Notes From A Bear's Journey

The Horses     Photo copied from Odysseo program The other night was a night to splurge, something that we seemingly all do now and then.  We bite the bullet and make the decision to have a nice dinner out at an expensive restaurant (not us) or buy something we had looked at for ages but couldn't afford (not us either).  Last night it was a night for horses.  The circus was in town, actually, the Cirque de Soleil was in town, their newest production through Cavalia and titled Odysseo .  Now I am not really a horse person, that is, I truly know little about horses other than admiring their size and their muscular structure;  to be honest, I've only ridden on a horse once or twice and both times were more of a gimmick thing, a paid stable ride and something far from the wild westerns where horses run all out and kick dust in the faces of people as the rider jumps off at the saloon (well, that was my childhood version of them, anyway).  B...

Cows and Climate     Beef.  It's there almost everywhere, dominating landscapes and lining the shelves of meat counters, even altering governments as they move water channels and knock down forests to make way for ranchers.  So what does all of this have to do with climate?  As it turns out,  quite a lot.  Author Richard Manning looked into our ranching practices and discovered that for the most part, we in the U.S. and elsewhere might be doing it all wrong...     So you likely already know about the life of a cow (word of warning: the following is toned down but still quite descriptive regarding the raising and slaughtering of cattle so some of you might want to skip this part and jump right to the next paragraph), born and raised in captivity, separated from their mother after two months for branding and castration and given a variety of vaccines (this summary from the Cattle Network : Booster viral respiratory vaccine-MLV str...

Forgetting     Sometimes things happen or things arrive that are totally unexpected...a box of chocolates waiting at your doorstep (not kidding, this was sent as a welcome home gift out of the blue), a last-minute invitation to dinner, even an impromptu talk with a group of care managers.  Just as with a bend in the road, these tiny events can change your direction ever so slightly, perhaps imperceptibly to you but a change nonetheless.  What might seem inconsequential at the time, can prove so much more meaningful as it reinforces or changes friendships and relationships, often for the better.  So it was with the arrival of the May issue of Esquire , a hit & miss magazine (in my opinion) of writing and fashion and a search for a crowd that no longer seemed to include me.  But this particular issue, although meant to be more of an editorialized political statement, had an introduction (the magazine's opening statement, not so common in today's wo...

Earth's Climate     There's something happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear.  So sang Stephen Stills long ago, although he was talking about an upcoming change in mood, people protesting over a seemingly never-ending war.  And sometimes, as I stare at my pile of saved articles and references on climate change, I feel like joining the protest.  Battling such giant corporations and governments over climate change and what exactly is causing it can appear to be a losing, or at least a prolonged, fight.  But something is happening here...go back just two months and you'll find that both January and February recorded their hottest temperatures ever (or at least, since record-keeping started over 100 years ago)...and not only the hottest, but the May/June issue of Sierra magazine added, the hottest "by far...Sea levels are rising faster now than at any time in the past 2,800 years.  If greenhouse gas emissions continue at a high rate, oc...

Looking Forward, Looking Back     The other day I happened to pick up an older book, one from 2010.  It was a collection of science and nature articles, one of those "best of" collections for that year.  The editor, Tim Folger, opened his forward this way: Remember the way the future was supposed to be?  The path to tomorrow once seemed so clear, its trajectory limned for the entire world to see in billowing plumes of rocket exhaust in the blue sky over Cape Canaveral...By the late 1960s, astronauts --and cosmonauts-- had walked in space; the first moon landing was at hand.  We had come so far so quickly...No doubt we'd make even greater leaps in the next sixty years.  By the year 2000?  A spinning, spoked space station staffed by hundreds was a given; travel to the moon routine; footprints on the red sands of Mars -- of course.  To my second-grade mind it all seemed closer and more imaginable than my own adulthood.  The space ody...

Dust to Nothing     Let's face it, there are things way beyond our imaginations, things that we are simply unable to grasp.  Infinity or the beginning of time might be one, other dimensions perhaps another.  I am continually reminded of the readings of Edgar Cayce, the "sleeping prophet" as he was known in his time.  Once in a trance, he could be transported anywhere, always saying that our bodies and our worlds were simply frequencies that once tapped into you could become that person or that world.  Everyone tried to test him and for the most part failed.  In his trances he could be fluent in any language, could give detailed family histories and explain and walk doctors through complex surgeries; he could even diagnose and sometimes suggest cures for a person's disease (sometimes these diseases were unknown to the person)...all of this was exhausting (he eventually stopped doing such readings after being flooded with hundreds of thousands of ...

My Stomach in Knots     An old colloquial phrase, one rarely used these days and a phrase usually meaning tension, the feeling before walking in front of a classroom or audience to perform or to make a speech.  For dogs, however, it is the second largest killer (second only to cancer).  More commonly known as "bloat" or "twisted stomach," the condition is rarely advertised (at least, we had never heard of it) even in veterinarian offices...but when it happens, you have only hours to save your dog.  Look up "lack of appetite" and "trying to vomit" and you'll likely read that it might be something your dog ate and that the condition will go away in 24 hours.  You might also wake up and your dog will be dead...here's what happened to us.     We returned home from our 3-day getaway, and were greeted as normal by our two dogs (something we humans could learn more of, that of greeting your loved ones so enthusiastically each and every time ...

Hidden Nature -- Trees     Nitrogen.  It's all around us, especially in the air, for 78% of what we breathe each minutes is nitrogen.  Even in a hospital, the "oxygen" you'll receive is mostly nitrogen.  It will fill your car tires, and when synthesized, become fertilizer.  So if it's so plentiful, why are trees so deprived of nitrogen (which they need)?  And going back to several earlier posts, what the heck do earthworms have to do with all of this?  As it turns out, trees are rather primitive and just as they did in primal forests, count on fungi and mold spores to break down the fallen leaves and branches slowly, very slowly (even those primitive sow bugs cannot digest a fallen oak leaf, but only those leaves that have over-wintered and have had time to break down).  This all makes a dense carpet on the forest floor and the decomposition allows the nitrogen to slowly seep into the trees' roots.  But the earthworms are too fast...

Hidden Nature II     My neighbors don't care for me; well, that's not true at all for we get along quite well.  What they really don't care for (but put up with) is my yard.  It looks fine to me, and I do mow and edge it regularly but therein rests the problem, that definition of "regularly."  Since my wife and I live on a corner, we have many "neighbors" and it seems that the majority of them are quite fanatic (my words) about their lawns.  A simple mowing becomes a two-hour exercise of edging and blowing and yes, vacuuming up fallen pine cones and such.  Then comes the fertilizers and weed killers, first in spring then throughout the summer and lastly in fall just before the snows arrive.  And watering?  One would think that in our desert state that we had unlimited water (actually, the state of Utah does have the highest per capita usage of water and yes, we are considered a desert state)...but boy, their lawns are green, almost un...

Hidden Nature     This morning finds me up early, early enough to witness the slow increase in volume of the birds outside, at first only one or two, then more as others wake up, the sky barely starting to light, the earth rotating ever downward to once again bathe in the sun's energy in the space that I live.  The time this morning is 4:30, the first chirp of the first bird I head coming soon after that.  Within a half hour, it would appear that several dozen birds had awoken, early birds so to speak, each awake well ahead of the majority of the avian symphony, which comes around 5:15 or so (which is generally well ahead of the human symphony of noise soon to awaken, cars starting, garages opening, traffic flowing).  The birds, it turns out, are quite competitive...this early in the spring, the "songs" I'm hearing are probably anything but (those will come later once families are underway and babies are hatching); the vocalizations are for the most part ...