More dots to connect

I imagine, and hope, that most of you are familiar with this quotation from Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac :

“There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot.”

(If you haven't yet read that grand and glorious and sensible book, please put it on your "to do" list for the near future.) As another one who cannot live without wild things, I've recently noticed that it's more and more of a challenge to find places that can be shared with them. I even have pictures to prove it.

When we moved into our current house many years ago, the "ridge" at the south end of the road was undeveloped. It was occasionally visited by sandhill cranes who foraged along the side of the "ridge." Later, just prior to the "great recession," development began on the top of that "ridge," shortly after sewer and water were extended to accommodate a major industrial development nearby. Following the custom of those developers who name subdivisions for what they eliminate, the development is called "Wilderness Ridge."

a residential subdivision, rural "progress"

Photo by J. Harrington

You probably remember how residential development pretty much tanked several years ago, during the great recession. The ridge top sat "empty" for those several years. Cranes, like the one below, occasionally visited the grasslands along the walking / biking path.

a sandhill crane near a hillside path

Photo by J. Harrington

They even followed the mostly unused path themselves from time to time.

three sandhill cranes near the start of the path

Photo by J. Harrington

Within the past year or so, the housing market has started to "come back." The houses below are behind the same tree the crane in the second photo stood beside. As I drove by yesterday, I saw four or five cranes along the path. How much more development do you think will be needed before they look for pastures that are just as green, but less crowded?

new house overlooking the path

Photo by J. Harrington

I'm writing about this not because I'm against development, but because I'm against "growth" as it's come to be accommodated.  The subdivision in question is in the midst of what used to be farm fields, some of which are still in that use. I know how that works. When I first moved to Minnesota, I bought a house in a northern suburb of the Twin Cities. Our lot backed onto the city boundary and on the other side of the boundary was a cornfield. Privacy in the back yard for awhile. That backyard cornfield isn't there any more, just as the "ridge" is no longer anything like a wilderness. And yet, there's still an abundance of ready to be serviced land between the subdivision pictured (and the one I lived in before) and "The Cities." The county in which we now live, where the subdivision is located, is outside the seven-county metro area. The Metro Council regularly prepares regional development plans for the 7-county Twin Cities Metro Area.

Now the Citizens League is undertaking (I hope that's not a prophecy) another study of how well the Council does its job. On behalf of the cranes and the truly rural folks who live near me, I hope the League's study includes lots of emphasis on unintended consequences of "urban growth boundaries" that leak like sieves. [Full disclosure: I worked for the Metro Council for more than a decade, beginning shortly after the first land planning act local plans were submitted.] This is going to become a fascinating issue as the need to respond to climate change becomes more critical and more people learn that the most energy efficient "green" buildings still require lots and lots of energy to get the occupants to and from it. Meanwhile, sandhill cranes keep getting evicted because we allow (not plan for or design) "growth" the world can't support. That might have worked before most of the world's population became "urban" and we began to regularly set new heat records. The time has come when we need much better cities and urban regions, ones that accommodate humans and wildlife with minimal conflicts and even less energy consumption.

Eve's Design

By Moira Linehan 

Then there's the Yemeni legend   

of Eve in the Garden knitting   

a pattern on the serpent's back,   

the snake unfinished like the rest   

of creation, the first woman   

thinking to add design, a sheath   

of interlocking diamonds and stripes   

along that sensuous S,   

knitting giving her time to learn   

what's infinitely possible   

with a few stitches, twisting cables,   

hers a plan to mirror the divine   

inner layer that can't be shed   

no matter what it rubs up against.

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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

Dear Governor Dayton, to "B" corp or not to "B"?

I've been quite pleased to see Governor Dayton's concerns about restoring Minnesota's pheasant population although, for the record, I've always been more of a ruffed grouse and duck hunter than a pheasant hunter. I also understand his concerns about the likely impact of the closed walleye season on Mille Lacs area resorts. In each instance, I think experts would agree, a major part of the problem stems directly from a lack of adequate stewardship of the habitat involved, due, in part, to over reliance on single resource like commodity farming, mining or walleye fishing. That, perhaps, may distinguish Minnesota's walleye and pheasant resource issues from the recent announcements of the catastrophic collapse of the tuna and mackerel ocean fisheries. Or, perhaps they, and we, are all suffering from insatiable greed and incessant demands to harvest more than the resources can provide from diminished ecosystems. Perhaps, also, the same reasoning applies to our insistence that the jobs provided by mining, a notably boom and bust industry with a horrendous environmental and human rights record, are worth the risks to the only natural resource base Minnesota will every have. Under these circumstances, I hope Governor Dayton continues to show a high degree of concern for the long term health of Minnesota's resource base when he's faced with decisions about permitting additional mining activity in northern Minnesota.

a "walleye chop" on Mille Lacs

Photo by J. Harrington

Repeat after me the lyrics from Joni Mitchell's Big Yellow Taxi "Don't it always seem to go, you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone..." I still find it hard to believe that, in the midst of drought and wildfires, California is continuing to allow fracking water to pollute groundwater and irrigate food crops. Do you know when we reached earth overshoot day this year? A little more than a month ago, on August 13. Does that remind you of the poor soul who told his bank that he couldn't be overdrawn because he still had checks left in his checkbook? All of this makes about as much sense to me as last night's Republican "presidential candidate" (really?) debate. So, what's to be done? I have two suggestions today that I think will help now and in the future.

the already polluted St. Louis River

Photo by J. Harrington

First, Minnesota must insist that only adequately capitalized B corporations, or equivalent, are eligible for any non-ferrous mining permits within 500 miles of the BWCAW boundaries. Other types of corporate entities usually have legally binding legal obligations to maximize shareholder value, which puts Minnesota's environment too much at risk it seems to me. Second, we need to revise our environmental impact statement rules and regulations to incorporate the precautionary principle and to require a significant element on risk identification and management in addition to impacts and mitigation. A small risk with a catastrophic impact (Mt. Polley mine disaster anyone?) isn't readily mitigated nor do I believe it conveniently falls under financial assurance requirements as they're written.

I enjoyed yesterday's weather and posting much more than today's, but, when life gives you lemons ...

Making Peace

By Denise Levertov 

A voice from the dark called out,

             ‘The poets must give us

imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar

imagination of disaster. Peace, not only

the absence of war.’

                                   But peace, like a poem,

is not there ahead of itself,

can’t be imagined before it is made,

can’t be known except

in the words of its making,

grammar of justice,

syntax of mutual aid.

                                       A feeling towards it,

dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have

until we begin to utter its metaphors,

learning them as we speak.

                                              A line of peace might appear

if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,

revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,

questioned our needs, allowed

long pauses . . .

                        A cadence of peace might balance its weight

on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,

an energy field more intense than war,

might pulse then,

stanza by stanza into the world,

each act of living

one of its words, each word

a vibration of light—facets

of the forming crystal.

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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.