Daughter 3 and I went hunting for mushrooms today. The flip of a calendar page from April to May
coincides with morel mushrooms pushing through last autumn’s leaf litter to
make themselves available for harvest.
Apparently the ‘shrooms missed the memo about May arriving; in two hours
of walking we found wild ginger and fiddleheads on ferns (two common sights during
morel season) but no mushrooms.
We had a great time together, which is almost impossible NOT
to do when walking in the woods, so this could easily become a “journey is more important than the
destination” kind of writing. It
won’t. I noticed myself moving through
the woods exactly the way I do when I hunt for deer or grouse, silently sliding
through brush one slow step at a time as if the mushrooms might scatter upon
hearing me; could’ve turned this into a dissertation on the need for stealth in
the hunt for all things. Won’t do that
either. No, I blog today about a
misunderstood and destructive enemy to nature – Smokey Bear. My motivation for such a rant? The lone wood tick I found on my shirt this
evening. Confused yet?
Smokey implores us to prevent forest fires while rattling
off statistics about millions of acres this and thousands of dollars that…which
is pretty impressive for a bear. While
Smokey’s intentions (Save the forests!
Save nature!) are honorable, he seems to forget, or ignore, that fire
was a part of nature long before man came along and started using it to burn
everything up. Fire is one of nature’s cleansers,
ridding the forest understory of brush and weeds that choke out desirable
vegetation. The absence of fire clutters
a forest or grassland with dead, dying, and decaying plant matter, all of which
becomes fire fuel and stokes the massive wildfires we see today.
If left unburned, these unhealthy and unsightly tracts of
land become habitat loved by pests such as mice and ticks. Yes, I know – songbirds and small game and
scores of other creatures use the same habitat; back off, already. The number of threatened and endangered
songbirds climbs annually, though, so is the unburned habitat really helping
the birds? And many small game species
are highly adaptable. What really
develops by “preventing” forest fires is not a healthy forest, but a breeding
ground for Lyme disease. Mice carry
it, ticks transmit it. Smokey enables it.
Thanks a lot, Bear.
Ok, I’ll ease up on Smokey while I shift to my true
objective in this writing: to remind myself, and you, valued reader, that no
one thing or action in the world stands alone.
In the timeless words of Chief Seattle, “All things are bound together. All things connect.” We can use the imagery of ripples on the
water from a single stone, the idea of paying it forward, or the simple truth
that Smokey is killing us all with Lyme disease – what we choose to do or not
do has consequences far beyond what we can ever know. The raw power of our every move is…..well,
it’s something. Phenomenal? Daunting?
Overwhelming? Exhilarating?
As we move through life riding the choices we make we can
make those choices from two opposite viewpoints: one that looks inward and one that looks
out. There are times one or the other
may be necessary; which viewpoint do we choose the most? We know the folks who look inward more often
than out. They are the selfish, the
me-firsters, the “what’s in it for me” types who suck from the best but give
nothing to the rest (I’m not sure what that means but it sounds too good to
delete). Like Smokey, they feel
justified in taking care of self first and steering clear of hot spots. They fail to see the interconnectedness of
their actions as they leave an expanse of fire fuel infested with disease after
they take and take and take and never give.
They don’t see themselves as the pebble making waves; they stand on the
shore and complain about the rough water that keeps lapping at their feet.
We also know the visionaries, those who anticipate the
reactions to their actions and see the waves rolling away rather than
towards. The ones who understand some
occasional small fires are healthier than one big blaze, and when the last
flames are squelched can see and foster the healthy new growth that
follows. These are the people who put
self second, third, or even last for the betterment of all, having faith the
process of connectedness will turn one giving gesture into a grand result they
might never see.
Go back and look at the first sentence in this post…..go
ahead, I’ll wait here………now, read the last sentence of the previous paragraph
again. Do the two connect? Not a bit.
Was there a clear path from one to the other? I hope so.
Did I plan this when I wrote that first sentence? Of course…….not. But that's life - an unending tapestry of
actions and results that can be traced from one point to another but not linked
directly. We are the result of the
choices we make, and the choices we make are the result of who we are. We can be the pebble making waves or stand on
the shore and watch the waves roll over us.
Unlike the pebble we have the power to choose where we make our waves,
their intensity, and their direction.
As we begin a new month and the mushrooms refuse to grow,
ask yourself: Am I making waves or
standing on the shore whining about the waves?
Am I “in it” for me or for others?
What were the results of my actions yesterday? Last week?
Last month? How could I make some
waves today? This week? This month?
Is who I am today who I want to be tomorrow? Next week?
Next month?
The future starts right now.
Connect with it. Be sure to check
for ticks when you’re done.
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