A few weeks ago, on a day when the smoke from wildfires was especially thick, I went out for a walk around Meeker Park, looking for something familiar and comforting. Weeks of white skies, uncharacteristic for Colorado, and lack of any moisture and wind made the landscape seem lifeless and unfamiliar. Even the birds were quiet or had left for cleaner air, wherever that might be.
In some places, the aspen, which didn’t leaf out until June—a month late—were starting to give up, their leaves turning yellow or brown, a month earlier than usual. In the meadows, the grasses were brown, and the tall angelica were reduced to the bare outlines of their starburst shapes.
Yet I was stopped in my tracks by the sight of a black-eyed susan (left) flowering in the middle of this dusty road. It’s about as short as I’ve ever seen one and could get trampled easily by a car’s wheels, yet its emergence from the ground, in these least favorable conditions for growth, signaled some urge for survival, heeding some ancient need to keep its species going.
I’m constantly amazed by the resilience of nature. A pine cone seed lodges among rocks, and somehow the tree manages to twist itself around and through the rocks and grow, reaching for the sun while digging deep in the rocks for water. Under those conditions, it might only live for a few years, yet it keeps going, even if it landed in the least optimal place to survive. Somehow the tree accepts its fate and still strives for life.
On my drive to and from the cabin, for the past month, I've passed a field of tall sunflowers. No matter how dark the skies or how little moisture we've gotten, they are always standing straight up, their cheery faces looking toward the sun. My heart lifts every time I see them.
A few weeks ago, I saw a hummingbird on the ground, not a good place for a tiny vulnerable bird. It held one wing out at a strange angle, and I guessed it might be injured. Because it probably couldn’t fly well enough to hover over flowers and get the nectar, instead it poked through the mud on the ground, looking for a meal of insects. If one door is closed, try opening another. Nature finds ways to survive.
Before our snow this week, the trees hadn’t received any real moisture for more than a month, and yet they endure. Some are more than 100 years old, and they know how to conserve for hard times.
Finding resilience is a lesson humans can learn, because it feels like we’ve squandered too much. So I’ll take heart from the trees, from the purple asters and yellow daisies clinging to life in the heat and smoke and from the blue dragonflies that circle the pond. Keep going. Dig deep. Persist in any way you can. Life is probably not going to get any easier.
Thank you for this post on resilience...needed that today after a full week of not being able to go outside [due to poor air quality here in California, for starters].
It's so great to see some nature in your beautiful post.
Posted by: shoney | September 15, 2020 at 11:54 AM
A great reminder that nature really has all the information we need in order to support life with sanity and efficiency …
Posted by: Jennifer Woodhull | September 15, 2020 at 02:01 PM