Acknowledging the land, so it becomes something dear and precious to me, so I am that person who pats a tree as I walk past it, and greet the first tiny alpine strawberries on a walk, or nibble the fresh iridescent Douglas fir tips and say thankyou, comes with a certain price. It hurts a lot more, when you let yourself care. I don’t have the distancing effect of “well, it’s not happening in my backyard” or “it probably won’t happen in my life time” that I hear many folk use.

Actually, it’s all happening, in my backyard, in my lifetime, in my body.

I read the news (of June 1!): an “unprecedented start to wildfire season” had destroyed almost 3 million hectares of forest.

Climate change is driving the conditions that have led to an off-the-charts May, roughly 2.7 million hectares of forest up in flames in B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and the Northwest Territories. Over the past 10 years, the average number of hectares burned in May was only 150,000.

Then, Stewardship Pemberton shared that climate change and wildfires is making California uninsurable. (It’s crazy to me that the most meaningful response to climate concerns might be led by the insurance industry… but hey, nobody ever said that capitalism and casinos aren’t one and the same.)

Sometimes, I worry that I am exposing myself to more grief and anxiety, by caring so much. And I do think that numbing and shutting down was probably a survival response for many along our ancestral pathways… But in this little window of time, while I’m not currently in the thick of trauma, I have the capacity to try and metabolize it, to try and come to terms with it, to try and work out what magical powers I have when I activate all that love and care. As much as it exposes me to hurt and heartache.

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Some things I think we can do:

• connect with people and talk about your concerns. Resilience is not a solo-act.
• come to Hollyhock in September for the Hope in a Time of Precarity retreat
• adjust our vacation and school calendar so we’re not trying to camp and travel during peak wildfire season… Let people spend July and August in air conditioned offices, and let people nap during the middle of the day, like the Spanish do, and let’s live in sync with our climate, rather than insist on camping from the May 24 weekend to Labour Day, and flying all around the world to try and find the most accommodating climate conditions…
• become a steward for a place, even if it exposes you to heartbreak, rather than collecting passport stamps for all the places you’ve skimmed past
• come to Green Drinks on Monday June 12
• support, donate to or participate in ecological restoration work – help boost/bring back Nature’s resilience
• acknowledge the Indigenous territory you’re on and then grow from there, into a personal effort of decolonization and explore how indigenizing your thinking and learning about indigenous ways of knowing can help us redress the imbalance our system (and dominant ways of thinking and being) is causing
• read Inflamed by Rupa Marya and Raj Patel for a powerful connection between our personal health, the systems of justice and injustice we’re living in, and the planet’s health.  
• honour the current fire ban. It’s much more dicey to “pray for rain” once the forests are burning, than just not to start one in the first place.
• What else? What else helps you stay awake and aware and even-keeled and engaged… asking for all my friends.