Tag Archives: nature

#2614

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Laying in the dark of a seaside hotel room, the wild Pacific Ocean eating away at the bluff just beyond and only thin blankets and old wood walls for protection, fear grips me without warning. I feel her like a storm front looming offshore, her presence weighing the stuffy air down around me like she’s watching, like she’s waiting, like she’s as aware of me as I am of her.

Cascadia.

Even as I acknowledge how silly this is, that I’m anthropomorphizing the convergence of tectonic plates (even gendering it!), still I find myself praying into the darkness, Ave Cascadia, full of rage, your sisters in slumber are with thee. Sleep, Cascadia, keep sleeping, at least for one more day…

If we had known about the Cascadia Subduction Zone a thousand years ago, five thousand, ten thousand, would we have worshiped it? Would we have conjured a wrathful goddess of rock and wave as I have, burned offerings to her on the rocky shores of the Pacific Northwest to buy her mercy? And would that belief have conjured her forth? Given her life in truth?

Laying in a rented bed in an aging lodge in the heart of the inundation zone, I can believe it. I feel her out there: Cascadia, crowned in fire; Cascadia, mother of mountains; Cascadia, who swallows the earth in her wrath. Cascadia, whose waves will kill tens of thousands when next she stirs. Who could waken right now and I would be helpless, an insignificant little flea scrambling in the cold, chaotic darkness to reach high ground in time.

I am always aware of Cascadia. Here in the dark, with the waves crashing just yards away, it’s hard not to feel like she’s just as aware of me.

#2612

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Sometimes I want to gather the rocky, pine-strewn mountains of northern California into my arms and croon, I do not blame you, oh land of my birth. I would hold them close like a parent aged fragile as a babe and swear, This was not your fault. You did not cause him to be taken from me, though it was in your heights the ending began. We are connected, even if this place is not the one that raised me, and our relationship should be one of love, not regret. I would sing to the scrub jays and coyotes, whisper tales to the granite boulders, lull the sun to slumber a little longer and hold off the day’s heat. Let there be peace between us, I would ask of those peaks. Your picturesque vistas will always hold as many joyful memories as painful; I will try to remember the beauty before and not the disaster which followed.

#2611

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For eight thousand years and more we have served the gods wine
sweet and bitter, rich and tart
vines and variants perfected across continents and civilizations.

Yet soon we will have only wine tasting of wildfire ash to offer our most sacred divinities
will pour them smoke-tainted vintages bottled during years when we never saw the stars
and the sun rose red as blood each dawn.

Before we know it, we will not even have that to give
our millennia of legacy lost to a century’s folly;
will the gods still answer our prayers then?

#2591

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Lungs full of wildfire smoke, I toss and turn in a bed of microplastics and dream of stream-filled glades paved over decades before I was born. I see the land that raised me as it must have been five hundred years ago, untouched by manifest destiny’s bulldozers, a version of that beloved place so long dead we have lost even the memory of its ghosts. I wonder: How do we guide the living through the death of everything they have ever known? How do we prepare ourselves to lose all we have loved and fought for? 

And then She is screaming with the voices of ten thousand extinct creatures, WHAT WILL IT TAKE FOR YOU TO CHOOSE LIFE? Her howling reverberates through my bones as I watch apocalypse spread across the globe like wildfire, scouring land and sea to bare rock. NO MORE CHANCES, She rages, and the planet fissures open along seismic scars. NO MORE MERCY, She wails, and whole continents of crust break apart like a cracked egg to spill Earth’s molten core amongst the stars. NO MORE, Gaia seethes. No more greed. No more cruelty. No more Mother Nature balancing our impact with her adaptability. It ends here. 

After, staring into the midnight dark, I think: Could I be a death doula to a dying planet? 

#2583

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The red grains of sand remember a time when they were still cliffs being worn slowly away by the winding river, and because the rivers are hers so the sands are hers. The monoliths remember a time when the waves of a vast inland sea gently deposited the rich sediments from which they were born, and because the seas are hers so the monoliths are hers. There are no wolves here but there are bony coyotes with their lolling tongues and clever grins, and so the coyotes are hers. There are no crows here but there are turkey vultures hunched in their fine black drapery and drifting high on invisible thermals, and so the turkey vultures are hers. This land is not the ancestral home of her people but her children are here and so she is as well: in the golden moon hanging low over dry creek beds, in the coiled curves of the waiting serpent, in the beautiful cacti with their long, deadly spines. And she is in the first rains of autumn which bring vital nourishment and a reprieve, however brief, from the daily struggle to survive.

#2577

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Ave Cascadia

Hail Cascadia, full of rage,
your sisters in slumber are with thee.
Dreadful art thou amongst disasters,
and dreadful is the fruit of thy wrath, tsunami.
Holy Cascadia, Mother of Mountains,
have mercy on us mortal creatures
now and at the hour of your waking. 
Amen.

#2550

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Paguridae

what a pink-fleshed thing I am
all soft meat and squinting eyes
flinching at every sudden sound

out in the world I am horribly exposed
clothes offer no comfort from others’ perception
buildings no shelter from the world’s ugliness

only in my home biome am I safe
armored by evergreens and blackberries
secure in my shelter of seawater and songbirds

yet as glaciers melt and wildfires rage
and every day the chainsaws close in
I feel the cracks in my shell spreading

#2485

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I carry the Disaster Dead with me always: Okawa’s precious children, lost to the waves; Pompeii’s huddled masses, lost to the ash; Titanic’s frozen passengers, lost to the cold. And more, so many more taken by pandemics, hurricanes, heatwaves, earthquakes, wildfires, famine. The burden of their unnecessary deaths is a reminder of the necessity of knowledge. Knowledge empowers the uninformed. Knowledge prepares the vulnerable. Knowledge saves lives that might otherwise fall to preventable, or at least mitigable, forces. There are no natural disasters, after all, only natural hazards exacerbated by human action – or inaction. Okawa’s children did not have to die within reach of high ground. Texans did not need to freeze in their homes. The west coast does not have to burn every summer for longer and longer periods until “fire season” becomes a meaningless phrase.

The Disaster Dead are also a reminder of my own self-ordained responsibility to ensure the people of my homeland do not share a similar fate, that we do not doom ourselves to repeat the past simply because we refuse to learn from its most painful lessons. What else can soothe the wailing of the Disaster Dead? What else can truly honor their memory? Never forget is a trite, passive promise when our historical knowledge stretches back thousands of years. We never forgot the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, but what good did that do us in 2020? Never again is the promise we must make and uphold as a global society. Never again should we allow greed to outweigh the common good. Never again should we ignore experience or science in favor of ignorance. And never again should we allow the loss of lives we could have saved with care, dedication, and preparation.

I carry the Disaster Dead with me always. Some speak louder than others, and some may have come to me sooner, but I carry them all. I mourn them, I honor them, and I try my best to uphold my vow to them – never again.

#2484

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In the end it isn’t Cascadia who comes to me at all but her mother Gaia, she whose incandescence alchemizes stone into liquid, birthing a great fiery ring of volatile children. She watches with pride as they shape the landscape of her body through sudden cataclysms and eons-long processes deep within her crusts. Cascadia, Mariana, Tahoma, Krakatoa, Mazama, how they rend the brittle earth, how they sink cities beneath waves and raze them with mudflows! How they shake the very planet when they unleash their full energy! It has taken humanity thousands of years to determine how her children work such miracles and disasters, but Gaia does not mind. There is still much for them to discover about the tectonic mysteries of subduction, collision, and volcanism, still so many scientific revelations awaiting those who best understand and truly respect the awesome might of her geologic offspring. That respect serves mankind well, at least when they are willing to listen to something besides their own greed. And when they are not… well, her children are there to act in Gaia’s honor and remind mortals by whose grace they reside on her creation.

New Zine – “turn to geology on your deathbed”

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My 8th zine is here to rock your world! “Turn to geology on your deathbed“ is full of poetry, prose, and hand-drawn art celebrating the nature and lamenting our role in its destruction. Topics include geology, nature, disasters, climate change, environmental justice, and the burden of being alive in such a dark time. The work here is filled with grief, rage, awe, hope, and responsibility.

As always, you can find physical and digital versions of my zines in my Kofi shop! Physical copies are just $5 plus shipping and digital versions are free/pay-what-you-want.

https://ko-fi.com/onlyfragments/shop

#2483

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After a night spent tossing and turning, grieving the endless noise of humanity and the oppressive heat of summer, the pale September dawn extends a peace offering of thin fog hovering over dewy fields dotted by stands of evergreens and clusters of sleepy cows. This isn’t quite reconciliation – evening traffic will still clog the city’s arteries with exhaust fumes and once white-capped mountains are still disturbingly barren – but perhaps it can serve a noble purpose anyway. Whether it’s a true promise of approaching autumn or only the last vestiges of that dying liminal season, soon to go the way of Tahoma’s dwindling glaciers, I take the gift for what it’s worth and tuck it behind my sternum for safe keeping. Some future night when I’m half mad with mourning all we’ve ruined in the name of progress I’ll pull this memory out and wrap it ’round myself like a blanket, breathing in the scent of damp soil until I finally fall asleep.

#2482

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Bees bob between moss-covered statues in Gaia’s forest garden, big fat bumblebees and tiger-striped honeybees all fuzzy as dandelion puffballs. Globs of golden pollen weigh down spindly legs so they must beat their translucent wings like mad to stay aloft in the warm spring air. I hold my arms out and they gladly alight upon me by the hundreds, settling onto skin and clothing and hair; they’re light as feathers to my sturdy human frame, just ticklish as they explore this unfamiliar blossom. The bees’ droning floods my mind and vibrates down to my bones until it drowns out every dark thought, eases every tensed muscle, even soothes my aching heart. I’m one with the colony and in harmony with the secluded garden around me. I carry this precious gift from the goddess with me when I wake, the memory of bees drifting lazily through beams of sunlight like giant dust motes a balm for my weary soul when I need it most.

#2442

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You wax so poetic about the lives of cities, how hot pavement swells with each behemoth breath, subway arteries rushing with electric lifeblood; look at Paris and New York, Rome and Sao Paulo, oh what ancient beasts of civilization! Yet even the oldest cities are naught but animate skeletons, great slabs of concrete death laid out upon the graveyard of a once living land. You want real sentience? You want a consciousness so vast its leviathan architecture is incomprehensible to your human mayfly mind? Go to the country. Go to the wilds. Go to the green growing places where man has yet to fully intrude, where you can be surrounded by things which exist only for themselves and not your convenience or society’s continuity. Walk out into the fields at night; feel the weight of the darkness on your shoulders like a raptor descending, the cool serpentine scales of the silence as it brushes against you. Stare up at the sharp, distant stars which scorn to shine on the polluted corpse-cities and sense like all prey animals the true primordial awareness boring into you. Understand for the first time how very small and fragile and fleeting you are, here among the collective consciousness of a wilderness untamed. The city can kill you just as easily, of course, but when you die in the country they’ll never find your body.

#2425

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I thought Tsunami would be a feral thing, silt between her teeth and gasoline rainbow hair tangled with fishing nets, distorted siren wail vomiting toxic black sludge. She’s frenetic, ravenous, a cataclysmic Charybdis, right? But Tsunami was scoured clean when I met him, a china-white skeleton in black robes like a Buddhist monk’s. Such silence in the sockets of that rictus face, such stillness, such unwarranted serenity! We look the same beneath, he told me, and I saw that I too had rotted down to fragile paper crane bones. The revelation did not disturb me; it was comforting to be done with the meat and its attendant miseries. We did indeed look identical, Tsunami and I. Just two skeletons clad in black, smiling through eternity.

#2358

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One thing I didn’t expect when I began working with the Morrigan is how many forms Her messengers can take. I have always loved Her dark-winged children, of course, and their presence brings me great comfort and strength. Crows have been a constant in my life since I was a babe; my first word was even “caw!”. Yet I’ve learned over time that they aren’t Her only children. The Morrigan also utilizes other local birds as messengers and omens. Early in my devotion to Her I began finding feathers, but not just crow feathers. I found soft little striped owl feathers, long pink-hued northern flicker feathers, and sleek seagull feathers the color of ocean storms. I came across fragile robin eggshells and abandoned nests. Even more startling, I began spotting birds I had never seen in my part of the state before. At work I sometimes glimpse a California scrub jay who lives in some tree nearby. Driving home I was once accompanied for a time by a huge raven who glided low over my car and disappeared into the forest behind my neighborhood. And while I often spot red tailed hawks hanging out alongside the highway (courtesy of the Netjeru) or bald eagles soaring high in the summer sky (courtesy of my father), I also recently spotted a huge osprey on the hunt for a snack. Each feather, each glimpse of a wing or sharp beak, is an honor and a reminder of the Morrigan’s presence and power. You start to recognize which birds are Her messengers for you and which aren’t, but it’s important to keep an open mind. All the winged creatures of the sky can be Hers.

New job!

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It’s late June and I’m cleaning out my desk… throwing away old papers… saying my goodbyes… but not because school’s out. It’s because…

I’m changing jobs!

See, for as long as I can remember I have been obsessed with disasters, both manmade and natural. I watched Twister religiously as a kid and was supremely disappointed that I was born eight years too late to witness the famous 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens. If asked what historical event I would most want to go back in time to experience, I could never pick between the sinking of the Titanic or the destruction of Pompeii. Pompeii would probably win out, though, because geology is the coolest of the hard sciences.

This is me as both a witch AND a geoscience major.

My obsession with disasters is formed of equal parts horror and fascination: horror because these events prove how quickly and completely our human-centric world can be reduced to rubble; fascination because their scale and power are frankly awe-inspiring, especially if you understand the forces at work. Disaster movies might take some scientific and artistic liberties, but they still offer insight into how fucking terrifying the earth can be.

 

I say all this because emergency management is my passion and finally, after six years in a different career field, I’ve found my way back! Starting this week, I’ll be working for my state’s Emergency Management Division as an Emergency Management Program Specialist to, and I quote, “provide professional level emergency management and public education assistance in implementing the statewide Tsunami/Earthquake/Volcano program.”

HOW FUCKING COOL DOES THAT SOUND??

They’re gonna pay me actual money to talk about natural disasters! And science! And emergency preparedness! Those are like my favorite things!! I’m just so excited that it almost doesn’t feel real. This is literally my dream job. I can’t even.

Actual footage of other people (left) versus me (right) during a disaster.

#2231

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I have watched the moon rise over blue-white mountains
and the sun set in a pool of glittering fire
yet still you are most beautiful

I have listened to water falling through green canyons
and thunder quaking in the bruised sky
yet still you are most beautiful

I have tasted cold, clear water fresh from glacial streams
and ripe blackberries warmed in the sun
yet still you are most beautiful

I have smelled the sharp salt scent of low tides
and the perfume of apple blossoms on the wind
yet still you are most beautiful

I have touched the rough bark of ancient redwoods
and stones formed deep in the earth’s core
yet still you are most beautiful
yet still you are most beautiful

#2182

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Embracing Apocalyptic Fatalism, or:  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

There’s no point in beating around the bush by crafting a poetic opening statement, so I’ll just say this as bluntly as possible: the world is fucked. We’re simultaneously dealing with climate change, mass extinction, deforestation, mass shootings, bigotry, war, political corruption, deadly diseases, genocide, poverty, famine, terrorism, potential nuclear annihilation, totalitarianism, and fascism, and those are just the things that came to my mind in like thirty seconds. Each of those topics has an overwhelming number of smaller but equally horrible subtopics which might come spilling out like maggots from a carcass if you poke the wrong spot with a stick.

…I’m not really selling you on this particular essay, am I. Okay, forget the roadkill analogy and just focus on the fact that we – “we” being almost any living creature on the planet with more than a single cell – are pretty fucked. The last few years have shed an especially harsh light on the course of humanity’s future as we’ve watched history repeat itself in ways we thought would never happen again. Genocide? Still happening. Putting people in concentration camps? Yep, that too. Racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, Islamophobia, anti-semitism? Alive and doing very well for themselves. Actual, literal Nazis? Fuckin’ everywhere. What I’m saying is, here at the pinnacle of human achievement we’re still struggling with the toxic byproducts of a fanaticism that seems inherent to our very species. We destroy everything we touch.

So how do we cope with this? How do we go about our day knowing that at any moment there are people being killed for their beliefs, billions of animals trapped in factory farms, ancient Amazonian trees being bulldozed and burned? It’s really fucking hard, I know, and everyone copes differently. Some people find energy in being angry; some sink into depression; others dedicate every hour they possibly can to signing petitions and attending rallies. But if none of those options are working for you in the long term, good news! I’m here to tell you about my new life philosophy: apocalyptic fatalism!

What’s apocalyptic fatalism, you ask? It’s the belief that we as a species have gone past the point of no return, meaning we have little to no chance of stopping the issues listed above – especially, at least in my humble opinion, climate change and its associated Bad Shit. Apocalyptic fatalism means we’re fucked, and that we fucked over every other living thing too. It means accepting the world (as we know it, at least) may actually end in our lifetimes. It doesn’t purport to know the how of things, only that the when is much closer than we’d like to believe. We are in trouble now.

If you’ve never heard about apocalyptic fatalism, that’s because I made it up!

See, in the two years since Trump (*gag*) was elected, I’ve tried coping. Anger only works for me in short bursts, though, and the well of depression is already up to my chin. Part of me wants to hide in apathy, but I’m too empathetic to ignore all the living creatures suffering right now. So anger is fleeting, depression is dangerous, and apathy is a betrayal. What I have instead found long-term comfort in is… acceptance. Acceptance that humanity is a cancer on this planet, no matter how much good we do on an individual level. Acceptance that we might really have gone too far this time, and maybe now there’s no going back. Acceptance, in short, that we might have already started the apocalypse and on an individual level there’s not much we can do to stop it. Doesn’t that lift a weight off your shoulders? Think about it; our generation doesn’t have to save the world because it can’t be saved in the first place. We can only do damage control on the way down.

That’s horrible! you’re probably thinking. How can you give up like that? That makes you part of the problem! But that’s the bittersweet beauty of this philosophy: it’s not about giving up. You don’t have to stop being a force of good in the world just because you know your efforts won’t change everything for everyone. You can do good for good’s sake, make a difference on the micro scale instead of the macro, all you want. But when those little bits of good get overshadowed by all the horrible things you have literally no ability to stop, apocalyptic nihilism tells you it’s okay to let them go. If you have to buy a plastic water bottle one day, it’s okay; your one guilty purchase is nothing compared to what those in power are doing to the environment. If you buy something to lift your mood instead of donating that money to a charity in need, that doesn’t make you an inherently bad person contributing to the downfall of humanity. The world is ending – buy the damn book, eat the damn doughnut, use a damn plastic fork once a year. It’s okay. Your guilt and anxiety help no one.

Read that again. Your guilt and anxiety help no one. Apocalyptic fatalism frees you from the responsibility of saving the whole damn world, a burden millennials and Gen Y/Z have felt acutely since birth. We inherited a shitstorm and we know the generation before us doesn’t, for the most part, really care about the future. In fact, they seem determined to fuck it up as much as possible. We feel, therefore, that it’s up to us to save the oceans and the national parks and the atmosphere and human rights and freedom and science and… the list goes on and on. But you know what? We didn’t start this war and we can’t end it.It’s just too big. It’s just too entrenched. So do what you can for the world – but take care of yourself too. If the end is extremely fucking nigh, then every moment is unbelievably precious. Don’t waste them worrying.

#2180

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I am no wanderer. I feel no desire to travel far from home, to visit foreign lands or step foot on other continents. I am happy in the same state, the same rainy peninsula, the same ten mile radius of forest and water where I grew up and which I still call home. This place is where I want always to return at the end of the day and I ask no more than that. As I said, I am no wanderer. I am no wanderer, yet the land around me has changed so that I feel lost in this alien landscape. Forests razed to make way for shopping centers; picturesque waterfront blocked by million-dollar homes. Storefronts sit empty while commercial building continues to churn out box stores and parking lots and cheap cookie-cutter housing. The nights aren’t as dark, the stars aren’t as bright. Every season seems hotter and drier than the one before. Where am I? I did not leave my home, yet neither do I recognize this place.

#1923

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We anthropomorphize what we do not understand and deify what we fear. Perhaps, therefore, I should call this terror and awe Cascadia and give it a name, a form, a realm to rule. Grand Cascadia, She Who Slumbers Uneasily, She Who Builds Mountains and Destroys Cities. Ancient Cascadia, who sleeps beneath the earth’s crust and whose every toss and turn rattles the land above. Cruel Cascadia, whose laughter stirs tsunamis, whose anger detonates stratovolcanoes and sends shockwaves of destruction through two thousand miles of rock and earth. I see her body made of the fine silt of the ocean floor; her eyes glow the hot white of magma; her hair is ash and smoke and seaweed and minerals. She is a uniquely Pacific Northwest goddess, one link in the great ring of fire through which she and her sisters transform the world.

It is tempting, I’ll admit, to hand the fear of what I cannot control over to a deity I can at least implore. I could light red candles in her honor and leave her offerings of seashells, saltwater, Mt. St. Helens ash. Beneath her altar I could store flashlights and emergency rations. I could write songs and poems for her, about the people she has killed already and those she will kill in the future. I could, I could, I could – but what good would it do? Even if Cascadia were a true goddess, she would not be swayed by offerings or pleading. She would be something more terrifying than Kali and more uncontrollable than Sekhmet, something that gloried in death even more than Inanna or the Morrigan. There would be no appeasing her. She would only sleep, wake, slaughter, and sleep to wake and kill again. All the prayer in the world could not reckon with her, and when she next wakes her death toll will be in the hundreds of thousands.

Sleep, Cascadia. Sleep.

#1880

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yesterday the anger was
a molten core, pressure building
praying for eruptiontoday the depression is
a granite pluton hard and cold
yielding to erosion

–

maybe Yellowstone will redeem us
before we can do too much damage;
you know, wipe the slate clean, hit restart on
this whole “life” business

foolish man, to think nature
does not always hold the trump card;
they ignored the signs in Pompeii too
but hey, at least they’re famous

turn to geology on your deathbed
it is the only science that can save you