John Vaillant’s, “Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World”

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‘Global warming’ and ‘climate change’ have become trigger phrases, hot buttons for millions of Americans. What were originally coined as descriptive, short hands to signify a complex climatological process induced and accelerated by human action, has been thoroughly politicized. Today they separate ‘us’ from ‘them’.

For those on one side, the earth, is a closed, limited and complex system we are ‘pushing’ beyond its inherent abilities to maintain dynamic balance within margins which organisms can live in a vital, healthy state, biological processes continuing in a familiar manner. This ‘side’ understands that we are adding vast quantities of carbon to the atmosphere causing the earth to retain more heat, heat which ‘spins’ the entire system faster, potentially beyond the limits that life evolved with. Such a more ‘carbonized’ atmosphere resembles that here of many millions of years ago, of a warmer earth, that was nonsupportive, too warm, for the vast majority of organisms which exits today. Too much carbon released into the atmosphere? These effects are easily demonstrable in a lab experiment. These people have some understanding of what they must do to slow and halt these changes, what we must do  to ameliorate the damage we’ll inevitably face. Pushed too far the system won’t return to the old ‘normal’ in a few weeks, months or years. It will be with us for generations to come.  Continue reading →

The Gene: An Intimate History, a Review

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I finished reading Siddhartha Mukherjee’s book from 2016, “The Gene: An Intimate History”, a dense, engaging book, written in a prose style, conversational, thorough, accessible and personal, exceedingly rare qualities to find in a book covering such technical topic. Mukherjee, trained and worked as an oncologist, won the Pulitzer Prize for his earlier book on cancer, “The Emperor of all Maladies: A Biography of Cancer”. He is currently an associate professor of medicine at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University. Understood to be the ‘best’, or most complete and thorough history of genetics, our understanding of it and the ethical questions of its increasingly influential applications in medicine, society and evolution. Of such broad scope in the changing landscape of medicine and its science, it has expectedly, become subject to an array of criticisms. The practice of science is not perfect. Our understanding is forever evolving and as much as promoters might insist that theirs is solid and fixed, our knowledge will always be imperfect. We circle around a topic, defining it closer and closer, but never quite understanding it fully, questions leading us to more questions, our knowledge shaped by what we already ‘know’, and very occasionally propose entirely new ways of explaining, new theories, that dislodge previous established theory. Continue reading →

An Immense World: A Review of Ed Yong’s Latest Book

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I’m a member of a natural sciences book group. We all share a mixed range of personal experiences as hikers, Gardners, horticulturists, ecologists, wildlife biologist and a fascination with the natural world. There are always so many good titles to choose from. I’ve written of several in the past. Our current book is Ed Yong’s, “An Immense World”, a look into the senses and perceptions of organisms, to understand how an animal ‘sees’ its world. of course, we can only do this from our own limited, human biased vision heavy view of the world. We should never assume animals ‘see’ the world as we do. Many animals primary sense isn’t vision at all. In this book Yong writes of how even when we share particular sense organs with other animals, our perception is very different. Perception is something beyond the senses. It occurs after sensing, an attempt to make sense of the world around us in a way that works for us with our needs and limitations…It is not the world itself. Perception gives us our personal understanding of the world. It is shaped by the combination of our several senses and our need to understand. In evolution what ‘works’ shapes us. We, the biological we, that is, all organisms, are in turn shaped by the world around us…our bodies, our sense organs and our understanding of the world around us. We are shaped by necessity and possibility. While discussing this Yong writes repeatedly of a species’ and an individual’s ‘Umwelt’, our individual view of the world around US. Each is distinct. Individual and limited, making it near impossible for us to imagine another’s, but this does not give us permission to dismiss that of others…any others. Continue reading →

The Much Maligned Western Juniper: The Role of Juniperus occidentalis in Central Oregon

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Old growth Junipers near Cline Buttes. These two rooted down long ago on top of this lava flow. Much of the lavas here were produced during the Deschutes Formation over many thousands of years more than 5 million years ago. Surface lavas, cliffs and slopes define the area with a few sediment filled basins dominated by Sagebrush and Bitterbrush.

The Western Juniper is the  singular native tree of Dry Canyon and the immediate Redmond area. I grew up with it here in Central Oregon. When we moved here in ’61 i remember driving north, passing through miles and miles of various Pine forests, which eventually yielded, to the Juniper. Riding in our VW bus, leaving Bend, the landscape’s dominant tree, changes abruptly. Bend sits within the ecotone, the relatively narrow transition zone, between Ponderosa Pine forest and Juniper steppe. What were these trees? Coming from California’s Salinas Valley, the landscape could hardly be more different to a six year old. So different in form and detail, Junipers squatted darkly across the landscape, nothing like the tall, majestic Pines or Oaks I was more familiar with or even the Lodgepole Pine we drove through across the pumice plain of the LaPine area. Continue reading →

Two Summers into Our New Garden in Redmond, Oregon’s High Desert Country

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Part of the S’W Arc Garden’ featuring plants from the SW US. My Cupressus grayii Sulphurea showing the damage wrought by a rutting buck last fall. The low berm was created from the material produced by regrading the abrupt drop to the sidewalk. The rock was used here and in back. I also collected a couple tons of rock to use from elsewhere on undeveloped parts of ‘Dry Canyon Village’ and placed an additional almost 20 yds of topsoil.

We’ve just gone through our second summer season in the new garden beginning with a blank slate other than the local weeds. While I grew up here we’d been ‘gone’ in Portland where we lived, worked and gardened between the Fall of ’85 and ’22. It’s a world of difference here three USDA hardiness zones colder where our last two winter’s have subjected us to long Zn 6b conditions, -5F while Portland experienced its far shorter winter and cold down into the mid-teens, which is colder than their new ‘normal’ range of lows which puts them in Zn 9. One of the biggest differences is that in the past rain year, running from Oct. 1 – Sept. 30. we’ve received only 6.66″ of precip around 2.5″ less than our 9″ or so normal. It’s colder here; the growing season is far shorter, yesterday, Oct. 5, we dropped to 30ºF; drier; the wind blows more consistently and the solar radiation is more intense at 3,000′; all of which greatly effect both what you can grow here and how it performs. Gardening ‘know how’ can only get you so far. I’m not really going to get into the deer problem here and it is a problem as we are on the edge of town adjacent to a major Mule Deer wintering area. Anyway, as gardening is always at least a bit of an adventure, these last two have been far more than a ‘bit’. Continue reading →

Origin Story: The Trials of Charles Darwin, A Review

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Evolution, natural selection and Darwin are often triggers for many conservatives. On their announcement people will often enter into angry diatribes which nearly just as often sets off others into a defense of shared ancestors, adaptation and descent, sometimes with a reciprocal attack against a determining role for God. It quickly moves into a polarized argument, one side embracing a christian, all knowing and powerful God who created all things in their particular ‘fixed’ forms, with man in God’s ‘image’, railing against those who would have us descending from monkeys, as if one day a monkey simply ‘birthed’ a modern human, an idea that completely ignores the substance of Darwin’s theory. The public argument seems to remain the same despite the passing of decades with little change, the battle lines firmly established, arguments entrenched. So, it is interesting to read, “Origin Story: The Trials of Charles Darwin”, by medical doctor and author, Howard Markel, which came out earlier this year, 2024. This divisive, get nowhere, pattern was set from the very beginning. Continue reading →

Climate Change and the Limits to Life: a couple reviews and examination

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Not to ‘rain on anyone’s parade’, but walking home last night at 10:30 from a neighbor’s, the air was still, it was 81F and 51% humidity…ugh. Normally, it cools off significantly here in the high desert once the sun goes down. This summer is different.
Today, August 2, we’re forecasted to break 100F again. That will be the 26th day over 90 this year, the ninth over 100F…with less than 1/4” of rain since June 1. I’ve mentioned before that our average high temp for July is 85F. We were at or below that only four days in July.
Our old normals no longer hold. They are shifting consistently higher from year to year. This is happening worldwide. Its effects are greater, and more devastating, at equatorial latitudes and polar.
It is estimated that at or above a wet bulb (W/B) temperature of 35C the human body cannot cool itself. We cool down by evaporating away sweat on our skin surface. W/B temps mimic this by placing a wet cloth sleeve around a thermometer bulb, the evaporation taking away heat in the same way. W/B temps are then cooler, ‘chilled’ by the water evaporating away, drawing heat away from the thermometer’s temperature sensitive bulb, than ‘dry bulb temps. When these rise higher than W/B 35C, our internal organs and systems begin to falter and will fail in relatively short order, depending on our state of health. Some of us will have greater tolerance than others, but all will die at these levels if they have no way to cool their core temperatures. Some argue that this begins happening below this. Many areas are already experiencing such ‘events’. Governments are still slow to act We continue to build out our cities in patterns that maximize energy use and consume resources and products from around the world which must be transported to us, removed from where they other wise occur. Profit driven businesses, still refuse to change their practices and goals, insisting that the market will solve this…the same market that has created the problem…and we ‘demand’ this, these patterns, goods and services, ever more ‘divorced’ from the places we actually live, the limits and constraints with which we’d otherwise have to live.

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Weeds: What We Need to Do at DCVS

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Looking NE from the gate at Northwest Way, other than a handful of juvenile Juniper there is literally nothing native of value across this roughly 9 acre spread. The other two undeveloped phases are equally bad, having a similar mix of weeds.

The question I keep hearing is, ‘What do we do?’ Many, if not most people living here now, have expressed frustration and more about the Dry Canyon Village South, DCVS’s, landscapes, specifically the berm, the mini-parks,  the Circle and the 25+ acres of undeveloped, uncared, for property we share space with. They ask me because they know I cared for Park landscapes, as a field horticulturist, for almost 30 years, Parks which often included natural areas of over 100 acres, to little neighborhood parks and intensively developed and used urban parks in the downtown core. I also haven’t been shy about my criticism of the lack of care, or of even a plan, for the neglected property we are saddled with. Anyone who has cared for a landscape can see the problem here. Leaving disturbed and neglected properties on their own is not a plan and can lead only to their further deterioration and continuing, worsening, ‘weed pressure on the adjacent developed landscapes. Continue reading →

On Healing: Life, Place and Relationship in Oregon’s Great Basin Country

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The massive fault block of Hart Mountain, Poker Jim Rim in the distance to the north. The gravel county road switchbacks up the more than 3,000′ beginning from the center in the distance here. From here this is how you get to Steens Mountain without doing miles of backtracking.

I woke up this morning to the sound of bird song…nothing else. There were Western Meadowlarks and a multitude of others, I’m sorry to say I don’t know, but beautiful and distinct. I was laying in bed, atop our truck, thinking about how rare an event this is for so many of us…not that the birds aren’t here greeting the morning every day, but that so many of us aren’t ‘available’ to hear them, sequestered away safely in our homes, otherwise occupied or, more commonly, the birds literally excluded from our urbanized and ‘modern’ places of residence, their own places developed/destroyed. Entire neighborhoods and cities excluding all but the most common songbirds and passerine species.  Little quarter is afforded most wildlife in modern development…and that upon which their lives depend.  Continue reading →

Weeds, Weeding and the Health of Our Public and Private Landscapes: an example from the ‘hood

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Every gardener is a weeder. Gardens are created landscapes, often expressions of the individual gardener or, lacking of intent and design sense, those of a chosen designer. We live in our landscapes as active, responsible, creators, participants and stewards. Gardeners are trying to create a particular look or to grow particular plants native to their area, or with ornamental value or food plants to feed themselves and their families. Some of us are simply pursuing what we understand to be a healthy relationship with one’s place, to undo the damage and allow a new healthy and vital landscape to grow. These are landscapes of our choice. Our intention and control results in various volunteers and weeds finding their own place and so follows the need for weeding. 

We watch carefully, monitor the impacts of our work, attempt to understand what result is moving us closer to our goal and which might be indicators of further loss. Landscapes and gardens are incredibly complex systems and anyone who claims to have all of the answers is fooling himself and you. Our landscapes are broken, by us and our predecessors. The Pandora’s Box of weeds and disruption was burst open long ago. The only way ahead is to find a new path.  Weeds are here filling the niches we have collectively made and maintain for them. The more one is surrounded by aggressive, well adapted weeds, the more time we must spend controlling them. While this can be significant, gardeners mostly take the work in stride, a necessity to reach our goal, a goal which may be the simple act itself, of working in concert with our place…open to its teachings. Gardening, is a way of life, a smaller scale version of farming and the management of large ‘natural areas’ with their attendant commitment, rhythms and demands. Continue reading →