The human-made threats like habitat destruction, development, pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, and invasive non native plants, are outside of a butterfly’s adaptability. This is where you and I must step in if we wish to continue the soulful joy of butterflies in the sky.
All the scientific concerns about a changing global climate was as inconvenient as a rattlesnake in a living room — not to mention those pesky rules and regulations that disallowed bold and rampant pollution and the raping of the earth’s forests.
And life’s serendipitous imp flew with me from the California coast to our landing in the Sonoran Desert last October. The objective was to physically heal. I’ve spent the last four months among saguaros, palo verde trees, wild coreopsis blooming next to chaparral and creosote shrubs. The massive structure of the Mayo Clinic outlines the horizon to the east. Westerly is the opened desert where coyotes and rabbits play hide and seek, and concludes my days in neon orange and purple sunsets.
But what nature insists on showing us, just like the flowers I captured during my January walk through the desert, is how nature keeps giving sensual delights despite the constant assault that you and I place upon it. These are simple things that unite us. These a pleasures that we can easily have in common. These are treats that come for free. These leave permanent moments while the effort to divide us is impermanent on every level.
At a time when our 24 hour news cycle broadcasts little joy, the enthusiasm of the volunteers who came to do nothing but pick up other people’s trash and garbage, shed a certain kind of light to blot out all the negative headlines of the day. At our locale, most volunteers were locals— some partnered with a friend or family, and some represented local groups. Visitors from Livermore and San Jose, (both cities about 200 miles north of San Simeon) also joined in the effort to keep our wastes from slipping into the Pacific Ocean.
And our planet’s modifier is in trouble. It’s a Neptune 911 crisis. What can we do to combat our ocean’s struggle with marine debris, hypoxia and acidification? The answers are found in university labs, recognized in world organizations, and ignored by feckless politicians and leaders.
–As seen on Thrive Global by Charmaine Coimbra “Compassion is a more empowered state and more than an empathetic response to […]
Politics aside, my concern over the rollback of national monument designations is the potential (and likely) loss of history, environment and open space — open space that does not include the scars of mining, logging, and drilling.
Spotting scope zeroed in on a nesting female peregrine falcon, director chairs set up for conversation near the base of Morro Rock, it takes less than 15 minutes before a person asks, “Are you Bob?” or says, “Bob, I brought my family to see the falcons.”
“Welcome back,” Bob Isenberg greets, as he readies to share his personal excitement about the recently hatched chicks on a Morro Rock State Preserve ledge. There, a 5-year-old female peregrine falcon (falco peregrinus) that arrived on the Rock three years ago with an ID tag stamped “23R” that tracks her beginnings at the Moss Landing Power Plant, has taken on a life-partner and set up a new eyrie (a bird of prey’s nest), one never used before, as noted on Isenberg’s website pacificcoastperegrinewatch.org.
23R’s arrival joined the only other nesting peregrine on the Rock — an older female that hasn’t produced viable eggs for the last three years, according to Isenberg.
The first California coast cleanup began in the mid-1970s, when an Arcata recycler operated beach cleanups in search of recyclables. Oregon, however, was the first state to organize a state-wide volunteer beach cleanup in 1984, called the “Plague of Plastics.”
