What if “highly irregular” becomes the new regular?

The good news is I wasn’t in the midst of yard chores, or standing in a river waving a stick, when the down pour let loose. A few rumbles of thunder, but no lightning that we saw, accompanied the rain. If I had been wading, I probably would have to have fallen into the river to get any more wet than the  “showers” would have left me. Then, it was all over in ten minutes or so. Will there be more today? Who knows? Certainly not the meteorologists who cover themselves in glory with a forecast that includes “isolated thundershowers” or “scattered thunderstorms.” 

our wildflower meadow, late June 2024

Photo by J. Harrington

At the moment, there are no rain events in the 10-day forecast, except for today. The (abnormally) wet weather we’ve had so far this summer created some beautiful patches in the fields behind the house. [see above.] To paraphrase a line from an old Tom Paxton song, “I can’t help but wonder where I’m [it’s] bound.” After all the years we’ve lived here and let much of the property enjoy benign neglect, this summer’s rain has transformed the fields from scraggly grass and sedges into wildflowers and/or weeds, depending on your perspective. What will be growing next year and where are this year’s mulleins? [Until today, I had no idea that mullein has so many medicinal uses.]

Some of us suspect that what we’re seeing this year may be the results of intermittent seedings over the years finally getting enough water to trigger germination. If that’s the case, and we refuse to install an irrigation system, will next summer provide only scruffy grass again? Last summer the extended drought triggered massive fields of yellow flowers in several local wetlands. So far this year, we’ve seen no sign of them but the season’s not over yet.

All of this makes me wonder what life may be like if the “new normal” doesn’t provide regular patterns and rhythms as much as it offers persistent inconsistencies in weather.

Characteristics of Life

Camille T. Dungy
1972 – 

^{A fifth of animals without backbones could be at risk of extinction, say scientists.
—BBC Nature News}

Ask me if I speak for the snail and I will tell you
I speak for the snail.
                          speak of underneathedness
and the welcome of mosses,
                                        of life that springs up,
little lives that pull back and wait for a moment.

I speak for the damselfly, water skeet, mollusk,
the caterpillar, the beetle, the spider, the ant.
                                                        I speak
from the time before spinelessness was frowned upon.

Ask me if I speak for the moon jelly. I will tell you
                        one thing today and another tomorrow
        and I will be as consistent as anything alive
on this earth.

                        I move as the currents move, with the breezes.
What part of your nature drives you? You, in your cubicle
ought to understand me. I filter and filter and filter all day.

Ask me if I speak for the nautilus and I will be silent
as the nautilus shell on a shelf. I can be beautiful
and useless if that's all you know to ask of me.

Ask me what I know of longing and I will speak of distances
        between meadows of night-blooming flowers.
                                                        I will speak
                        the impossible hope of the firefly.

                                                You with the candle
burning and only one chair at your table must understand
        such wordless desire.

                                To say it is mindless is missing the point.

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