Radical

 Life has been being lived completely indoors lately. It's hard, not going to lie. Our region is on fire and the smoke is suffocating. I heard this morning they were burning part of Lassen Volcanic National Park to try to save it. That sentence just hurts my heart. 2016 found us at Lassen a few times, it was part of my healing after mom's death and all that 2016 brought. 

The heaviness that this years climate changes have brought are numbing. We are here. I have always clung to the notion that you teach our children to love our outdoor spaces before they can become stewards and activists...obviously this model works, for some, but maybe we should have been taking a more radical approach! Maybe my teachers, instead of helping us form an environmental club and doing beach clean ups should have been teaching us about the loss of Hetch Hatchy and the UNSUSTAINABLE harnessing of the Colorado! Maybe they should have taught us about infrastructure and the building of homes in the western part of our country at unsustainable levels! Maybe we should have had true indigenous teachings in school so that we would have learned early to listen to our elders about their knowledge of land stewardship and wild fires!

Do I blame my teachers? No. I had some radical teachers for the time and place. My 7th grade science teacher did help us form that environmental club. She was radicle in many ways. I had another science teacher, Mr. Jacobs my senior year of HS who took us through the eastern Sierras and Death Valley creating awe inspiring nature experiences. He also pulled us over just outside of Lone Pine CA, to what looked like an abandoned town with a derelict building. It was. It was Manzanar. And we sat there as he told us what had happened there. And that it was wrong. That was 1997, it was the first time I had heard of Japanese Internment camps. But I digress.

Is this our new August weather? The season of hiding inside just so that I can breathe a little? I don't know the answers. I don't know what we should do. For today I am turning off the news. My heart hurts for so many around the world. So many women. So many trees. So many.

Read THIS today and yes.

* Donnor Lake last night at sunset after we had to break out of the house from cabin fever.