Life: Unexpected

Ghosts In the Shadows

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I’ve lived long enough on this earth to know ghosts. I’ve felt them, seen them when I close my eyes. Heard them when I block out all other noise. Ghosts are real. In my experience, they’re nothing like the ghosts depicted in Hollywood, which usually resemble something out of Dickens novel – ragged clothes and chains and dangling teeth.

They are times gone by. They are faded memories that suddenly adopt a splash of color. They emerge from somewhere deep inside you, dance around, then fade back where they came from. Ghosts are not necessarily scary, creepy, or lonely — at least my ghosts aren’t. They just need some attention now and then so that you can remember to live the way you’re supposed to live.

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Seeing through the smoke in my eyes

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You might think that as a meteorologist who gets a rush from watching the summer sky light up from brewing storms that I would be excited to see lightning in my head. But no. I was just about as terrified as any of you would be.

On a Saturday last December I suddenly found a big circular jelly-fish-like blob floating in front of my face. The jelly fish had long, wispy tentacles, and floated in a sea of dust. I closed my eyes and shook my head, but it was still there when I opened my eyes. A few minutes later, the flashes began. Long curved bolts of lightning streaked across the peripheral vision in my left eyeball. With my eyes closed, I could see branching and arcing. With eyes open, it was like someone was flashing a bright light in my eyes.

I had AI try to make a picture of what I saw…But I only gave it one attempt. No need to waste more energy trying to make it more real.
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Tending to your inner landscapes

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This is a post about gardening. Sort of. I started writing this post years ago, but like many of my posts, it was abandoned as I pursued more pressing needs. But some of those half-completed posts are ready to get hosed off and sent out into the world – especially as we begin a new season of tending to growing things.

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A swallowtail enjoying the red valerian.

You might know an old lady who’s crazy about her garden. She’s that lady with the wide-brimmed straw hat and strands of frizzy gray hair hanging out in all directions. She wears floppy, long-sleeved shirts, cushy, mud-covered crocs, and always has dirt beneath her fingernails. She’s out there every day when the weather’s nice enough, tending to her garden, chatting with passersby as she digs up another bed or pulls out another patch of weeds.

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Radio Silence

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I guess you could say it’s writer’s block. There’s certainly no shortage of things to write about. But the words are stuck in my throat. I have a dozen half-completed posts drafted over the summer. Half-formed ruminations on everything from travel to climate resilience to fascism. But nothing feels like the right thing to say.

I realize there is no ‘right’ thing to say at this time. I can only tell my own story. But that’s a challenge when it feels like you’re drowning in everyone else’s voices. When the news and social media feel like a firehose of voices – most of them angry or scared. I’ve questioned whether to add my own voice to the stream. Especially when I’ve found myself wanting to disengage from the stream so that I can hear the thoughts in my own head.

It’s good to hide in a box sometimes, to recover from the onslaught.
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Protecting our National Parks is an Act of Patriotism

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Some of my first memories involve riding on my Dad’s shoulders as we hiked past stinky geysers that shot mist and clouds high above our heads. I also remember staring into the abyss of a yellow-walled canyon, while water foamed and gurgled nearby, then raced over the rim. At night we had the thrill of sleeping in a log cabin with bunk beds – but Mom said I was too small to sleep in the top bunk. I was almost three years old the first time I visited Yellowstone National Park, on a road trip with my parents from California to visit my grandmother in Ohio.

Returning to Yellowstone’s stinky glaciers at a much later point in life.

We also took a helicopter ride over the Badlands (which were several years away from becoming a national park at that point). I remember wearing headphones that pinched my head as we swooped over a landscape that, to me, looked like a layered ice cream sundae.

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The voices that hold space in my head

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“It wasn’t meant to be.”

Mom said that so often, the words still play through my head at least once a week, even through I’ve always had a very different take on the world. I don’t believe things are meant to be or not. They are what we make them. Mom was not a religious person. She never talked about a god (unless she joked that maybe there was a goddess?), but she was raised in a religious family, and there was an element of faith and preordination that was deeply ingrained in her. It came out in her way of speaking. And now her voice is forever in my head. The things she said again and again will always be with me.

My mom in 2013, visiting Alaska.
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Neck deep in mud: how we move forward

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“There is the mud, and there is the lotus that grows out of the mud. We need the mud in order to make the lotus.” ― Thich Nhat Hanh

(As a reminder, from my Disclaimer page: this site is not an official site of the University of Northern Colorado. The views expressed here are entirely those of the author, and do not represent the views of the University of Northern Colorado, the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Science at UNC, nor any other program or individual at the university or elsewhere.)

No time to read? Here’s the summary: We need to act as a collective to battle authoritarianism and climate change. We need to act now. White people, especially, have a responsibility to act. This is a clumsy, chaotic, stupid coup – there is still a chance our democracy will live another day. I have to hope that a lotus will grow from the mud. See the bullet points at the end calling for action. And continue to exercise your First Amendment right whenever you can.

The lotus emerging from the Mekong Delta.
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Resilience Amid Disruption

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(As a reminder, from my Disclaimer page: this site is not an official site of the University of Northern Colorado. The views expressed here are entirely those of the author, and do not represent the views of the University of Northern Colorado, the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Science at UNC, nor any other program or individual at the university.)

Call to Action (if this is too long for you to read): Do one small thing to build resilience. And please share a good recipe for chocolate chip cookies that doesn’t require eggs.

Do you ever feel your words drowning before they pass through your lips? Like the rain beginning to fall just before sunrise. There’s something there that needs to shine out, but it gets lost in shadows. That is where my voice has been these past several months, lost in the shadows.

The world has zapped my energy. Floods, fires, drought, heat wave. Along with other climate scientists, I have spent the last 25 years shouting ‘the sky is falling’ over and over. Now that it is falling, many choose to be blind – afraid that recognizing it for what it is will ruin the world we’ve worked so hard to build. Sorry. The ruin is happening now because not enough people (especially people with power and money) have paid attention.

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Ode to Our Little Buddha

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The vet said he wouldn’t make it to New Year’s Day. It was mid-December when he stopped eating. His kidneys were failing, she said. He was already quite far along. He also had hypothyroidism and a heart murmur. His little body was shutting down. He had a good run, at almost 16 years. We were given saline fluids and needles to administer 150ml under the scruff of his neck each night, too keep him comfy as long as we could. It doesn’t seem like a lot of fluid, but it took 4-5 minutes for that much fluid to flow under his skin. That’s a long time to hold still for a cat who likes to squirm. I asked him every time: Is this ok? Can we give you fluids? And he let us carry him to the kitchen table.

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Shining the light on the ground beneath my feet

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Have you ever looked down and found that you are standing on something rather unexpected?

I grew up in a place that experienced frequent small earthquakes. If you have ever felt one, you know that no matter how small the movement of the solid earth beneath you, it always throws you off center. Sometimes you feel like it must be in your head, this sudden motion from something that felt so solid. You might feel a bit queasy, a bit off balance, like the world isn’t as it seems. If you’ve studied a bit of geology, you’ll know that there’s a whole world beneath your feet that you really can’t see with your own eyes – and it’s always moving and shifting.

Walking on solid earth…we hope.
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