As a child, spending my summers with my dad in Idaho, USA, I don’t remember a year when the wildfire smoke was bad. Now, 20 years later in the neighboring state of Montana, I’ve come to expect smoke every summer. This month’s podcast takes place in my mom’s urban Missoula, Montana garden in the midst of increasingly severe weather events, as early September 2024 brought us another bout of intense wildfire smoke and as South America was burning up with drought and fires. As I write this from Oaxaca, Mexico on October 1, 2024, the fires in Brasil and Bolivia continue. In the last week, two hurricanes that emerged in a matter of days have hit Guerrero, Mexico and Florida, USA and dumped torrential, destructive rains on their path inland.
But in spite of the severity of events like these, this story is about resilience. It’s about birds, plants, and the nature outside our door. It’s a story about how we can stay connected as everything gets more extreme.
In this podcast, I quote from Leah Rampy’s book Earth and Soul, which you can find here: https://www.leahmoranrampy.com/.
The audio includes recordings of American goldfinch (Spinus tristis), pine siskin (Spinus pinus), Wilson’s warbler (Cardellina pusilla), mallard (Anas platyrhynchos), and fall rain that I made in September 2024 in my mom’s yard. It also includes my whistled imitation of a lesser goldfinch (Spinus psaltria) call.
You can find the written, illustrated version here: https://wildwithnature.com/2024/10/01/waiting-for-rain-climate-change/.
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