Bryan, Thanks for sharing this update. My brother-in-law, John Snell, has reported how the community has pulled together, but still, the recovery will take months. Also, I agree with your thoughts on the longer term issues.
As you know, John and Liz are often in the thick of our community, Dale. We are indeed pulling together -- but I agree: recovery will take months, if not longer.
Your thoughtful ramble is a gift, for which I am grateful, Bryan. Thank you for stepping aside, for making time to create a story that brings us along and offers us a seat in your canoe, glimpses of a place, your place, turned upside down. I'm achey with you at the thought of the residual fear, of rivers and clouds, seen now in ways that perhaps your eyes and those of your town mates have never previously even considered. I'm awed with you at the casual appearance, the hopeful talisman of a swallowtail butterfly flitting and floating above flooded streets. May each step back toward a calmer, more settled place stretch your heart and fill your ever-observant eyes with wonder. Namasté
Very kind of you, David. Thanks so much. I so admire your gentle and perceptive and exuberant eye and mind for nature, captured so well in the force of your written words and in the beauty of your photography.
Thank you Bryan. I have been thinking of you- the pictures of devastation are grim, but ,as usual, Vermonters know how to support each other. What troubles me the most is how little I have heard the words climate change up here. What pleases me the most is the birds, bees, butterflies are all carrying on. I saw the most beautiful Checkerspot I have ever seen. yesterday.
Thanks, Rita. Yes, there is some hope amid all this devastation. As it turns out, where the floodplain took on water during the storm, five days later I noticed a mating pair of Baltimore Checkerspots!
So few people understand the importance of and threats to habitat. Roads, too, especially highways and freeways. In Rob Chaney's book "The Grizzly in the Driveway" he's got one passage about a grizzly wearing a tracker who was repeatedly and over a long period of time deterred from exploring a wider range by the barrier of a highway. (There's a new book, "Traffication," about car-centric culture and how roads in particular devastate nature. I haven't read it yet but listened to this new interview with the author on the War on Cars: https://thewaroncars.org/2023/07/18/108-traffication-with-paul-donald/)
Thank you so much for this, Bryan. I am so, so grateful for the work you do and the way you continue to be present in the world in all its beauties and painful losses.
I can always count on you, Nia, for wisdom ... and book suggestions. Yes, roads! It had indeed occurred to me to mention roads in the essay, but I somehow lost the idea. (Wish I hadn't.) Roads really haven't been ranked high enough among our classic environmental issues, so I'm thrilled to hear of these two titles. (Eek -- and I didn't know about War on Cars. So thanks again!)
The author of that book is a conservation biologist, so you might be glad you waited to write about roads because there is so much to say! And to mourn. And so much that could be easily repaired if most of us changed the way we move around ...
Sending lots of hopes for repair to all out in your area. 🧡
Jul 20, 2023·edited Jul 20, 2023Liked by Bryan Pfeiffer
Really glad to see a discussion of roads as habitat destruction here. Road Ecology is a discipline that should be much better known, esp. at the policy level. Good progress has been made with road crossings, but not nearly enough. I did a three part series on road ecology a couple years back (starts here: https://jasonanthony.substack.com/p/road-ecology) though it should probably be updated. I'll follow up on the leads you've offered here. Thank you.
"Road Ecology" is a great term I hadn't heard before! My book was about walking, walkability, and car-centric culture, so I think about what roads have done to our world *all the time.* Most of my writing on that was in the realm of human communities and health (incredibly destructive), so I'm eager to read your series. "Millions of miles of wounds in other species’ worlds" -- what a perfect way to put it. I live in northwest Montana, and the only institution that's taken wildlife crossings seriously is the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CSKT), who've built several across the highway that runs through their land.
(Also, if you read Ben Goldfarb, I think he has a new book coming out this fall about wildlife crossings.)
Wow, you're a glutton for punishment, Bryan. From blood lithium to the horrors of sugar? I'm sitting on a screen porch in a rough cottage on an island, a few feet from the water, listening to loons and reading escapist fiction...
Road ecology was new to me when I dug into the topic two years ago. As you'll read, there's a road ecology center at UC Davis whose work will no doubt interest you. For me the urge to write and research started with a lifetime of wincing at roadkill. And Barry Lopez's beautiful short essay Apologia, which I taught often to students bewildered by his deep concern for dead animals...
Excited to see what Ben Goldfarb does with the topic.
I should probably update and republish one or more of the road ecology pieces. I think, for example, there's some decent funding for crossings in the Infrastructure bill.
A road ecology center definitely interests me! (I loved that essay of Lopez's. Was that in Orion? I can't remember.) I avoid driving in the dark when possible because my night vision is poor, but I never thought about the risk to animals until a friend told me he avoids driving at night because he doesn't want to risk hurting animals.
I'm curious to see where and how it's used. Mostly right now I see chip-sealing everywhere I go! (Also very keen to see the funding for mine reclamation, which isn't nearly enough but at least acknowledges there's a problem.)
One of the many things I took pride in, with the Company/Corporation I worked for, was their commitment to environmental protections of plant and animal/bird species and of Native American artifacts. Training was done to identify habitats, address seasonal factors and highlight awareness, work was stopped if an unexpected discovery was made. Climate changes impact more than we know, the lessons will keep coming, when will we learn to act accordingly instead of responding only to address the aftermath?
This is heartening. Thanks, Shire. Yes, we have answers, we have solutions. We just don't have the political leadership, the moral leadership to implement them. We have the power to warm a planet, but seemingly no ability to do anything about it. Thanks again for reading and writing.
Thanks, Mim. I might have read "global heating" somewhere before using it, perhaps in The Guardian. Its climate and extinction reporting is extensive and commendable. And it covers nature — birds and bugs and plants and other wonderful living things — better than any daily newspaper I've ever read. In any event, yes, a dire shift indeed.
I don't (yet?) subscribe to The Guardian but read some of its articles as time permits. I'll look for their climate and extinction coverage more often. Thanks.
This is perfect, Bryan, and heartbreaking. It's a clear-eyed, open-hearted note from one of today's countless climate ground zeroes. I love that you took this opportunity to ask your readers to look outward from the floods at the big picture rather than merely looking in with sympathy. Really well written, from stem to stern. And of course, thank you for taking the time to send people my way. I'm honored.
p.s. I'm sure that like me you were moved by your fellow Vermonter Bill McKibben's latest post.
Nailed it! (Soon as I heard this news, I thought of you guys—and awaited this essay.)
Thanks, Brian. Nice to hear from you. We're dry at home, but heartbroken about the rest of our home: Vermont and beyond.
Yes! "Basically, nature suffers most from the ways we eat and buy stuff." and oy.
I do hope to write more on this. (I'll ponder it while walking!)
Bryan, Thanks for sharing this update. My brother-in-law, John Snell, has reported how the community has pulled together, but still, the recovery will take months. Also, I agree with your thoughts on the longer term issues.
As you know, John and Liz are often in the thick of our community, Dale. We are indeed pulling together -- but I agree: recovery will take months, if not longer.
Your thoughtful ramble is a gift, for which I am grateful, Bryan. Thank you for stepping aside, for making time to create a story that brings us along and offers us a seat in your canoe, glimpses of a place, your place, turned upside down. I'm achey with you at the thought of the residual fear, of rivers and clouds, seen now in ways that perhaps your eyes and those of your town mates have never previously even considered. I'm awed with you at the casual appearance, the hopeful talisman of a swallowtail butterfly flitting and floating above flooded streets. May each step back toward a calmer, more settled place stretch your heart and fill your ever-observant eyes with wonder. Namasté
Very kind of you, David. Thanks so much. I so admire your gentle and perceptive and exuberant eye and mind for nature, captured so well in the force of your written words and in the beauty of your photography.
Thank you Bryan. I have been thinking of you- the pictures of devastation are grim, but ,as usual, Vermonters know how to support each other. What troubles me the most is how little I have heard the words climate change up here. What pleases me the most is the birds, bees, butterflies are all carrying on. I saw the most beautiful Checkerspot I have ever seen. yesterday.
Thanks, Rita. Yes, there is some hope amid all this devastation. As it turns out, where the floodplain took on water during the storm, five days later I noticed a mating pair of Baltimore Checkerspots!
So few people understand the importance of and threats to habitat. Roads, too, especially highways and freeways. In Rob Chaney's book "The Grizzly in the Driveway" he's got one passage about a grizzly wearing a tracker who was repeatedly and over a long period of time deterred from exploring a wider range by the barrier of a highway. (There's a new book, "Traffication," about car-centric culture and how roads in particular devastate nature. I haven't read it yet but listened to this new interview with the author on the War on Cars: https://thewaroncars.org/2023/07/18/108-traffication-with-paul-donald/)
Thank you so much for this, Bryan. I am so, so grateful for the work you do and the way you continue to be present in the world in all its beauties and painful losses.
I can always count on you, Nia, for wisdom ... and book suggestions. Yes, roads! It had indeed occurred to me to mention roads in the essay, but I somehow lost the idea. (Wish I hadn't.) Roads really haven't been ranked high enough among our classic environmental issues, so I'm thrilled to hear of these two titles. (Eek -- and I didn't know about War on Cars. So thanks again!)
The author of that book is a conservation biologist, so you might be glad you waited to write about roads because there is so much to say! And to mourn. And so much that could be easily repaired if most of us changed the way we move around ...
Sending lots of hopes for repair to all out in your area. 🧡
Really glad to see a discussion of roads as habitat destruction here. Road Ecology is a discipline that should be much better known, esp. at the policy level. Good progress has been made with road crossings, but not nearly enough. I did a three part series on road ecology a couple years back (starts here: https://jasonanthony.substack.com/p/road-ecology) though it should probably be updated. I'll follow up on the leads you've offered here. Thank you.
"Road Ecology" is a great term I hadn't heard before! My book was about walking, walkability, and car-centric culture, so I think about what roads have done to our world *all the time.* Most of my writing on that was in the realm of human communities and health (incredibly destructive), so I'm eager to read your series. "Millions of miles of wounds in other species’ worlds" -- what a perfect way to put it. I live in northwest Montana, and the only institution that's taken wildlife crossings seriously is the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CSKT), who've built several across the highway that runs through their land.
(Also, if you read Ben Goldfarb, I think he has a new book coming out this fall about wildlife crossings.)
Oh, I gotta get through Ulbe Bosma's magnum opus on the horrors of sugar (six centuries worth) so that I can read about roads! :-)
So much damage to catch up on 🫠
Wow, you're a glutton for punishment, Bryan. From blood lithium to the horrors of sugar? I'm sitting on a screen porch in a rough cottage on an island, a few feet from the water, listening to loons and reading escapist fiction...
Road ecology was new to me when I dug into the topic two years ago. As you'll read, there's a road ecology center at UC Davis whose work will no doubt interest you. For me the urge to write and research started with a lifetime of wincing at roadkill. And Barry Lopez's beautiful short essay Apologia, which I taught often to students bewildered by his deep concern for dead animals...
Excited to see what Ben Goldfarb does with the topic.
I should probably update and republish one or more of the road ecology pieces. I think, for example, there's some decent funding for crossings in the Infrastructure bill.
A road ecology center definitely interests me! (I loved that essay of Lopez's. Was that in Orion? I can't remember.) I avoid driving in the dark when possible because my night vision is poor, but I never thought about the risk to animals until a friend told me he avoids driving at night because he doesn't want to risk hurting animals.
And yes, I believe the infrastructure bill had quite a bit of funding for crossings: https://wildlifemanagement.institute/brief/august-2021/senate-passes-infrastructure-bill-funding-wildlife-crossings-natural
I'm curious to see where and how it's used. Mostly right now I see chip-sealing everywhere I go! (Also very keen to see the funding for mine reclamation, which isn't nearly enough but at least acknowledges there's a problem.)
Your post is heading to my Kindle, Jason. Looking forward to reading it.
One of the many things I took pride in, with the Company/Corporation I worked for, was their commitment to environmental protections of plant and animal/bird species and of Native American artifacts. Training was done to identify habitats, address seasonal factors and highlight awareness, work was stopped if an unexpected discovery was made. Climate changes impact more than we know, the lessons will keep coming, when will we learn to act accordingly instead of responding only to address the aftermath?
This is heartening. Thanks, Shire. Yes, we have answers, we have solutions. We just don't have the political leadership, the moral leadership to implement them. We have the power to warm a planet, but seemingly no ability to do anything about it. Thanks again for reading and writing.
Thank you for putting it all in perspective for us, Bryan. I hope you and yours stayed safe in the flood.
We're lucky -- safe and dry. Hope you are as well, Lené!
You are the first person I've read who uses the term "global heating" instead of "global warming." It is a dire shift in understanding, isn't it?
Thanks, Mim. I might have read "global heating" somewhere before using it, perhaps in The Guardian. Its climate and extinction reporting is extensive and commendable. And it covers nature — birds and bugs and plants and other wonderful living things — better than any daily newspaper I've ever read. In any event, yes, a dire shift indeed.
I don't (yet?) subscribe to The Guardian but read some of its articles as time permits. I'll look for their climate and extinction coverage more often. Thanks.
This is perfect, Bryan, and heartbreaking. It's a clear-eyed, open-hearted note from one of today's countless climate ground zeroes. I love that you took this opportunity to ask your readers to look outward from the floods at the big picture rather than merely looking in with sympathy. Really well written, from stem to stern. And of course, thank you for taking the time to send people my way. I'm honored.
p.s. I'm sure that like me you were moved by your fellow Vermonter Bill McKibben's latest post.
Oh, gosh -- thanks, Jason. You've made my day. (Yeah, quite a post from McKibben, including the reflection on his own efforts.)