If I Were The Wind

I just came into contact with an old childhood friend, Mary. We use to live in the same neighborhood as children,
along with Mary Kay, Jenna, and Zoe. We were all around the same age, and sort of friends, though there were some strained relationships. At any rate, there were times when Mary and I were really close, but I haven't seen her since her family moved away from the neighborhood and I went off to college. But she found me via facebook (of course), and though I had heard bits and pieces of her life's happenings, actually hearing from her was much more revealing than gossip, and it turns out that we have a lot in common. She has been living out west, going to school in Puget Sound, and spending a lot of time in the redwoods. I had heard that she'd spent time living in a tree for a while, but I didn't realize that she was actually tree sitting, that is protesting, with the same organization and many of the same people that Julia Butterfly Hill worked with. Its to strange and interesting to me that Mary Gonzalez would end up out there, and with one of the same passions that I have, trees.

I'm not really sure when I realized how wonderful and amazing trees are, but they really are. Trees can live so long, and be so incredibly big, or they can be as small as bonsai. Trees are home to so many other species that I couldn't possibly begin to name them all. Trees are found everywhere on this planet where there isn't an ocean. They are just so beautiful and grand, and I think that there is something very powerful and spiritual about forests, especially old ones like the redwoods. I don't think that that power is something that I could really describe, but I feel like its more relevant than other sources of spirituality because its grounded in something real and tangible, and environmentally really important. I know that there are a lot of people who would think that I'm silly and out of touch with reality for thinking so highly of trees, but there are also a lot of people out there who agree with me, like Mary Gonzalez.

When it comes to tree sitting, and general protesting in that area of the country, there is so much more at stake that trees and the spiritual value that people get from them. They also preserve our history, our past. They are the only living individuals that were here before Europeans arrived here. They are also a key member of the ecology out in the north west pacific area, and it is not true that new growth forests can act the same as old growth. But there are so many opinions, and sides to the argument out there, it is not easy to come up with any solutions. I sympathize with the people who make there living by logging, I know that they need to feed their families, but its the big companies that don't care about the environment what so ever, who are only in it to make money, that I wish could be stopped. It is just incredible the amount of damage that has been done, the amount of clear-cuts where the damage can't be fixed. There have even been towns that have been destroyed by mudslides because of irresponsible logging practices. This shouldn't happen. Something so precious as the fate these forests, these peoples homes, peoples lives, should not be decided on by companies whose only interest is money. The free market economy should not decide everything, when everything is left to the market to decide, really important things get trampled on, like the environment. Maybe this makes me a socialist, but I think that there should be some political body with the power to say that irreplaceable things should not be destroyed just because this country, which uses up so many resources that it would take 13 planet earths if everyone lived like us, wants something.

I think perhaps I've gotten a little off-topic in thinking about tree sitting. I'm not really sure what else I have to say. I don't think I can write anymore, this makes me too angry. Perhaps more on this topic later.

Posted by Jennifer Murray at 04:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I really love the weather. Not just the weather today, but the weather as a concept, as a thing that is predictable but not controllable, and thing that limits what we can and cannot do in any given place and time in the world. Everyday is defined by what the weather does, how cold it is, if it rains or snows, etc. I love that it is one aspect of nature that people have not yet found a way to manipulate, it is an aspect of nature that still gives people daily anxiety. Granted, the weather sometimes causes bad things to happen, there are floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, etc; but that is just part of life.

Everyday when I wake up, one of the first things I think is: I wonder that the weather will be like today? It must be a question that many people ask, because if you turn on the daily news, you'll find that every news station devotes at least 10 minutes to describing, in detail, and reiterating over and over, what the weather will be like that day, and what it will be like for the rest of the week. On these news programs the weather gets very sensationalized, there are strong storm/snow storm warnings, advice on what to do if caught in a storm, exaggerations about weather situations, montages of extreme weather and the weathermen who got you through, etc. Weather seems to be an extreme source of anxiety in our society. Which is not to say that people shouldn't take the weather seriously, I for one do not like driving afters it has snowed, but enough is enough.

Almost everyday, not matter what the weather is like, wherever you go there will be people talking about the weather. Today it is -4 degrees outside, I personally am debating on whether or not I should bike to class, which I probably will end up doing. I am certain that when I get to campus I will overhear countless conversations about how darn cold it is and how everyone wishes it would be spring. Well it is not spring, and I wish that people could appreciate the weather for what it is today. Today it is cold, that's true, and it's also cloudy and gray, but that can still be enjoyable. There is snow on the ground, which brightens things up, the snow is clean since it just snowed a couple of days ago, it's not -15, it's not windy. I think it could be a pretty good day.

In the paragraph before this I completely lied. I do wish that the sun was out, too many cloudy days in a row gives me a headache. I'm glad it's not windy, but I do miss the sun. While I might not be totally happy with the weather today, I do appreciate the fact that there is this part of nature that effects me to such a degree on a daily basis. Maybe it makes me feel closer to nature, or to the past when there were less options about dealing with the weather, or maybe it makes me feel tough and rustic, I don't know. I do know that yesterday I enjoyed the challenge of biking through day old snow, it made me feel alive.

For every type of weather there is a mood. I recently read a couple of short stories that relied completely on the weather to keep the story moving. One of these stories was "To Build a Fire" by Jack London. In this story a man ventures out into the Alaskan wilderness while it is -75 degrees outside. The story is about dying out in the cold. This story wouldn't exist it is weren't for the weather. The other story I read is actually a short novel, "The Awakening" by Kate Chopin. This story takes place in New Orleans, where weather dictates the mood more that what people are actually feeling.

I happened to live in New Orleans for a couple of semesters, which is where I discovered the true power of nature. The defining feature of New Orleans for me is it's overwhelming, stifling, spicy, thick, hot, moldy, smelly, sweet, clinging, drowning humidity. Summer in New Orleans is like swimming through the hot thick air. This humidity clings to you like life and death, it dictates what your limits are as a human, what activity you are capable of before you need to stop moving. I love New Orleans humidity. It was more like an old friend, always with me, surrounding me wherever I went, getting into my head until I couldn't think clearly. I used to go out walking everyday, just walk and walk and walk. Following my senses, feeling the air, just walking outside gave me some of the best experiences of my life.

Its hard to have a clear grasp on reality when it's that hot and humid, especially if your in New Orleans. Anxiety, danger, real threats; they all seem to disappear in a sweaty heap of relaxation, almost. By some horrible coincidence I happened to be on a road-trip in August of 2005, and towards the end of the month I was visiting my friends in New Orleans. People in that part of the country always live with the threat of hurricanes, and eventually it just gets annoying and you try to ignore it, only leaving when the threat seems inevitable, and sometimes not even then. When the news reports that this hurricane Katrina might be heading towards New Orleans, half of the people I knew up and left that day, and the other half said "fuck it" and didn't go anywhere. In the days leading up to the hurricane there was the strangest atmosphere in the city. The humidity was now filled with both anxiety, defiance and fear. Everybody was giddy. There were lines at every gas station. It was really hot outside. The weather, this ominous, huge thing, seemed to be targeting New Orleans, playing with it, laughing at it. I left with a car full of friends and drove to Florida a day and a half before it hit. Every one knows what happened then.

The weather has an ability to destroy people or to make them happy. During that trip to New Orleans, the weather in the form of humidity and all the things that swim in it, gave me a horrible infection in my tonsils. The weather in the form of a hurricane destroyed the city that I love more that any other city in the world. The weather will always be a part of nature that we, as people, have to respect and think about in more meaningful ways than we sometimes do about other aspects of nature.

Posted by Jennifer Murray at 05:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)