In the autumn of 1996, my daily walk to school took more than an hour, but I didn’t mind. It brought me from the shores of Ramsey Lake in Sudbury, Ontario, through a bright birch forest where everything was whishy and dappled and stripy-white. Blueberry bushes lined the path.
A birch tree alone is a beautiful thing, stark against the darker trees, but a whole forest of birch monoculture is matched in its strange artificiality only by the eerie verticality of a bamboo forest.
Artificial it was. Before they raised the smokestacks in 1972, the local nickel mine’s activities had rained sulphuric acid on the local lakes until all the native vegetation was gone. The place was like a moonscape.
After twenty years it had regenerated to the point where plants that loved acidic soil – birch and blueberries – had begun to thrive. But still the fish stocks were depleted and the Common loon, whose 30-year lifespan makes for slow reproduction, was still limping back into residence.
A little loon goes a long way, though, and I can still bring to mind the avian voice that projected across the lake most nights. I could write its call on sheet music if I knew the notation for quarter-tones. Continue reading
3 – 7 February
If you were a kid in the eighties in California, you might have done things like this: Save the bathwater and flush the toilets with it. Turn off the shower when you soaped up. Let it mellow. You might have even had a Rube Goldberg-like contraption like the one my dad made to use water from the washing machine for the plants. Maybe, like me, you got embarrassed when you saw the signs that read “Save Water. Shower with a friend!” We were all drought experts then. In my freshman dorm, my roommate even policed other people’s sinks while they brushed their teeth.
January 27 – 31