The Urban Naturalist

Recycling wars

Lichen, one of nature's recyclers. The Urban Naturalist photo
 
A story in my local newspaper this morning described the conflict one of the area's smaller communities is having over recycling.

Amazing. In 2011, we still have whole communities that haven't yet decided whether recycling waste -- as nature always has done -- is "worth" it. The city is considering a voluntary recycling plan that would charge those who want to do it $2 to $3 more a month to cover the costs of the program. Those who don't want to recycle wouldn't have to pay the extra fee. As one recycle-supporting resident told city officials, recycling is a personal choice, and she didn't mind paying more.

How pitiful that this woman had to pander to the ignorance of a few in order to get her city to do the right thing -- and is having to pay more to do what's right in the process.  Cities have it all backwards. Recycling should be mandatory, and those who don't want to do it ought to be the ones paying more.  The true costs of our landfills encompasses more than trucks and people whose job it is to turn the stuff over.  Trashing our only planet will cost future generations much more than $3 a month.

One of the residents who is against having to recycle said his family "doesn't produce enough" to recycle. Really? Where does this guy buy stuff? I buy mostly fresh produce-type food, and one week's worth of packaging from the grocery store is enough to fill our indoor recycling bin twice.  Our recycling trash can goes to the curb twice as often as our garbage can.

When and how did we become so ecologically illiterate as a society? Step back and consider that nature has thousands of detrivores -- animals and other organisms whose job it is to eat dead and decaying stuff -- and it is plain to see that recycling waste back into the system is not simply a part of life. It is what allows us to make new life.

Recycling isn't a choice. It what nature intended. Those who don't do it, end up paying one way or another.

A day for Earth

Photo by The Urban Naturalist

It's Earth Day.  Take some time to marvel at Nature's wonders.

From boots to the ballet

The princesses have abducted Dora. 

While thumbing through a Target insert this past Sunday, I spotted a Dora the Explorer doll, only it wasn't really Dora. This chick had Dora's face, but she also had a teeny waist, longer hair and was decked out in a pink tutu unsuitable for exploring much of anything beyond the plastic barre that Dora apparently has traded for her backpack.

Oh, the shame.  Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against ballet. I spent 10 years of my youth dancing. It was a period in my life that also saw me learn to ride a bicycle, and a time when I also was likely to be climbing trees in Mr. Hatley's apple orchard or poking around it the creek near the junior high school.  Just because I went to ballet class once a week and donned a puffy tulle skirt a few times a year didn't sap my sense of adventure or yearning to get dirty.

It also was a time when you could actually buy a toy that wasn't attached to a movie or television show.  Certainly, toys were still marketed heavily and branded in certain ways. And some were attached to the movies and shows of my youth (I recall insisting on my mother buying me a dress sported by Buffy on the television show "Family Affair").  But I saw about a third of the television advertisements and shows in those days as children are exposed to now.  I wasn't innundated with brands in five different types of media.  We only had a couple to deal with.

So whennadventurous Dora the Explorer becomes a Dora who opts instead to stay inside where she and her pink tutu won't get mussed, it likely will have an effect on how little girls view the whole getting outside and exploring thing. 

In this age of the media princess army, it doesn't take much to turn little girls away from worms and mud and tree-climbing to get a better view of a bird nest -- curiosities and activities that help build scientists and problem-solvers.  I have seen many young girls who, by the time they are in fourth grade, worry more about getting their shoes dirty and hair messed up than they do about getting something  cool out of the soil to put under the microscope. It is depressing.

A female coworker and I noticed earlier this year that we had both developed a habit of dressing nicer -- sometimes in "girl clothes" complete with skirts and cute socks with our trail shoes or boots -- when we taught groups of children in third or fourth grade or higher.  Younger children just see us as the grownups who tell them waht to do. But these older girls are watching. And we want to show them that girls can still look like girls while they are bumping around outside getting a little dirty and exploring nature. It works. The girls who come on field trips wearing sparkly ballet flats warm up to us when we at least look as if we understand them.

But Dora has tossed in a new wrinkle. I just don't know that either my coworker or I could pull off the pink tutu gig while plucking tadpoles from the pond.

Caught in the cycle

  Photo by Doug Murray

See the smiley face in the mountain above?  Look hard. This fellow has a little bit of a nose, too.  The mountain is Ben Lomond, and it keeps watch over my city from the north.

Last week, while pedaling home from work, a new coworker said his landlady told him that when the smiley face on Ben Lomond disappears, it is time to plant your garden. He had no idea what she was talking about, so we stopped riding and I pointed it out.  And until he mentioned what she'd said, I had totally forgotten the old local lore about how the disappearance of Ben Lomond's face meant the snow had melted enough, and it likely would not snow or freeze again until the fall.

Our city about 82,200 people isn't exactly a small town. We're surrounded by cities to the north and south of us, and if it weren't for mountains on the east and a big salty lake to the west, those areas would be packed with people too.

But we still manage to recognize nature's cycles as a backdrop for our bustling lives.  Think about it. What do you do in spring? Fall? We all have our little rituals set to the pace of nature's cycles.

Last weekend, I attended a party a friend gave for her daughter, who had just started her moons.  They called it a "Becoming party" because the young girl was  embarking on womanhood.  It was a grand occasion and something quite out of the ordinary compared to how modern western society views this big event in a girl's life.

Indigenous cultures considered a girl's moving into womanhood a rite of passage that bore celebrating. A woman was considered her most powerful spiritually when she exhibited the process that allowed her to bring new life into the mortal world. It wasn't seen as icky or something to hide or be ashamed of.  It was just another of nature's cycles, and it was recognized and respected as such.

Which of nature's cycles speaks to you? The return of birds to your window feeder? Being able to sleep in a little longer in the morning because you don't have to scrape the windshield?  Having a couple of extra hours of daylight to enjoy your garden or a walk or bike ride after work?

We may be urban dwellers, but all we are aware of nature's cycles, even if we only acknowledge them long enough to know when to plant the tomatoes.

    Monument Valley, watercolor, Susan Snyder

The Peace of Wild Things

By Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

 I turned 50, was awarded my master's degree and lost my mother - all within a three-day period in February. It was the best and worst weekend of my life.

Still, upon reading the above poem that a friend sent to me when I returned from my mother's memorial, I found solace by remembering to "rest in the grace of the world."  Being 50 and healthy is a gift.  Having the opportunity to reinvent oneself and get an education is another bonus.

And my mother dying? Well, that's still tough.  But she was almost 86, and as I tell students at our nature center, everything dies in time and recharges the energy that sustains all life on our planet.  Thinking in those terms, my mother's light is brighter than it ever was.  And she is free.

How many times do we walk out of our front doors, these days, take a deep breath and find grace in the privilege of just being in this world?  For many of us, the answer would be rarely.  We rise to the beeps and twitters of our electronic thingamawhatses, pull on some clothes, jam down some breakfast, grab the coffee cup and thrust ourselves out into the world for another day of "productivity."

It's the way of the urban human. But does it have to be that way?  I decided it doesn't. Three milestones in as many days call for a true celebration of all that I can have with this one life I am afforded.  So I took up my nature journal again in earnest and have decided that spending a little time outside every day embracing the "grace of the world" is more important than, well, just about anything other than eating or sleeping.

And I probably could do a little less eating.

Spring Dance

 Photo by Doug Murray

The Greater Sage Grouse above is all gussied up for his annual spring dance, which we got to observe this week at a local "lek," the term for a mating dance arena used by the males of some animal species.  Leks are generally associated with the mating rituals of birds, but some bats, insects and fish also use them. The females hang around and watch as the males prance and call, trying to impress the ladies.

In Northern Utah, lek-watchers head out in the spring to see the Greater Sage Grouse.  Lek-lookers in other areas of the country might watch Prairie Chickens or Ruffed Grouse or similar ground-type game birds. Check with your local Audubon Society or state wildlife office to find out who likes to lek and where to find them.

Although I consider myself a relatively avid birder, I'd never seen a lek in action.  As it turns out, a successful lek trip takes two things in greeat quantities: coffee and patience.  We arrived at our chosen sage grouse lek at about 6 a.m., following a 50-minute drive. (This activity is not for those who don't like to rise early.)

This lek was close to the road -- in fact, at the peak prancing, the grouse were all over the road -- so we parked the car alongside a fence in a roadside pullout and waited with the engine and lights off and the windows rolled down. 

After about 40 minutes we saw the shadowy figures of birds scuttling into position in the meadow just beyond the fence. After about 15 minutes, the field was covered with more than 100 grouse, about a third of which were males puffing out the enormous air sacs on their chests, making noises that sounded like hoots followed by a thumping sound -- al the while prancing forward or in circles 8 or 10 steps, then pausing to waggle their pointed fan-shaped tails. It looked like downtown Ogden on Saturday night.

 The display went on for a little more than an hour and started breaking up just as the morninglight took hold. Apparently, grouse prefer to do their business under cover of darkness. They're not shy. They're just easy prey for golden eagles or hawks in broad daylight.

It was an eerie, primal experience happening in a region that is Utah's most populated and urban. And it's a cool way to spend an early morning.  You won't even be late for work.