CHANGING LANDSCAPES

 

“To have the landscapes of your memory disappear is always disturbing.”  (Prof. John Pomeroy, hydrologist and director of the Global Water Futures program, University of Sask., on disappearing Peyto Glacier within Banff National Park.) 

 

NEAR THE END OF MARCH, up in my neck of the woods, we had an ice storm brought about through the confluence of moisture-laden air and temperatures just at the freezing point. It took everyone by surprise when, after a day of rain, trees burdened with heavy coats of ice began to break under the weight or have limbs crack and fall off. I had gone for a late afternoon walk in a nearby park, and as I walked beneath the maple and elm, spruce and pine trees, every now and then I would hear sharp cracks and then the swishing sound of upper-storied tree branches falling amidst the surrounding trees. I calculated the chances of a particular tree limb breaking off and actually landing on my head was relatively small, so I continued my walk. I finished and returned to my car in the parking lot. As I was getting ready to leave, I heard a loud crack and a forty-foot spruce tree broke off at the trunk, landing across both sides of the road I was about to drive on. Had I left a few seconds earlier I might have ended up underneath! I acknowledged my karmic debt and looked for ways to repay it. (I’m still looking.) MEANWHILE, it was important reminder that the landscape I had had grown accustomed to was different now, with the trees’ silvery glaze  both beautiful and potentially dangerous.

Like everyone else, I marveled at the luster given to evergreens, and how the dark, bare limbs of elms and maples were brightened by the icy syrup coating them.

Of course, there were power outages as trees fell across power lines—my street was without electricity for around thirty-hours, and my car just missed getting hit by a heavy branch in the parking lot where I live. The power outage was a minor inconvenience, followed by several weeks of clean-up afterwards. The nearby park was closed and tree maintenance firms using chain saws and wood-chippers would grind down all the fallen tree limbs. On most city streets there were rows of stacked branches curbside for the city to deal with.

 

THIS MAGICAL CHANGE HAPPENED over a weekend, from one landscape to another, and then back again. Landscapes change sometimes very fast, like with our ice storm, or over eons as mountains and river lands slowly erode, returning once more to the sea. Nature is ever the trickster.

So, my main point is that the places we live in are constantly changing, and we change as well, often struggling, often falling, and at other times basking in a forever Now. But, when things change in a dramatic way, like with ice storms or in our lives, we are roused from our chairs and bend or break with the fashioning landscape we inhabit.

 

CHEERS, JAKE.