The last two posts have offered two aspects of our bountiful Nature. First we had Earth Day and the celebration of our trees. Then yesterday we had the celebration of the birth of five Canada Geese goslings.
So it seemed appropriate to continue the theme for another day.
Earlier this month there was an article over on MNN that I saved for later use simply because the message it offered was counter-intuitive. Here’s how that article opened:
Deforestation vs. nature: The winner might surprise you
Large-scale tree-planting projects, abandoned farmland help balance out rain forest destruction.
By: Michael Graham Richard
Wed, Apr 08, 2015 at 10:11 AM
Forest canopy heights are highest near the equator and generally decrease the closer forests are to the poles. (Photo: NASA)
For decades, we’ve been hearing about how the world’s forests are under attack, how the equivalent of “36 football fields of the world’s forests are being cut every minute.” With all this pressure on nature, could the Earth possibly be getting greener? Not a chance, right? Surprisingly, that’s what a team of scientists discovered when they looked at two decades’ worth of data from satellites that use a technique called “passive microwave remote sensing,” which allows researchers to measure how much biomass, or living matter, is present on the surface of the planet.
The researchers found that despite ongoing deforestation in the rain forests of South America and Southeast Asia — a huge problem, regardless of what happens elsewhere — other regions outside the tropics, such as Africa and Australia, have been improving enough to offset the losses. Some of the more unexpected sources of this extra biomass are farmland abandoned after the fall of communism where forests have spontaneously regrown in the former Soviet republics, as well as in areas of China where large-scale tree planting projects took place.
What really caught my eye was another photo from NASA that showed the biomass stored in trees in the USA.
The concentration of biomass stored in trees in the U.S. The darkest greens reveal the areas with the densest, tallest, and most robust forest growth. (Photo: NASA)
But as the article reminded readers:
We’re only talking about biomass quantities being offset, though; the loss of rain forests also mean the loss of many species of animals and plants, as well as unique habitats that can’t be replaced by other regions elsewhere, such as the savannah of Africa or the Australian Outback. So while this is good news, we can’t declare victory over deforestation just yet!
Nonetheless, I am sure that I am not the only one to welcome this reminder of the power of Nature. Or in the closing words of that MNN article:
In the period between 2003-2012, the total amount of vegetation above the ground has increased by about 4 billion tonnes of carbon. Any way you slice in, 4 billion tonnes is significant!
This is particularly important because around 25 percent of the CO2 that we release into the atmosphere by burning formerly buried hydrocarbons is absorbed by plants, so having more of them can help slow down (but not stop) climate change, and there’s a limit to plants’ rate of absorption. Still, it’s nice to get good news for a change …
While it may be a long way yet from them being tonnes of carbon, let me close with three pictures of ‘increasing tree biomass‘ right here on Hugo Road in Merlin, Oregon.
The oak.
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The madrone.
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The cedar.
Nature really does have all the answers to man’s long-term survival.
Or, to be more precise, any form of post for today.
The weather forecast for Southern Oregon for yesterday included very significant rain.
They were not wrong.
By the time I sat down to think about Saturday’s post, around 2pm, we had already had 3.2 inches of rain (8.1 cm) and our attention, understandably, was on more important matters, such as the integrity of our driveway bridge over Bummer Creek.
So if you will forgive me, I’ll just offer a few pictures and leave it at that.
Starting with a picture that Jean expressly said I couldn’t publish!
I shall probably be denied access to the bedroom after showing you all how my wife likes to dress up!
What lucky horses to have such a devoted ‘Mum’ that feeds them every morning; whatever the weather.
Only one way in or out: over the bridge!
Neighbours who have been here much longer than us say they haven’t seen so much rain fall in such a short time.
Bummer Creek in full flood – this photograph is of the Creek just 50 yards upstream of the bridge.
This is an old dam for irrigation purposes. One doesn’t want to reflect too long that a cubic yard of water weighs a ton!
Luckily the house (off picture to the right) and immediate surroundings are elevated.
So that’s it for today.
Another picture parade for tomorrow assuming I haven’t been lynched by my lovely wife for showing that earlier photograph.
A connection with a wild animal doesn’t get better than this.
You may wonder, dear reader, how I “square the circle” in terms of a post title, Utterly beyond words, and then reaching out to you with the use of words! My answer to that legitimate question is that if I reflected for the rest of my life, I couldn’t verbalise adequately the feelings (but note p.s. at the end of the post) that went through me, and through Jean, when a mother deer and her young fawn, crossed the boundary between their wild, animal world and our human world.
This is what happened.
Last Sunday afternoon, around 4pm, I was pottering around the area of fruit trees just above our stables. We were fully aware that deer were coming in to our property to eat fallen apples as many times we had caught a glimpse of them through a window.
Anyway, on this particular afternoon outside by the stables, I noticed a deer eating some fallen apples and, somehow, picked up the idea that this gorgeous, wild animal was not stressed-out by me standing there looking at her from some twenty feet away.
After a few minutes of just watching, I quietly went across to the garage where we keep a bag of cob, or cracked corn, that we use to feed the deer during tough winter times. I collected a small amount in a round plastic tray and went back into the orchard area and sat with my back against the trunk of an old oak tree, spread my legs apart and placed the tray with the cob in between my knees.
The mother deer was still hunting around for fallen apples but within a couple of minutes looked across at me, clearly smelling the cob.
Slowly but steadily the beautiful creature came towards me and, miracle of miracles, trusted me sufficiently to eat from the tray. Her head was well within arm’s reach of me!
I was totally mesmerised by this beautiful, fragile, wild animal, head down, eating cob less than three feet from my face! I had the urge to touch her.
Slowly, I reached forward and took a small handful of the cob from the tray and with my other hand pulled the tray to one side. My hand with the cob was fully outstretched; my heart was whispering to the deer that I would never, ever harm her.
Softly, gently the deer reached towards me and nibbled the cob from my left hand.
Later on, when I relayed this incredible event to Jean, I said that if it was at all possible we must try and take a photograph of a wild deer feeding from our hands.
Moving on to Monday afternoon, camera ready if necessary, we kept an eye out for the return of the deer. There was no sign of her. Looked as though it wasn’t going to happen.
Then just before 7pm, I looked up from my desk and there, just outside the window, was the deer. But even better, this time the mother was accompanied by her young fawn.
I grabbed the camera and quickly told Jean to meet me outside with a refill of cob in the same plastic tray. We both sat down on the flat concrete cover of the septic tank; me with the camera, Jean with the tray of cob.
Over to the photographs! The daylight was fading fast and I was hand-holding the camera, thus these are not the sharpest of pictures. But so what!
The mother deer not even startled by the sound of the camera shutter!
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Mother deer reaches down to feed; the tray is about three feet in front of Jean and me.
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Jean reaches forward and gently draws the tray closer to us. Mother deer continues to feed.
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Then, unbelievably, the wild deer continues feeding as Jean fondles the deer’s head and neck.
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The trust between the deer and Jean then enabled the deer to feed from Jean’s hand.
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There was a rustle in the leaves some twenty feet away and we saw the fawn watching her mother feeding on the cob. Jean pushed the tray away, just by a few feet, and the fawn came right up to her mother.
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The culmination of the most magical of experiences: mother deer and her fawn eating together some three feet in front of us.
When I published my post Space for Nature a little over a week ago, a post that included a photograph of two deer some thirty feet from Jean’s car, never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined what took place last Tuesday afternoon.
Words truly do seem inadequate.
P.S. It is at times like this that we need poetry. So how about it: Sue?Kim? How would you describe in poetry what Jean and I experienced?
Way back in July 2012, I posted the following item.
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Dear Readers of Learning from Dogs.
Today, Jeannie and I are off on a trip to Oregon.
Oregon State
We expect to be away for about the next 10 or 11 days.
While there are a number of new posts that will come out during this period, rather than have quiet days with nothing being posted, some days I will be republishing posts from the last three years; hopefully most of them new to your eyes.
Inevitably, responding promptly to comments will be tough.
Which is why I am so grateful to Martin Lack of Lack of Environment who graciously agreed to keep an eye on things while we are away.
The Punch Bowl Falls, Columbia River, Oregon
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That was twenty-six months ago.
Yesterday morning, Jean and I took Reggie and Chris down to our creek area to feed some wild deer that have been congregating in recent days.
After Jean had sprinkled some cracked corn on the ground, one of the seven deer around us started feeding and when it looked up at me, I took the following picture.
One might be forgiven for thinking that community is an odd bed-fellow with trust and truth. Many might think that faith would be a more logical third leg, so to speak.
However, I hope to show that in today’s world where trust and truth are beleaguered qualities a rethinking of community is critically vital for the long-term health of mankind.
Community
Can’t resist a third look-up in Roget’s Thesaurus.
community noun
Persons as an organised body: people, public, society.
For me two words jump out from that definition: persons; organised.
The challenge is that the word organised is easily interpreted as an organisation with leaders and followers. But that’s not how community is regarded in the context of this third essay.
“No man is an island”, John Donne wrote in 1624.
This is a quotation from John Donne (1572-1631). It appears in Devotions upon emergent occasions and seuerall steps in my sicknes – Meditation XVII, 1624:
“All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated…As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness….No man is an island, entire of itself…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
Thus for the vast majority of people on the face of this planet, we are linked to others and how we live our lives is fundamentally influenced by those others about us. In a past life, I lived in the village of Harberton in South Devon. The population of Harberton was 300 persons.
An E. M. Morison (Totnes) postcard, bearing a 3p stamp, which gives a sending date between Feb 1971 and Sept 1973.
Now I was lucky when I moved into Harberton because my two sisters, Rhona and Corinne, had lived in the area for many years and it was easy for me to be positioned as ‘the brother’. Nevertheless, the way that the village embraced all newcomers was wonderful and within a very short time one felt a settled member of the community.
Same for Jean and me as relative newcomers to our property just 4 miles from Merlin, Oregon. All of our neighbours have embraced us and helped us understand this new rural life that we have embarked on. We feel part of the local community.
Yet it doesn’t stop there.
Obviously, I’m a WordPress user! Learning from Dogs is a WordPress blog! But were you aware of the size of the WordPress community? (As of now!)
How many posts are being published?
Users produce about 44.5 million new posts and 56.7 million new comments each month.
How many people are reading blogs?
Over 409 million people view more than 14.7 billion pages each month.
Even my funny little blog has 959 followers!
What that figure doesn’t reveal is how many of my followers have offered support, openness and real loving friendship. None better demonstrated than by the comments left by readers when I announced the recent death of Dhalia.
Think of the way that untold numbers of internet users rely on that ‘worldwide web’ for referrals, opinions or knowledge about anything ‘under the sun’.
So while there might be many aspects of our new technological world that create unease, the opportunities for having ‘virtual’ friends to complement our social friends make this era unprecedented.
I would go so far as to say this. That the way that knowledge and information can be shared around the world in no time at all may be our ultimate protection against those who would seek to harm us and this planet.
How to close these essays? Perhaps no better than as follows:
On Wednesday evening we were joined by neighbours, Dordie and Bill. My post on truth came up in discussion. Bill mentioned that he had read about a person who had spent many years studying the texts of all the world’s major religions. What had emerged was that across all those great religions there was a common view as to what the long-term health and survival of societies requires.
It is this: the telling of truth and the keeping of promises!
Last week, I wrote about Hazel. The week before Jean wrote about Casey. This week it’s back to Jean writing about the one little dog we have here at home: Sweeny.
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Sweeny
Sweeny – taken at the end of October, 2013, here in Oregon.
On that day we lost Poppy back in February, 2011, when we were still living in Payson, Arizona, it was as though she had been vaporised! Dear, sweet little Poppy. A ten-pound Poodle mix I had rescued in Mexico. She had been living in and around a Mexican construction site and when I rescued her she was very scrawny and without hair. But Poppy, as I named her, soon blossomed into a little, blonde, beauty and I grew to love her very much. Prior to Poppy, I had always liked the bigger dog but Poppy taught me the pleasures of a ‘lap’ dog that also happily slept under the covers at night with Paul and me.
The Granite Dells, near Payson, AZ. Picture taken February, 2012.
Most afternoons in Payson, we took some of the dogs for a walk along a trail hike of about 2 miles. The dogs were allowed to be off-leash and loved it. Poppy always came and stayed with me, never leaving the trail as did the other, bigger dogs. That February, it was a chilly Winter’s day (Payson and area were at 5,000 feet above sea-level) and we were all dropping down into a dry wash when I glanced behind to check that Poppy was handling the slope. To my total horror, she wasn’t in sight. Indeed, Poppy was never seen again.
Despite days spent scouring the terrain, notices in Payson shops, radio announcements on the local radio station; it all came to nought. Poppy was gone! Locals that we spoke with and who knew the area of desert where the trails were, the Granite Dells, were all of the opinion that Poppy had been stalked by a coyote that would most likely have grabbed her in an instant. Such happenings had been known before.
I was inconsolable with guilt. I had let Poppy down by not giving her enough attention and it lay heavily upon me. For weeks and weeks I moped, missed her snuggles and that cute, little body crawling into the bed with me. One day, I broached the idea with Paul of adopting a small dog from the local Humane Society. Naturally, Paul agreed in an instant and in next to no time we had jumped in the car and were heading to the Society.
I wanted an older dog but the two small dogs that the Society had were really only suited for adoption into a one-dog household. The Society did, however, have two puppies from a mother that had been taken in by them when that dog was heavily pregnant. The pups had been born and raised at the shelter.
It was love at first sight when they handed me the puppy that was destined to become Sweeny. Sweeny Todd to give him his full name was a two-pound bundle of fluff.
Sweeny loving Jeannie on the door-step of our Payson house; May, 2011.
Today, Sweeny is a twenty-pound terrier mix. A very ‘sassy’ little dog that is as much loved by his doggie brothers and sisters. Sweeny, too, sleeps on the bed, laying alongside me and the edge of the bed so that he isn’t between Paul and me. Sweeny has developed the habit of waking me in the morning by laying, full-bodied, over my face; to the point of me not being able to breathe. Guess I shouldn’t have called him Sweeny Todd! 😉
No dog will ever take the place of Poppy or fully assuage me of my guilt that I still feel to some extent. But ‘The Sween’ has helped beyond measure.
Cleo and Sweeny, 2013. Our first Christmas Day in our home here in Oregon.
Last Thursday and yesterday have seen huge amounts of rainfall in this part of Southern Oregon. In fact it was a swipe from the massive storm that was featured in a recent Climate Crocks article, from which one can read:
Meteorologist Paul Douglas has more:
I’m seeing some signs of a potentially historic storm for portions of the western USA between Friday and Wednesday of next week as a series of very moist storms push inland from the Pacific. I expect some flash flooding (and river flooding) for the San Francisco Bay Area, but the most severe flooding (and mountain snows) will take place from Marin county into the mountains of northern California and the Coastal/Cascade range of Oregon.
The ECMWF model, which seems to be doing the best job overall in this new weather-on-steroids environment, prints out some 16-20″ rainfall amounts over northern California and southern/western Oregon by Sunday; two surges: one Friday, a second front pushing in Sunday. WSI’s high-res RPM model confirms this as well, which increases my confidence level. The ECMWF model prints out 4-5” for San Francisco, but 8-10” for Marin county, just north of SFO.
The driveway from our road to the house, about a quarter-of-a-mile long, within 300 feet crosses a creek that flows right across our property. Most of the time it’s a quiet, idyllic place for a dog to play.
But when the volume of water reaches the sorts of proportions that we have seen in the last 48 hours, it turns into a nasty torrent.
Not only that, the driveway across the creek relies on a bridge. Rather, it did rely on a bridge. But Mother Nature, as always, had her say!
Most, if not all, the wooden support structure that held up the steel platform has been swept away.
So all the well-laid plans for the week-end now on hold as we play Marooned! At least our dogs are taking an active interest …
Your journey will be much lighter and easier if you don’t carry your past with you!
So said some unknown scribe. Well I have to say the move from Arizona to Oregon seemed to have quite a bit of ‘past’ travelling with us! But we made it!
Before I mention a few highlights of the last twelve days, first let me say a very big ‘thank you’ to Martin Lack for his fabulous role in looking after things while we were engaged in the moving process. Indeed, Martin’s involvement was so valuable that it made sense to retain his status as author on Learning from Dogs. I hope Martin shares posts with you all on a regular basis.
So to the recap.
As many of you saw, Neil Kelly sent us on our way to Oregon with that wonderful cartoon on the 23rd. October. The previous day had seen a transformation of belongings everywhere …
Ready for loading, except the dog!
…. to an eerily empty home.
Ready for the off in the morning.
The journey up to Merlin, Oregon of 1,176 miles over three days was a blur of hours and hours of driving, walking dogs around strange Motels evenings and mornings and keeping fingers and toes crossed that something didn’t go wrong!
Luckily fate was on our side and a little before 11am on Thursday, 25th October, our mini-convoy of a U-Haul truck towing Jean’s Dodge laden with one group of dogs and our Jeep with other dogs on board, towing a trailer with our five cats inside, pulled up outside the local store in Merlin, some three miles from our new home, so we could purchase basic necessities for the next 24 hours.
Nearly there!
Then at precisely eleven minutes past eleven a.m. we turned into our drive,
closely followed by the truck.
And here we are!
Nature was on hand to greet us as we nosed up to the edge of the paddock; a mother deer and her two babes. A treasured moment.
Welcome, you humans!
The rest of the day was absorbed with the unloading of all our belongings and making arrangements for bedding both humans and animals down, for the first night in Oregon.
Then the morning of Friday, 26th gave us a taste of what Autumn mornings here were like – stunning.
The reason we came here!
So there we are! It’s going to be weeks before we are properly settled in but there’s no question that we have ended up in a beautiful part of the world.
Happy dogs and happy people.
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Now some thoughts regarding this Blog. The list of jobs and tasks that are ahead of us as we turn a house that has been empty for some years into a fully functioning home is ‘interesting’! Inevitably I will have to cut back a little on the 2 to 3 hours a day I used to spend writing for Learning from Dogs when back in Arizona. I am fully committed to publishing something every day but for a while I will lean more heavily than usual on finding material previously published elsewhere. Please let me have your feedback, good or bad!
Finally, the move made it impossible for me to reply individually to a number of readers who decided to subscribe, as I like to do.
So a blanket thank you to all who in the last 10 days decided to follow Learning from Dogs.
Just a wonderful set of very heart-warming pictures.
Note: These were sent to me by John H. back on the 13th October, our penultimate Saturday in Arizona. I thought they would make a perfect start to our first November week-end in Merlin, Oregon.
There are twenty-two in total; eleven today and the rest tomorrow.
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The concluding glorious eleven photographs tomorrow.
Learning from Dogs 