcanic eruption in Chile, I'm going to stop whining about our weather! Now they say the cloud has partially collapsed with fears of smothering the land and the villages.

Who says nature is always benevolent? The past few weeks have undermined that from the tornadoes in the US to the Cyclone in Myanmar and the earthquake in China. Never underestimate the power of the natural world. Never!

Ponder This

From Inward/Outward, a thought for the day:

By Wendell Berry

The miraculous is not extraordinary but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread. Whoever really has considered the lilies of the field or the birds of the air and pondered the improbability of their existence in this warm world within the cold and empty stellar distances will hardly balk at the turning of water into wine - which was, after all, a very small miracle. We forget the greater and still continuing miracle by which water (with soil and sunlight) is turned into grapes.

I Thought WE Had the Brains

I was watching Nature on PBS the other evening. It was a show about Death Valley in all its extreme glory and danger. Tiny fish who have adapted to live in highly saline water- when it is available. Lizards that can tell the difference in water content in different plants. Adapt or die to this extreme- very extreme- environment.

But then there's humanity- the crown of creation. This is the animal with the amazing pre-frontal cortex that makes decisions, weighs choices- and even goes against all logic and intuition and even biological need. They told of a man who tried to walk across it but died- mummified and not even attacked by any predator- within a mile of his car where the water was.

They showed people running in a race across death valley followed by an entourage of other people spraying them with water. They run through this extreme land to win a race. One of the people they talked to had already won the race twice. Wouldn't once be enough?

I kept asking, Why? Why would anyone even want to do this? And I kept getting no real answer. It is truly amazing that people would choose, willingly, with their logical, thinking, advanced human brain to do such things. Just to prove they can do it. They must live with a sense of immortality. Nothing can happen to them. They must live with a need to prove themselves over and over and over. They must always be on the lookout for the exciting that moves beyond the mundane.

The lizards and birds and snakes and fish hide in the ground or the shade. They have one instinct- survival. It makes you wonder why we have lost some of that instinct. It may be the trade-off with the ability to think and make our own free-will decisions. I am sure that most of us have moved away from the best decisions to the dangerous ones many, many times. In the end it may be what truly does separate us from the other animals. We can overcome instinct and common sense to find a good time or to stretch ourselves to new limits.

Rediscovering Pilgrimage
Annie Dillard's pilgrimage at Tinker Creek, actually. I first read this wonderful and amazing book over 30 years ago. It was an eye-opening journey through a year next to Tinker Creek as Dillard meditated on the natural life of the Creek's ecology. I still remember the overwhelming thought as I read it that this sure undermines the romantic and benign view of nature. Death amid overwhelming life. One is not possible without the other.

This is the third time I have read the book and it never fails to amaze and move me.