In Rocky Mountain National Park this week the signs of early spring were everywhere. The ranger at the entrance station excitedly told us he had seen bluebirds and woodpeckers and even a butterfly. My friend and I told him we had just passed a herd of deer, some of which were sitting in the shade of the pine trees, as if the March sun was already too warm.
On the trail to Dream Lake (above), despite the presence of 42 inches of snow (according to the ranger), people were hiking up the slush/snow-covered trail in shorts and T-shirts in this 50-something degree day. We ran into a photographer who had been taking photos of and on Haiyaha Lake and suddenly found his feet sinking in the lake. He had been taking pictures in the park for 25 years, and never had the high alpine lakes started melting this early. For the first time, he was seeing robins who stayed here through winter rather than migrating to warmer places.
On the trail, there was almost a spirit of revelry, hikers greeting each other with smiles. And how could you not be happy on such a day: the warmth, mingling with the coolness of the snow under the vastness of the shockingly blue sky.
Yet there’s a disturbing undercurrent, a feeling that things are not right, that we have altered the climate in ways that could prove unalterable. Over thousands of years, animals and plants adjusted to nature’s dependable seasons, but that calibration is being sundered now, as warming temperatures produce earlier flowering seasons and food that arrives at the wrong time.
To sit here on a March day in my cabin and have the windows open, so I can feel the breeze and the sun is wonderful. But I rather have the snow we usually get in March, which means the streams and reservoirs would be full in summer, the fish will have enough water in the streams to survive and there will be enough berries for the bears to eat in the fall.
The nature photographer we met on the trail to Dream Lake said he would give up 20 years of his life to make nature right again. I feel just as passionate, that I would be willing to put my life on the line to save the planet, to keep the glaciers and icecaps frozen, to save the polar bears from drowning in oceans where ice floes have melted. But my life is insignificant compared to the massive forces of progress and greed that ravage the environment in pursuit of cheap food, gas, and wood, among other things.
I want nature back: the snow that we used to get every March; the flowers and fruit tree blossoms that didn’t emerge until April; the time when we didn’t have forest fires in March. Is it too late?
Thanks for this post Kathy, which puts into words so much of what I've been feeling about this stunning, odd spring. I worry on many levels about the changes in weather and what they indicate for us, including the fire danger. And still, still, still I enjoy the strange warmth and feel in my gut that we are due for several more big snowstorms before the season is over.
Posted by: shoney | March 28, 2012 at 07:07 AM
Beautiful and ugly at the same time. Not sure how to explain it, but I feel that tinge too...that all is not well. I enjoy the flowers and running waters, but my heart does achingly miss the Match storms. Where are they? And as a wildfire rages to my south, I have a deep-seated fear for this coming wildfire season. Thanks for this piece...you captured my emotions spot on.
Posted by: Erin Block | March 28, 2012 at 02:54 PM
Thanks, Kath, this is lovely summation my feelings as well, the joy that spring awakening always brings, tinged with fear and a sense of something being wrong.
Posted by: Verna | March 30, 2012 at 02:10 PM
I agree with everyone above. In CA we had 70 degree temps almost all winter!! We are getting cooler weather now with rain but only half of what we should have! It was nice yet no one ever remembers this happening before! So, I'm glad to know I'm not the only one worrying!
Posted by: Sally | March 30, 2012 at 05:12 PM
Kathy - I just found your wonderful blog via a link off the Nature Blog Network site. Your photos and text are a pleasure to read.
The strange too-hot-for-comfort weather has been bothering me, too. In my neck of the woods (Flagstaff, AZ) I've been snowshoeing high up onto the San Francisco Peaks all winter, although you couldn't really call it snowshoeing as my snowshoes were strapped to my pack much of the time without enough snow to bother using them. It was nice to walk among the spruce/fir in January/February without being hip deep in snow, but it felt wrong too. And watching joggers in shorts and t-shirts running on bare trails in March was surreal, like seeing tourists walking out onto strangely exposed seafloor to pick up starfish in the minutes prior to a tsunami...
Posted by: del | April 13, 2012 at 11:58 AM
I like your analogy to just prior to the tsunami. Thankfully, it's cooled off some here, but I still worry. Thanks for your good comments.
Posted by: Kathy Kaiser | April 16, 2012 at 05:33 PM
This willingness to put one's life on the line: I believe it and feel it too, but why aren't more of us making a racket, putting up a fight to try to save the world we love before it's too late? I think, sadly, that most of us have given up already. Given up on the world that seemed so beautifully in tact during our own childhoods. How is it possible that so much change has occurred so fast? And, again, how is it possible that we don't do anything about it?
Loved del's comparison to the sea floor before the tsunami. Wow!
Posted by: Julene Bair | May 12, 2012 at 10:42 AM
Julene, I don't know if people have given up as much as they choose not to see, which is easier. And we all do it.
And how is it possible that we've let things change so much?
Posted by: Kathy Kaiser | May 17, 2012 at 12:24 PM