Chapter 168
Ahh, the beauty of our Alberta summer. When I first arrived in Calgary over 30 year ago, I was repeatedly entertained by the locals’ expressions “If you don’t like the weather, wait 10 minutes” and “Yep, you’ll love Calgary, we get four seasons in one day”. Although the weather patterns have altered dramatically over the past three decades, those adages still hold true.
Riding in the mountains in the first week of July this year I noted the wild flowers looked similar to most years’ June foliage, but the height, depth and richness of the green everywhere is far more abundant this season than for many past. While many began to grumble about the rainfall, to me it remains a blessing. It’s such a relief to not be anxiously perusing smoke levels and wondering if I will see the mountains again.
Driving back and forth to the city today at the beginning of a stunningly hot period perfectly timed to exhaust those perambulating the Stampede Grounds amid the annual riot of western cowboyness, I note the impeccable clarity of our mountain air, the stunning edges of the ranges to the west. This is it. This is our glorious southern Alberta at it’s finest.
I wonder how anyone can support the destruction of our few remaining wild forests and wilderness areas, all in the name of the $. There seems to me to be a fundamental disconnect in the desire for continued growth on a finite world. Surely the great minds and highly-paid economists can wrap their heads around the concept of finite? Once it’s gone, it’s gone. Clear-cutting has been shown to be destructive, ineffective, detrimental on so many levels. The streets of Calgary (and other cities) are 2-3 degrees warmer than the surrounding green fields and forests. The urbanization and deforestation of our lands serves to create disharmony, greater danger, more challenges… water shortages! Short-term gains and political posturing avail us nothing as a species for our greater longevity.
Approaching a tripling of the global population in my lifetime thus far is pretty alarming. In this area, the population has quadrupled. Why do countries such as ours feel that we have to increase our population exponentially to be ‘successful’? Surely being largely self-sufficient in ensuring clean fresh water and decent shelter and food for all is a greater success than trying to persuade everyone they should have trinkets, that global commerce represents success? Yes, I know we are embedded so deeply into our current sociological climate that we have rely on the existing infrastructure and status quo to maintain trade with our neighbours. We also need to stand up for ourselves and the integrity of the land, air, and water, not capitulate to ideas and demands totally at odds with logic.
At times I feel so wildly out of sync with ‘the masses’. No, scratch that, most of the time I feel wildly out of sync. I would love to inhabit a world where where people recognise that a featureless lawn is a death sentence of sorts, where children are raised to understand the concept of gardening, animal husbandry rather than exploitation, and social cooperation rather than competition, a land where kids have the answers to ‘where do eggs come from?’ or ‘what is this?’ (a raw potato). An alarmingly high percentate of children couldn’t answer either of those simple questions. Did you know that when the British chef Jamie Oliver (who transformed school meals in the UK) was invited to the States to educate school boards, parents and children, the LA School District attempted to have him incarcerated?
There are pockets of inspiration everywhere, good people all around us pursuing positive objectives and doing their best to pass on good knowledge, skills and life experiences. Yet we /they are frequently subsumed by the overwhelming mountains of effluence the ‘mainstream’ belches out as absolute truths.
Question Authority, a badge my brother wore for years on his lapel… while on mine… Don’t drink and drive, smoke and fly. Advocating alternative thought and practices for decades, both really devolve to the same heinous concept – think for yourself, don’t be one of the ‘sheeple’, do what elevates you and others, to everyone’s greater good.
Heading back to school? Think outside the thought-police’s box that is delivered to your desk each day. Enjoy this tiny wildflower that graces my wilderness ‘lawn’.
In hope,
Kat Dancer
bodymudra@gmail.com 1 415 525 2630 (c)
