We had a much needed rain this week, two days of it I think and we are grateful We are down about 5" I believe. June has been a really lovely month this year, seventies and not a lot of humidy, the way mid coast has usually been in non climate change days. I grew up with humidity in Minnesota so midcoast was appealing to me. Being on the ocean, storms come and go and often our little cove pocket here makes our temps cooler than someone just a mile away [colder too sometimes].
I feel for the West. It is dangerously hot and I feel for the earth and animals too. Our area in Oregon were seeing wells dry up. We knew it was a matter of time. We had water rights on the river so we could always know our animals could have water. But as time wore on there were more fires and less rain. The heat was always there, for long stretches. Farming in heat is horrible. After we left the fire that struck was really close to where we lived and I knew people and animals affected by it. I felt for them but was also relieved.
People ask me if I miss the West and I really don't. I loved living there though. Part of the reason I don't miss it is I feel strongly, and intuitively knew then and now, that is very spot, this very house in this very town is where we are met to be at this very moment. I loved the big open skies and double rainbows and wide open public, sandy beaches all up and down the Oregon coastline. It was all wonderful. But it evolved and the dream shifted. It was time for change and I felt propelled, viscerally, to leave, as quickly as we could. Originally it was a two+ year plan but it escalated and I just kept getting shoved by some internal and spirit forces to leave, now. It was almost like these guides were predicting something big, something big we did not want to be in, was coming. That's what it felt like.
So we did go quickly and I'm glad - even though I had much grief over many good byes. I'm glad we got here when we did, we never would have found anything now, the market is crazy.
I read an article the other day that the Pacific North West is not ready for ongoing heat and they need to get it together and face reality. Their systems aren't ready. When I moved there in 2002, everyone bragged you never needed air conditioning. I bought one immediately. Just as many people we met here said, "Don't worry, Maine will never run out of water" [wells were starting to go dry in southern Maine our first summer] many people in the Northwest seemed to think nothing would change in their beautiful Garden of Eden. But it did, and it has. And it is not going away.
Our beautiful mother ship...what have we done to you over the centuries here? And do enough people care to help you? I heard a buffoon the other day stating with great certainty that because the dinosaurs died on their own or by Nature, without any men living then, that that shows mankind has little to do with climate change.
Oooof.
My best wishes and prayers for water and rain for the West. And for Maine too, and for the Earth.
"We will be known forever by the tracks we leave."
- Dakota Tribe
