Summer Solstice Edition, 2008

Summer's Fruitfulness

This year the spring and summer rains have been so heavy through America's midsection that flooding is at record levels. From Southern China, we hear from Dawn's son Harrison that three weeks of virtually non-stop torrential rain on top of the recent earthquake -- one that affected many people even far from the region of immediate impact -- has left people feeling depressed and hopeless.  Everywhere, food prices are going up as floods prevent planting or drown crops.  Yet here in New Mexico, the acequia waters have dried up now that winter's snows have melted away, and the pastures are dusty and windswept.

It's easy to look at these extremes and wonder what's happened to summer.  Summer is supposed to be that time of year when we see the future bud into ripening promise literally before our eyes.  Where is the bounty of food the land provides for its children each year?  What of summer when there is too much rain or sunshine?  Or not enough?

I am struck when I compare what's going on with the cultivated crops we humans grow, compared to all the wild plants that are quietly going about their business regardless of weather "excesses."  These plants have the wild stamina and the range of variation within their populations that allow some individuals to grow and thrive even when others can't. They are more opportunistic because they don't depend on humans to plant them to begin with;  they depend on winds and animals to plant their seeds, and they grow when the conditions are right for them -- not when a human decides it's time because of the market.

There may be fewer wild flowers this year in places of drought or flood, for the bees, hummingbirds, butterflies, moths, and other creatures that feed from them and carry out pollination for the flower at the same time.  But there will be flowers -- sooner, later, or around the margins of where they bloomed last year.  And the creatures who depend on them will simply adjust their own populations to accommodate -- laying fewer eggs, moving on sooner, or visiting other flowers that are more abundant this year.  Where there's less grass or foliage this year, the deer, elk, and bear will roam more widely and spread out more from each other so they can get enough to eat anyway.  It's what our domestic animals would do if they could, if they weren't contained by fences.

Comparing what's happening this year during a time of weather extremes, in the world of humans and in the world of the wild, leads us to see the Land's wisdom in this regard as unusually meaningful -- even, one might say, abundant and fruitful.

In a time of changing environmental conditions, we would do well to learn from what wilderness remains available to us.  For the Land, Summer is still a time of fruitful abundance.  Only this year, what we may need to harvest, more than anything else, is wisdom itself.

President Letter

Linda Hogan Addresses the United Nations

Summer's Fruitfulness

Summer Photographs by Carol

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