Dana O'Driscoll Bob Dylan’s masterpiece may have been composed 60 years ago, but I feel the words in this song powerfully resonate within me today. Music has become more and more of a refuge for me these days, as I struggle to express the depth of my feelings and responses to increasing climate change and bearing witness to how quickly the climate crisis is unfolding on our land. Hearing words that resonate in a song really helps me process those feelings, be with those feelings, and hold space for myself. I’ve been in a dark place for the last few weeks about it, especially as I am once again, for the 3rd time in a row, watch my land suffer through serious drought (although this one has a new term attached, “flash drought”). Funny how we keep having to come up with new language to describe new climate phenomena, while the media refuses to say what is actually happening.
I was sharing some of my feelings about the “flash” drought and the 4+ week unending heat wave with a dear friend of mine. She suggested I write about it. I told her that none of my blog readers want to hear about my climate angst and going through a dark night of the soul. I try very hard to make this blog a place of hope, of vision, of peace for all beings, and of inspiration. But she said to me “Are you so sure nobody wants to hear it? Aren’t we all going through it now? You always share so eloquently what many of us feel,” So, here I am. Today is not really a glass-half-full day on the blog, today is a grim reality day. So, I’m going to take the advice of my friend and share my thoughts on climate change as it is unfolding on our land here. I know it is good for all of us to share our experiences with each other and hold space for ourselves while we are also holding space for the Earth. Therefore, I would like to ask that you hold space for me with these words–and in turn, I would welcome you to share in the comments your own reflections on climate change. How it is affecting you, the world around you, the things that you love and hold sacred.
The idea of climate change has always been a part of my life. My parents were hippies in the 1970’s and had me in the early 80’s, and they always have loved the earth. They loved the earth so much that they even called their business “Earth Graphics” and their logo featured a big planet. I grew up composting, hanging out with frogs, climbing trees, building cabins in the woods, convincing chickens to perform tricks, and eating a lot of zucchini from the garden. As a small child, my father told me about climate change. I remember him sharing this with me with sadness in his eyes. Perhaps my father, like me now, doesn’t want to see what the world is becoming, what we are all forced to live through in this age. I made the decision in my 20’s not to have children because that is the single most important thing I can do for the planet, and I feel settled with that choice. But, I have a three-year-old niece now. I fear she will see the same fear in my eyes as I think about what life will be like for her when she’s my age. Unfathomable and unimaginable, I’m sure. So I’ve always known, and I’ve always cared. During my formative years as a new druid, I also had many long conversations with John Michael and Sara Greer, and anyone who knows anything about JMG’s work knows that he’s not pulling punches when it comes to the slow crash, the long descent, the myth of progress and industrial decline. Many of the ideas I share here were shaped by our conversations.
You see, I wrote that paragraph above because when I write the rest of this post, you have the context. I am not new to the idea that the climate is going to change. I’ve made some very hard decisions in my life, like not having children, and to live as a homesteader and rewilder, because of climate change. I’ve dedicated my life energy to doing everything I can to try to help humans stop the climate crisis and return to the embrace of nature. It’s why I spend hours each week writing this blog, why I volunteer to run a druid order. I do this because nature is sacred and nature is everything to me.
But what I’m describing above is an intellectual knowing. Knowing that climate change is still a future thing, a faraway problem, something you can avoid looking at too closely if at all. When you aren’t living it directly, it feels far away. It still feels very far away for people who don’t have the kind of homesteading lifestyle that I do. It feels like it is not entirely real. We only live in the present moment. I can only really truly experience what I am experiencing now. The past becomes lost to time. The future is not yet here. We might choose as people to live in the past or the future, but that’s only denying the present. The present is all we have…and there are no substitutes for lived experience when it comes to what is happening now.
But understanding something intellectually, even on a deep level, and facing the lived experience of it are radically different things. Climate change is happening outside of my door with increasing frequency and intensity. Climate change is happening faster than I thought it would, and I’m pretty scared by the experiences I’m having already. And I’m trying really hard not to be afraid of the future.
As a homesteader, I am outside for a minimum of two hours a day every day of the year, in any weather, and in fact, the worse the weather is, the more time I might be out in it! A lot of the time I’m outside at least a dozen times a day, sometimes for hours. When you are growing your own food and have a variety of animals you care for, you are very close to the land. You are living in and with the land every day. And I am always aware of everything that is happening around and on the homestead: the temperature, the precipitation, the sun, the clouds, the birdcalls, how the plants are growing, what babies or new life is on the land, and so forth. And you develop very keen observation skills. I like to write things down, so I keep journals about the land and what’s happening. But what this means is that I’m also, to use the metaphor of my ancestors, the canary in the coal mine. I’m outside and in it more than most people I know, which means I’m going to see changes, even small ones when they start to happen long before those living in cities may take notice.
And the changes are happening rapidly here. The first drought we experienced here was in 2020, and I wrote about it here. This is 0ur fourth drought in five years, all in the summer months. Each of them has their own unique way of unfolding. This year, we had a really nice rainy April and May, so we were able to establish the garden and get the plants out. The first succession of crops had mostly had set roots before the drought came, but when it came it was a “flash drought” which means that it went from being fine to being a drought really quickly (in a matter of weeks, with zero rain and 95+ temperatures and no cloud cover). We have never had sustained temperatures over 90 stretching for weeks or a month at a time. We can contrast this to last year, when it didn’t rain in April or May at all and then we were trying to plant out our garden in the beating 95 degree heat with no cloud cover, and yet again, no rain for six weeks. I’m not going to lie–the thing I have the most anxiety about in my life right now is precipitation. It is not good, but I’m obsessing over the weather–I look at it several times a day, and it either elates me or crushes me. The worst is when it says 100% chance of rain and we are supposed to get 1.5″ and then 2 hours later we now are at 0% chance of rain and the storm has gone a different direction. It also crushes me when I see storm systems continually go north or south. This is especially when I know there’s a lot of flooding for friends who live in those regions, some of whom have literally gotten flooded in and been stranded at their homes. And so, I look at the weather. And look. And look.
Becuase out there, a lot of things are starting to die. I’ve never seen potatoes wilt and die in the middle of July, but I’m now digging the whole patch up. I’ve never seen squash yellow and wilt, and corn literally curl in the fields. Some of the trees here are going yellow and starting to lose their leaves. The mayapples have given up and retreated into the soil till the spring. The berries wither on the vine. And when you step outside, it is awful- sweltering, humid, and hot. The energy of the land is tense and feels like it is on fire.
And maybe some of you are saying, well, if things are that bad, why don’t you do some weather magic? I know that lots of people have differing opinions about this but I do not believe it is my place to work such magic. I don’t think any one human should work affect such a large system, in an ignorant and potentially selfish way. There is frankly too much of that kind of thinking already–the idea that I somehow know better, that I can somehow make a better decision about the weather than air and water spirits. I have to trust that the spirits of the earth know that I am here, that this land is suffering, and that they are doing what they need to do and send rain where it goes. With that said, I passively do support balance in the weather. I make offerings to the air and water spirits, and I pray for rain. I offer symbolic water to wilted plants on the landscape (a kind of water wassailing to energetically support a dry land). I do other ceremonies to hold space for those who are suffering during the drought. I do a lot of magic, actually, but not anything that I’d consider crossing that line to actively interfere with weather systems.
I made it through three other droughts in 2020, 2022, and 2023…but this third one in a row happening now really broke something in me. It wasn’t seeing the land suffer and be so dry with endless weeks of 90 degrees. It wasn’t the wilting and dying garden plants–you can only water so much and they can only handle so much heat for so long. It wasn’t the exhaustion of trying to keep everything and everyone alive and hydrated and comfortable.
It was the fact that I felt like a new phase of my life was beginning. I would never again have the easy summer where it was cool and rainy, where I could just watch the plants grow and harvest them. Where I never had to water, and all my passive permaculture systems just worked well when it did stop raining. Where the rivers stay full and kayakable all summer long and the mushrooms grow fat in the foggy damp mornings. I think that might be my favorite kind of weather–the rain and the snow. Here in PA, in our temperate rainforest, we have always gotten a lot of rain, even in the summers, and our climate has always been wet and overcast. My hometown of Johnstown, PA is one of the rainiest and cloudiest places in North America; Johnstown along with other cities in Western Pennsylvania almost always makes many top 5 lists for being the most overcast place in the country. It is common lore (which means it may or may not be true) that Indigenous people called Johnstown “Grey Cloud” and refused to live there, even if it is at the confluence of rivers and on very fertile soil because it was too cloudy. This is all to say, I have water and rain and snow in my bones. And when it’s dry like this, I just feel like I’m withering.
And it was the loss of that climate, losing all the rain and fog and overcast days in the summer, that broke me in the last few weeks. Those rainy and overcast days are my very favorite days. And I was losing that. I miss them. I miss the summer endless rains where you can go outside and play in the puddles. I’ve always been the closest with the element of water, at my core, and I am just feeling dangerously dehydrated. Not as a physical being (although my body is certainly exhausted from all of it) but more I feel like the drought has dehydrated my spirit.
I probably didn’t do myself any favors this week by digging into the historical climate and drought for my region and discovered some startling trends–like while we get an “abnormally dry” period every few years as a normal part of summer, actual drought conditions (moderate or above, to use the USDA’s terms) only happened typically once in every 10 years before 2020. But in the last 5 years, we had 4 summers where we had at least some moderate drought conditions and some severe.
I still want to cling to the Pennsylvania climate of my youth–but that climate is but a memory. And that is what broke me.
I realized that this “new normal” means shifting more seriously to gardening in a desert and enduring really hot summer conditions every year rather than growing in a lush and green landscape. I’ve started to write about this and I’ll keep writing more to help us all out and build knowledge together. It means a lot more hard work, brutal work in brutal heat, but also designing new resilient systems–because what worked in the past just isn’t cutting it any longer. It also means more heat stress–and heat does bad things to the human body, like raising our anxiety, and cortisol levels, and taxing our bodies. It is also the stress of watching my country spiral out of control and all that I can do is think–why is nobody talking about how bad climate change is getting? Why are people ignoring the many warning signs? These shifts in thinking are necessary and needed, but I also feel a little more than sad and hopeless at the moment.
During all this, I’m also just trying to take care of myself. My best approaches are working with healing plants and mushrooms medicinally and spiritually, making art, being in nature, and being with my goose flock. Just breathing and holding hope in my heart. It is hard sometimes, but it is what I am holding onto today.
I am going to end this with another set of lyrics that have brought me a lot of comfort, this time from The Hills and the River’s “Misery’s Company”
Misery’s company is all you can share
as you add an empty bottle to the pile at your chair
saying “Life is meaningless, life is unfair.”
You look me straight in the eye and tell me we’re all gonna die.
You view the World through a screen in your head
A separate self cut off from the rest
You see everything living and think that it’s dead
but tell me now what’ll you do when the World looks right back at you?
So what is the self that you wanna be?
The Thinker? The Willer? The Watcher? The Beast?
A bundle of senses and anxieties?
The Doer of all to be done? The Player of games to be won?
’cause you look at yourself through a dark dirty mirror
waiting for something different to appear.
Will you sit there forever alone in your fear
or stand up from down on the floor, walk over and open the door?
I am not afraid of the weight of my body
I am not ashamed of being human
for surely what is born will return to the compost
but I do not think that is all that I am.
I could be the wind moving down through the valley,
I could be the sun looking down through the trees.
I could be the forest alive in tongues mouths and eyes
of a multitude of realities.
I am not alone in a cold dark cosmos,
I am just an atom of a much larger Self.
For surely what is born will return to the compost,
but the body that will rot is not all that I have.
I am not afraid, I am not alone.
I listen to this song and find myself repeating that mantra at the end of the song: “I am not afraid, I am not alone.” It brings tears to my eyes to write it. It has become something I am saying as I stand and witness the plants wilt, then yellow, and then die under the brutal sun. It becomes what I chant to myself as I walk through the darkness under the full moonlight, one of the only times it is comfortable to be outside. I tell myself I am not afraid as I take a deep breath, trying to get enough oxygen in my asthmatic lungs that feel like they have 50lb weights on them in the unrelenting heat. I tell myself this as I watch the political situation in my country catch on fire, and I wonder how much more of nature and wild places we will lose to their greed. I say this as I stand with my land in the face of climate change, holding space and praying for rain. I say this as I tell my dear plant and tree friends just to send their roots deeper and hold on just a few days longer, to endure just a little more. And I remind myself that I am not alone, I am here with all of you. Perhaps tomorrow, it will rain.
Invitation to Share
I would very much welcome anyone’s stories or thoughts on climate change in the comments Please feel free to share anything–how it is affecting you and your land, and how you are faring in the present age. I am happy to have this space for us to talk about it.
dearest Dana, I hear you. I hear your grief, your fear, your empathy for all of life. I am here with you, On the other end of the crisis spectrum, recovering from another devastating flood here in VT.
I too am a water being and i know the feeling of withering under heat and drought. It’s so hard on the body and soul. I also chose to not have children in this life, for the same reasons. It has been clear to me since my early 20’s that there are way too many people on this planet, and the future for the next generations is at risk.
I have studied Weather Shamanism, and have a deeply respectful relationship with the weather spirits. I agree it is not about forcing our will on them, but building relationship, love, gratitude, and reciprocity. How often do we thank the weather for beautiful days and rainbows? Im sure Druids do this more than most!
I continue to pray and weave with the waters and weather beings here and beyond.
I grieve for all the lost lives and habitat washed downstream, and all the toxins.
I also continue to dream in the New Earth amidst it all. Cultivating connections, good works, sustainable community in love with the land. I will share a favorite invocation that speaks to this, by Orion Foxwood:
Good Neighbors Invocation
”Good Neighbors of the under-realms;
awaken unto life!
Ban the bane and bless our luck;
and banish blight and strife.
Open now the ancient ways
of life in love with Land.
Open now the Hawthorn Road
as we extend our hand.
Lead us to the magic road
and back in touch with thee;
and we will know our kin in rock, in cloud and sacred tree.
We end this call with heartfelt breath and consecrated deed.
Blessings to all by root, by flower and wind-scattered seed”.
(repeat this last line 2 more times for a total of three)
Dear Fearn, thank you, my friend. I am sorry to hear how extreme the floods have been in Vermont. I hope all is ok where you are. Standing strong together.
Thank you for holding space here and with Orion Foxwood’s beautiful good neighbors invocation!
I thank the weather spirits each day, although some rainy days I do have more gratitude than normal, lol!
Your friend was right. You are always able to put my own feelings into words and I feel such joy when I see a new post! Even if the post is grim , I feel seen and I feel community. Thank you for being vulnerable with us! In Minnesota I have grieved for the loss of our beautiful, snowy winters. When we had an evening where snow finally came for a night, I went outside and just stood with my face towards the sky for as long as I could. Grateful for the moment, not knowing how many more times I’d get to have this experience.
Our spring and summer has been near constant rains. Not the heat, drought and wildfire smoke of the last few summers but a new challenge none the less. The black raspberries are so small this year. I can usually pick gallons but instead left them for the animals who needed them more. The sumac is a deep burgundy, soaked with water and no flavor. It’s as if each day is a new reality to face. I’m trying to just accept it as it is and adjust as I can. But it’s very hard. I’m so glad I’m not alone in this.
Christina, you are not alone. It is amazing to me about how precious things like a winter snowy night becomes when it so rare. I have such deep gratitude for every rain now, and every snow, and ever day that is not sweltering. I think that’s just it–each day is a new challenge, and the only constant is change. It is hard to accept. Hard to live in this world. But we are here together, hand in hand.
Dana, I am so glad you posted your feelings. I, too, see these changes here in Baltimore, MD. As a steward of an urban foraging trail, an avid gardener, and as an ecotherapist, I am often outdoors, visiting same plants and trees year after year. I can feel part of me unable to face the depth of my feelings. I remember refusing to believe that my sister would actually succumb to her terminal cancer diagnosis. I could easily slip into manic optimism. I see humans around me incrementally developing love and care for our world, but I fear it’s too little, too late. My sister passed away four years ago this month.
Hi Ckirkos, I’m glad you are stewarding your trail and your garden. I hold hope with your statement ” I see humans around me incrementally developing love and care for our world, but I fear it’s too little, too late.” Perhaps, perhaps not. More people have returned to nature in the last 4 years than probably the last 20 or 30, at least if we look at the statistics for druid orders! I think that people are waking up. Will it be enough? What is enough? I am not sure that the current paradigm is worth saving. I think that enough of us will have what we need next to transition. And so I pray, offer ceremony, and offer hope. Blessings to you–you are not alone.
Thank you for writing this, as I, too, am witnessing the chaos and feeling such grief. And at the same time, such gratitude for the beauty. In Maine, I had a huge, beautiful, magical garden. I witnessed the not-so-gradual changes, the losses of insects, especially the bees and butterflies, then the fireflies, and then the bats. Gone. Or almost. I would see ghost bats, and wonder, as a single firefly appeared if it felt lonely, if it wondered where all its kin had gone.
The worst year (before I moved to NY state in 2018) was the drought of 2016. Water for the garden had priority over toilet flushing and laundry, and even so there were beds I had to let go. I’ll never forget digging in one of them – the garlic bed after it had been harvested was one I stopped watering – seeing the worms, shriveled and dry with no sand on their normally damp bodies. They weren’t dead. They were in some kind of hibernation, waiting to the rains to come. All I could do was kneel on the ground and cry. We finally got some rain in October, and while this drought was going on, we fought (successfully) Nestle’s plans for a water bottling plant in our little town. But the water mining was ongoing, despite wells going dry. The bottom line transcends all else. The suffering of trees and worms, and humans matters nothing to them.
Now, two years in a row (to the day) friends and family in Vermont are once again dealing with such devastating flooding, Plainfield is considering letting some of the town roads go, and at least one bridge too. The roads are gone now. The flooding in that small town tore away the largest apartment building (6 units) in a house that was built, I think, in the 1800s. A friend of mine watched it happen. I used to visit friends in that home, drive on those roads, as I lived there for almost 25 years. Just a couple of days ago, 5 tornados touched down in upstate NY. I think a record, but now it is “normal”. Such devastation in their wake. It’s hard to imagine this happening over and over and over again, and humans continuing to make repairs only to have them undone a few months later. (Hurricane season is still to come – it was Hurricane Irene’s last gasp, and Beryl’s this year, that caused such devastation in Vermont – will it happen again – this year? Next? Every year from now on? What does that mean for us? For our communities? And what happens when towns no longer have the ability to fix the roads or to reconnect all the downed power lines when we depend on electricity for every damn thing we do now? I’ve wondered this for decades – knowing full well the grid will go down and one day that will be it.
Dana, you were born around the same time as my boys. My youngest especially is having a really hard time now. He always said he would never have kids for the reason you haven’t. Yet when he married Lynn and she got pregnant, they were overjoyed. So overjoyed that they did it again, and now they have 2 boys, ages 11 and 5. And now Colin sometimes finds it hard to breathe. I wish there was something I could do to help him. I was (still am, but in different ways), an activist when my boys were growing up. They knew all about climate change and corporate control and Hydro-Quebec flooding Indigenous lands, and the World Bank and Structural Adjustment, and wars for oil and genetic engineering all the stuff because that’s what my work was about. But my biggest work was fighting to stop clearcutting in old growth in the PNW and the tropics. My organization along with numerous others around the country, formed a coalition and gathered signatures on petitions to stop the clearcutting. My boys counted every one of those over 100,000 signatures. I wonder, sometimes, how different their lives would be, Colin’s especially, if I had a “normal” job and didn’t bring all those counterculture people into our living room, all that knowing of the reality of that overarching, “evil” in so many ways, corporate dominated, destructive western capitalist system that is the reason for all of this suffering. Would he have more peace now, even while the chaos rages around and through us all? Or did I simply prepare him for these times? I don’t know. All I know is every day I witness both beauty and pain. And I too, am filled with weather anxiety, and the grief of lost species and places and the fact that no matter how much is paved over, they are still paving what little is left. With no consideration, no understanding, no empathy or compassion for life or the future – not even for their grandchildren. Which is beyond my comprehension.
I have to find some solace in a deep knowing that what is happening is somehow needed, that without it there would be no hope. That these disasters, this suffering, and the pain and losses that are now reaching into the homes and hearts of many who were oblivious before, is part of the cleansing and ultimately the healing. I sense a transformation does not have to take long though the journey to that tipping point seems to be taking long, until now – now it’s happening every moment somewhere. I honestly did not think I would live to see these changes. But now it’s clear I will because I am. It’s all energy and I’m trying my best to breathe and communicate with the grandmothers (past and present), and love through it all as what we give our energy to, is what we create. Love Beauty Peace. I too tell myself I am not afraid. Even when I am, hoping to cast that spell to give me courage and so I can continue to put love energy into the world.
Hi Susan, thanks so much for sharing. I am not surprised to hear about towns deciding to abandon roads, etc, as the floods or droughts get worse. We have storm damage on poles outside of our house–after requesting again and again, the power company basically told me they are only repairing poles when they fall at this point…well, ok. They are going to fall on cars on the road. There’s a lot of that here these days. The basic breakdown of the infrastructure is accelerating due to many reasons, not only the extreme weather.
I’m glad to hear of the work you are doing. We each do it in our own way. I also cannot comprehend the behavior these days, and I pray that people will open their eyes. Keep up the hope and the courage, and put your love and energy into the world. I am with you!
Thank you for inviting the collective ‘we’ to answer you.
The same ‘cult’ that blindly follows the Project 25 script are the same people that deny that extreme heat has, and does, affect our lives. The only way I can cope with the reality of the non-thinking is to register as many people as I can as Democrats. I refuse to ignore the destruction of our planet, and our democracy, faster than I can recognise it in my broken heart and shocked brain.
I depend upon the trees around me to keep my spirit going. I ask them for strength and energy. They are massive, resilient, beautiful, wise and strong. I love them, all of them, so much easier to love than other forms of life. This week a violent wind storm split away one portion of a tree, and at another location hurled away a mighty maple branch. To see their remains is a kick in the stomach, a sock to my eyes, a wrenching to my mourning soul. If it had not been ninety degrees week after week, with a culmination of 105, it would not have happened.
Too hot to work outside, too hot to sleep, the burnt leaves fall from the River Birches as if Thanksgiving is approaching. Brittle brown grass cannot feed the browsers. Even weeds wither and die. I cry out for people once alive on this planet who have been slaughtered, children blown up in clinics, in hospitals, just as I cry in anguish for the struggling plants that did not survive the pulse of the sun.
I ask myself how will I continue, and who will listen to me as I watch an unfolding panarama not unlike 1930’s fascist Germany, with pumping fists and sneering faces.
Thank you for reminding me that we are not alone.
LME, thanks for sharing. It is a terrifying time to be alive. Hold fast and do the good work. I hear you, and you are not alone.
I agree. We need to come together, get involved, get Kamala in office and move things forward quickly to solve climate change issues. I’ve been writing my representatives for to save old growth trees and help with climate change issues.
I lived in Portland OR for almost 25 years. I saw how quickly things changed with the weather, the heat, longer and longer periods of no rain, fires, smoke filled air, plants stressed, and now my favorite trees, the cedars are dying out in their southern range. I moved to the coast last year because I couldn’t bare it anymore.
I too made a vow to the earth not to have children. I’ve always felt perplexed when people would call ME selfish for not having children! How could I when the planet is suffering so much because of too many of us. I saw this growing up in the 70s watching wild animal shows. How many were becoming endangered.
I try to do my best, grow as much of my own, but 2nd hand, walk rather than drive, don’t consume so much or buy things that have too much packaging but I don’t see others doing the same. I see a lot of people sitting in their idling cars on their phones. Its very disheartening. Sending you hugs Dana.
Hi Rhonda, Sending hugs to you too. I’m sorry to hear how you had to leave your home because you were dealing with the fires, smoke, and drying out cedars. That’s so hard to bear witness to. And I’m glad to meet another one of the childless for the planet club! Thank YOU for your sacrifice and know that you are in good company. I try to do all the things..I do think more people are starting to wake up. But goodness, it is hard out there right now. Blessings to you and walking with you in all of this!
“I’ve been in a dark place for the last few weeks about it, especially as I am once again, for the 3rd time in a row, watch my land suffer-”
as i posted on Discord, two tornado warnings in a week in a half (in Upstate NY) have definitely put me in a dark place, so this resonates. a lot.
“It still feels very far away for people who don’t have the kind of homesteading lifestyle that I do. It feels like it is not entirely real.”
i’m not sure about that. i keep having conversations with people – like my neighbor whose roof was crushed by a falling limb during the first tornadic wind event – and having people at least nod their head at climate change being real. hell, we knew when i did my Master’s degree in Ecology in the early 90s that climate change was coming. but i think people are starting to see the 100+ F record temperatures, all the wildfires and certainly the increasing storm activity from increased heat/energy, are beginning to accept it’s real.
the bigger problem is, not many of them are changing their behavior. 🙁
“We have never had sustained temperatures over 90 stretching for weeks or a month at a time. We can contrast this to last year, when it didn’t rain in April or May at all and then we were trying to plant out our garden in the beating 95 degree heat with no cloud cover, and yet again, no rain for six weeks. I’m not going to lie–the thing I have the most anxiety about in my life right now is precipitation.”
i’m very concerned this is going to become our ‘new normal’… and rain water caches will also become our ‘new normal’. i spend an hour or so every morning now carrying water to all my transplants. i’m fairly sure i have it way easier because – being in the Ontario/Oneida watershed – i’m in a wet place. even a lack of rain for a couple weeks at a time will only take our water table down just so far. in addition, almost all my fruit trees are well-rooted now. but i feel this; the heat is new and slightly crazy-feeling/making.
for us (up here) the lack of rain is taking a backseat to the increased winds. Air has always been my weakest element, chart-wise and energetic-grasp-wise. it’s true that the droughts will do tremendous damage over time, but the winds – both hurricane and tornado – are what i’m most concerned about. every day it feels like i struggle to tame my anxiety, continue to connect with the land around me, and appease the wild Fey energy where i can.
“This is all to say, I have water and rain and snow in my bones. And when it’s dry like this, I just feel like I’m withering. And it was the loss of that climate, losing all the rain and fog and overcast days in the summer, that broke me in the last few weeks. Those rainy and overcast days are my very favorite days. And I was losing that. I miss them. I miss the summer endless rains where you can go outside and play in the puddles. I’ve always been the closest with the element of water, at my core, and I am just feeling dangerously dehydrated.”
sending you some love. and water, if i can.
Hi Chris,
Thanks so much for sharing. I am holding space for you.
I’m glad to hear that people where you are are starting to pay attention. I don’t really see that here too much: people don’t even know we are in a drought, they spend all day in their houses. I did a plant walk two weeks ago and a lot of the plants in this damp, river bottom area are all dried up and dying. When I shared that, I had many note that they had no idea things were so dry. (I thought to myself, so you want to come out and learn how to forage but don’t actually pay attention to anything that is happening to the land)? I took the opportunity to open people’s minds about what was happening and raise awareness. I just don’t see the awareness or acknowledgement of the impact–or maybe people just don’t know what to do. I don’t know. I also hear a lot of people insisting that nothing has changed.
Ohh…the increased winds sound intense. We don’t have many winds here–we have a lot of mountains and usually have protection from wind. But I can see how stressful that would be. I totally know what you mean about the rising anxiety and the stress surrounding these new weather patterns.
Sending you, too, some relief.
I come from a long line of Washingtonians. My grandfather used to like to tell people he was conceived in the state of North Carolina and born in the Territory of Washington! But it became a state 2 months after his birth, in 1889. When I was 12 years old we moved to the state of Hawai’i, where my mother spent her teenage years. All to say I, too have rain and water in my blood. And, as an aside, I have to laugh. I moved to the Pittsburgh area 14 years ago and one day, at a church meeting, some ladies were complaining because it was so gloomy and they hadn’t seen the sun in a long time. I went home and looked up gloomiest, grayest American cities. The first 18 were all in Washington state!! The 19th was Pittsburgh. I had a good laugh over that!
Anyway, I, too have seen the weather change over the course of my life, and I’m 70. But what bothers me the most is it seems too few people have made any changes to their travel or consumption lives. And I’m the sucker for changing mine. And I am just the opposite of you, I had four kids, and now have six grandchildren and I fear so much for their lives. My children are clueless, they think I am such a Debbie Downer and they get upset that I don’t buy myself new stuff. One of my daughters is almost exactly your age, I think. I am upset that my older grandchildren are planning for a life that I just don’t see being around for much longer. I’ll be moving back to the Pittsburgh area sooner rather than later, I hope and hope I can have some influence over my three younger grandchildren. But they’re being raised so differently, not conventionally at all. That gives me hope. They’re already raising some of their food and I am teaching them about spinning yarn and natural dyeing. And the middle one talks to the trees and wood spirits. They give me hope.
Hi Heather,
Thank you for sharing. I agree–it is hard to see these changes and so many people, animals, and plants suffering and yet not see people change. I have meditated a lot on this. Change is really hard–especially when you are being required to work 50-60 hours a week. The system sucks you in and then demands tribute. I try to have compassion but also, that’s why I write here and write books like Sacred Actions…to try to encourage people to do what they can.
It is wonderful to hear how much your grandkids are connecting to the earth! 🙂 Blessings to you!
Wow! Yes! I am feeling all of this deeply in my bones these days. Where I live in Edmonton, AB, Canada, we are heading into our second week of 30+ Celsius temperatures with a Humidex of close to +40 Celsius. When I was growing up, I lived in Drumheller, AB (which has a desert micro climate)and we would get 30+ days but maybe one or two a summer, not for two week periods or more. We also currently have forest fire smoke that is a heavy weighted blanket over the city. You cannot walk outside without being hit with a brick wall of stifling heat. We have had several “brown outs” because our electrical grid cannot handle the massive increase in use of power to run the fans and AC Units we have all rushed out to buy because our homes were not built for this. We can withstand -40 Celsius but not +40. Seniors, unhoused, and people like me who rent are caught in this loop where we cannot escape the heat and if we are lucky enough to have homes, they become death traps. I feel like we are facing a massive culture change in our province and in fact our country as we become hotter and drier and also face more wild weather events. Our current provincial government has their heads in the sand though and ignore our pleas for change and are sticking to their antiquated and erroneous beliefs that we cannot get off the oil train and that renewables will not help us with the amount of energy we need all year long.
I used to experience only SAD in the winter months but now I am feeling SAD in the summer as I cannot be outside in it because of the heat and smoke. Sleep is harder. Eating well is a challenge as we can’t really use our stoves and ovens as it adds to the heat of the house and getting to a grocery store or Farmer’s Market becomes an event in strategic planning. I still have to work my regular 9-5 full time job and cannot take advantage of cooler hours to get things done. All I can do when my work day is over is sit in front of a fan because the heat and smoke have worn me out. I used to look forward to the summer and being out in nature as much as I can but that seems to be a thing of the past. Gardens here are also not doing well with berries being scalded by the sun and plants bolting before they even set fruit or matured to provide fresh greens.
Edmonton as a city is trying though….we have set up water stations around the city to provide access to clean drinking water. We have a really robust naturalization and Rewilding program and have done a lot of work to reforest areas we can. Our City Council is also investing in public transit, bike infrastructure, and better housing that will manage Climate Change…but it just is not enough. We should have been doing more 10 or 15 years ago but now we are literally just putting out fires.
I am not sure that we will ever wake up as a province to the reality of Climate Change. I sometimes feel like I need to move to another province or even another country but then I am just escaping what I can maybe help change somehow. It is exhausting. I am so sad that my grandkids (not that I have any right now, but may someday) will be faced with the mess that their ancestors left for them.
My apologies for the long reply…I am actually working on my own blog voicing these things too, and can easily get long winded on the things I am passionate about.
I’m a fan of your offerings from the lands of Western New York and of Texas. I wanted to get over to your recent plant walk as I moved between the two last month, but regretfully didn’t.
I hear you. It’s like, one day it’s just … gone. Those times you loved simply end. Don’t want to believe it, to accept it. Want to refuse, to say no, no.
And yes, meanwhile, people are escalating in violence and chaos. It does feel like my two options are to be in despair, or to be numb.
I think the greatest solution of all is what you did today, really. I have so appreciated your voicing what we are all thinking and feeling (even those who don’t know it yet…). That’s the first step. To grieve, but feel sane, is so much better than not and feel insane. It brings me such relieve to hear even just one voice of sanity. I hope we can all find each other more in this way, in person, in our lived surroundings.
I try to remember that this is ‘change’.
Horrible change, yes. Painful change, yes. Change that wrongs so many innocent, yes. But earth is strong and great nonetheless, and she will continue. Kind of bleak for us little guys … but it helps the grief.
Finding the joy in little things… this week I discovered John Hartford. If you don’t already know of him, he was a bluegrass musician with a special spirit to him.
Strength and peace be with you and your land, friend. I hope to walk your path more, thank you.
Hello Hazel, You are so right! The earth is certainly strong. She’s been through so much. She’s been through worse, and she’s recovered. The long view always brings me peace. Its the short and medium view that give me despair. As you said, we all can keep our sanity somehow! I will check out the work of John Hartford–I’ve been getting into a lot of bluegrass and other folk music lately! Good stuff. Thanks for your kind words and sharing!
Yes, I hope you enjoy! He’s the person that wrote ‘gentle on my mind’.
Also, I wanted to request a teaching from you– this may have been covered some time in the past, but I would love to learn all the ways you do and don’t interact with technology. I have some serious organizational boundaries to make in real life with my tech but need to flesh out my internal understandings first. Would love to hear your thoughts and practices, as someone who is nuanced and intentional.
Until next time …
Hazel
Such a heartfelt expression of the grief of our times. I did not realize I have had a low level grief over the climate I knew even 10 years ago. Thank you. I am not a druid (shamanic practices and reiki) but found your blog several years ago and have so enjoyed it that I purchased “Sacred Actions”. Five years ago we (both retired) moved from MN to the Mid-Hudson Valley area of NY to be closer to our only grandchild (2 y.o. at the time and now has a sibling). We are in a condo with a balcony. Missing my yard/garden, I took a year long herbal course 4 years ago and planted pots of herbs including calendula and it all grew beautifully. 3 years ago we had a very dry, hot summer and the calendula produced much less. Last year we had so much rain that things started rotting in the pots and the calendual did not even flower. I did not bother with calendula this year but just grew kitchen herbs and the 4 or so weeks of above 90 with high humidity brought growth to a standstill. There is a hummingbird that hangs around so I bought a hanging fushia, lantana and randomly a petunia that. The hybrid petunia is what thrived in all that heat and humidity! I was dismayed. We are getting rain but it is rain that just pours down heavy and hard. These last weeks made me realize that I have to really look at what is going to grow in these conditions. What I knew from years of gardening is no longer relevant. As I drive or walk around, I am starting to notice the “weeds” that are doing well this year such as yellow dock and lady’s thumb and what is that telling me (I don’t know – but am realizing this might be time to use shamanic journeying skills to ask the plants themselves). But am off topic. Just want to reiterate that you bring such a great sense of community and caring that is appreciated in these difficult times. Again, thank you.
Hi Christine, thank you so much for sharing your observations and how things change. I think all that rain is getting concentrated in places that aren’t here in PA, WV, and VA–it is either rain or drought. Like you, I no longer feel like I know what to do–planting times, typical seasons, pest control, all of these are new challenges. Each year I feel like a new person, learning all again (even though I’ve been homesteading now for 15 years!)
I do think it is important to pay attention to what is happening out there, what is growing well, and so on. Blessings to you!
Yours is a very long email to respond to. I’ll do my best because I think being down in the dumps is clouding your judgement and I do hope to help you find hope.
I have lived through droughts that went on for years when I lived in the west country, of Queensland, Australia. I’ve also lived through flash flooding that was so deep that the long horns of cattle trapped them in the tops of 30 meter tall trees. That’s 90+ feet. I saw the carcasses with my own eyes after the waters abated. I now live on the coast where we literally have eight seasons.
As much as what you are experiencing is depressing as you watch your beloved plants die, I think you should not lose hope. I do not believe the rhetoric that we are being fed, about climate change being the fault of humanity. That’s balder-dash in my opinion. If you examine historical temperature graphs, decades longer than the ones being used to feed us this heating-of-the-planet climate change nonsense, you find we are in a cool cycle. Unfortunately, that doesn’t help you.
We are also experiencing the effects of a 6000 year solar cycle. The earth and the sun are intimately connected and enormous effects occur on earth as the sun goes through its processes. Combined with the weakening of the magnetosphere which is part of the cycle, as the solar activity ramps up we are experiencing the effects of a polar shift which has been increasing speed exponentially since the 1990’s. We’ve been living through it all this time and those devious powers-that-be have kept it secret. The prediction is that the most dramatic effect’s of the polar shift will take place anywhere between 2030 and 2045. This is nothing that can be controlled by humans.
I think you’re wrong about not wanting to affect the climate by using magic. its defeatist, and is like saying you won’t fill a bucket from the stream because you don’t want to affect the water level. Meanwhile everything dies.
We cannot live without affecting our immediate ecosystem. Planting affects it. Creating food forests affect it. Bringing animals into the ecosystem you’ve created, affects it. Are you really prepared to let your animals die and possibly yourself because you’re afraid to affect the environment?
Our very natural presence on this planet is an affect, and so is our passing when we die. We can be stewards who help, who create little Eden’s where we are, or we can stand aside, pray for some god outside of ourselves to take over and pretend we have no power. You can fight, or you can give up. Don’t give up.
Climate changes, and it challenges the grit, determination and will of the most stoic of us all. Trying to encourage life in extreme conditions isn’t easy. Use what power you have.
Living in an environment that exhibits eight distinctly different seasons per year you get very accustomed to change. Let me explain.
The calendars all say autumn in Australia starts in March. At least, by mid-March the threat of a cyclone has finally passed, but the air is still steamy and hot.
When the air suddenly changes to dry overnight in early May, I know that true autumn has finally arrived for us.
We can enjoy that until about mid June when we experience a wet cold period which threatens to cover our walls in mould unless you know how to handle it.
This is followed by a few short weeks of dry, cold winter. As Spring finally reaches us in September we have beautiful mild, weather with a few spring showers.
Then we transition into the hot dry summer until the monsoons hit around mid December and we having torrential rain, flooding and more mould.
Then the summer skies clear and we experience sweltering heat and humidity. I swear we’re going to melt.
As the weeks roll around we find ourselves back in late January and February when cyclones threaten us in late summer again. We’ve come full circle and we go again.
Those of us who grow food and steward the land here in the tropics are well used to constant change. Along with the difficulties of growing food in such constantly changing, dramatically different conditions, the joy of battling pests and encouraging birds to eat them, growing flowers to encourage native bees and other beneficial pollinators, we often lose food plants to rot from the wet.
For those of us who choose to develop a deep connection with the earth, we know, whenever we move location we experience disconnection and changes in the seasons, and different patterns are trackable in nature. It takes time to observe and reconnect with the new area.
The diversity in the ecosystem is a whole new animal to learn about and integrate, as well as become a part of so as not to become a burden on it, ourselves.
What I am trying to point out here is that what you seem to be experiencing in an extreme way is the ecosystem changing where you are. That seems obvious but it doesn’t usually happen that way when the earth is settled. And there’s the point.
The earth is decidedly unsettled and we must roll with those punches as best we can. Our challenge here is to succeed at surviving and helping our land survive as best we can during this time of upheaval on the earth. Blessed be.
Climate change is not the “fault” of humanity (that’s a manipulative framing, and not one I’ve ever heard a climate scientist say), it’s a scientific result of billions of gigatons of greenhouse gasses being pumped into the atmosphere over the last several decades.
If you want to attribute everything to weather, you have that right. But there are many of us who are old enough and who have lived in our areas long enough to have seen for ourselves the enormous changes wrought by the *climate* changing and, respectfully, we’re not interested in being gaslighted by being told it’s all in our heads.
I also live in VT. Besides the flooding, we just had an EF1 tornado hit a NH town about halfway up the state; tore out ~1,000 trees, many of them huge oaks. Something like that never used to happen, esp not that far up the state. It’s the third tornado warning we’ve had this summer.
Our state organization association (NOFA-VT) just sent out an email with a message from a board member who is also a farmer. I thought it was relevant enough to copy/paste it here:
“This morning, I drove over to my parents’ place to harvest garlic and cried in anxiety and frustration. And then, I drove home this evening and cried some more, in exhaustion and despair… I’m frustrated because every year the weather gets more extreme and unpredictable, every year my job gets harder, and every year farmers still have to figure out how to make it work. I’m anxious because | don’t know how much harder my job can get before | can’t keep doing it anymore, and | don’t know how we will survive the climate change apocalypse if small farms can’t keep feeding their neighbors anymore. I’m exhausted because | had to surprise harvest garlic today, because everything’s two weeks early this year from our abnormally warm and dry spring, and now that things are soaking wet, the heads are starting to split. I’m in despair because we’ve had three disastrous floods in one year and still won’t put the lives of poor people over the comfort of the wealthy.”
Someone sent me a meme lately that is the current homepage of my phone, a photo with the caption: “I’ve come to the point in life where I need a stronger word than ‘fuck’.” That’s me, right now.
I appreciate your honesty. I’ve felt and feel your rage and despair and frustration. I’m sick of living the lie, of pretending it’s all gonna be OK, just to make a bunch of white people (yes, I’m one) happy.
Besides ceremony and my work on the land (which, like yours, is daily), I also listen to Eckart Tolle. “Go deeper” has been a recent focus. Go deeper. That, and the bonds we form with others who are also going deeper, are what we are going to have to rely on.
I feel this so very much. Ive noticed the shift of the Wheel of the Year occur gradually, I live in a sub-rural area of the Ohio River Valley. Snow is rare in the winter, September feels like August and the lightening bugs are dwindling. Song bird populations are also declining.
Couple this with our political climate also going through chaotic change, its enough to make you lose your mind. Worst to me are the Pagans in our own community who only seem to care about being right about mythology and throwing magick around vs. the actual living earth.
I have a young child. Sometimes I wonder if my spouse and I made the right decision to knowingly bring another human into this world. Our cub is one of my touchstones though to hope, and very *very* grounding. They do not care about the climate, Earthly or political, when they wake up from a nightmare, or hungry and they just need some mommy snuggles.
I keep in mind that the sun will still rise tomorrow, no matter who gets elected or what news of another species goes extinct. I will still have a child to raise in kindness, one who already cares about our holy living earth.
I also remember that Bald Eagles and bobcats have gotten footholds again in my area!! Its so exciting! In our local rivers in my childhood you’d never see an eagle. Now I can reliably see them fishing at least once a month. And while there is tons of change happening, people are actually *talking* about this. There are others who feel this same way and the younger generation is more aware of this than their predecessors.
Lughnasadh is on its way, and there are some traditions about funeral games that are held (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lughnasadh) – And it makes me think that this is a good time honestly to look around and grieve.
Its these times that make hope and small works of land tending and kindness into huge acts of punk-rock level rebellion. Holding space for everyone.
Hi Melissa, Thank you so much for sharing. This is beautiful, especially the hope about the Bald Eagles and bobcats–that’s fantastic. We also have eagles again! I see them a lot when I kayak our local rivers (which is something I do often in place of taking vacations that would require an airline). We need all the hope, small works, and punk rock we can muster :P. Blessings to you!
Thank you so much Dana, for opening this space for sharing. I am appreciating the posts and the opportunity to be heard and to hear diverse views. I believe that witnessing and grieving for what is dying is part of our work at this time. We are in the ‘Great Turning’ as Joanna Macy calls it, the transition from one era to the next. We are here at this time to midwife that process.
And it’s all too big for many to contemplate, hence the denial, powerlessness and lack of action. As many of you have said, we are not confronting the real issue of capitalism and the polluting and exploitation of our planet. I also think ‘climate change’ is the wrong term – as others have said, if you take the long view, climate change is a process that has always been with us. Many of the changes we are seeing, like the loss of biodiversity, are due to chemical and industrial pollution and the continuing exploitation of nature for profit. Nature is strong and can teach us much about adaption (like the forests in the northern hemisphere that are ‘migrating’ north to find their cooler preferred habitat and the ocean creatures we are seeing further south in the southern hemisphere for the same reason).
In New Zealand we don’t experience quite the extremes of weather that some of you describe, but we are in the midst of catastrophic biodiversity loss, much of it due to agricultural practices rather than ‘climate change’ per se. I openly grieve that and do what I can to call out destructive practices and champion regenerative ones. Sometimes it feels like a losing battle, but one we absolutely cannot give up on. There are many people working in a myriad of ways to caretake the planet and create new regenerative ways of living. They fly below the radar but give me hope. Blessings to you all.
Hi PJ, yes, to everything you’ve said. Joanna Macy’s work has been hugely resonant in my life a while back, and maybe it is time that I re-read her books. They always bring me hope. I feel like the activities she has are some of the most moving and powerful…letters to the future is one that really sticks out and that I’ve done many times. We are absolutely here as midwives and that is very hard work.
I agree with you about “climate change” being the wrong word. I wish we had a word that encompassed all of it… Exploitation? the Myth of Progress? The entire civilization? Colonailism? Greed? I just don’t know what to call this entire paradigm, but it is no good. I do not think it is a loosing battle, even if it seems that way now. The earth will balance herself and there are so many of us here caretaking for her, even if we aren’t in the nightly news. Blessings to you, and thank you so much for sharing.
I write from Southeast Missouri, just a stone’s throw from the Mississippi. The weather here has been eratic to say the least.
I was lementing to my husband just the other day that we never see storms in the morning anymore. In my childhood I remember all through the spring and autumn the dark clouds would roll in, making 10am look like 10pm. Thunder would crash and lightning would streak across the sky as we stared out the windows from our desks. And by 10:30 it would be gone, leaving only puddles that evaporated before lunch. These days, it only storms in the evenings, and the pressure change is so drastic that I am plagued with hiccups. And the intensity is always so high. Never a gentle rain. Only storms with high high winds that bear tornadoes to places tornadoes never go, and that drive them distances they have never before traveled.
Flooding we have always had–flash floods even. But we are river people, and floods are part of our lives.
Snow we never have now. The last good snowfall I remember was over a decade ago. And it used to snow several times per winter here. My grandfather recalls snow from December-April. Christmas usually dawns a 60 degree day.
We are largely agricultural here. Any area for 25 miles that isn’t settled is monocropped. We have been driving the levees, and the fields in between are just endless stretches of corn and soybeans. There are pockets of wildlife, but there is little diversity. Hardly any wildflowers.
You are right to share in your sorrows, Dana. I assure you they are well met. Help your niece to see. Teach her everything you know. It is through the CHILDREN that we change the world.
Hi Elyssa, thanks for sharing from Missouri. I was out your way two years ago to visit Dancing Rabbit and also a friend in St. Louis–it is such beautiful country out there.
I’m sorry to hear about the many changes you are experiencing and the lack of rain and snow and the extreme weather. I agree with you–it is through children and the young that change is possible. I’m so sorry to hear about all the monocropping. That’s not too terrible out our way because we have enough mountains to be too steep to farm. But there are many forests being cut down now to make way for more corn and soy fields (usually for feeding dairy cattle). It is a sad situation everywhere you go. Blessings to you, and I’m holding space for you too!
Thank you Dana; I just hang on to see what grows in the vegetable garden & what doesn’t. This year is so chaotic (MI low center) that a little of everything is coming through. It’s been like this for 4 yrs now. I lost my favorite wild flower over 10 yrs ago & bought seed to replace it. I got to see a couple before they left….yes a new normal.
Yeah, “Chaotic” is a great way to describe this year. I’m sorry about your flower–I hope that you can replant and replace your friend.
Here I thought our potato crop had not done anything, and I just harvested over 80 lbs from our 4×20′ bed….which was a surprise and a blessing for sure! But harvesting in July? Some were small but at least there was a lot of them!
Yes! You think they’re dead or on their way out & you’ve got crop or seed. Absolutely…it is so strange.
Thank you!
Dana, Thank you so much for voicing and holding space for the fear, anxiety and depression that is overtaking us in light of our chaotic world. In 2007 I worked for an organization called The Clean Energy Group that was focused on educating Folks about the coming impacts of climate change. I was frightened then but only knew of the coming changes on an intellectual level. I now know these changes in my bones. I too live in central Vt, just over the mountain from Fearn. July 11 our homestead was inundated with the remnants of hurricane Beryl. We live high in the mountains and felt ourselves relatively safe from flooding. We were wrong. The trees have 10 or more inches of silt choking them, some were torn completely from the stream bank. My pastures look like an alluvial fan. My heart aches for the land, and the stream which is now incised 2 feet lower than it was before the storm. I witness the changes and I think that I must learn to be more resilient to be able to help and heal the land. I am so grateful that your book on Land Healing is giving me many tools to be able to do that. I will bear witness and mourn. Then I will listen and do ceremony. I have been inspired to plant trees on the stream bank and to move some rocks to an outside corner to protect a bend in the stream. It will not bring back what was there before but it will help. It is doing what I can. It is so helpful to read and know that many others are experiencing the same pain and chaos.
As a grower of food, resilience has become my mantra. It takes a lot to continually develop new strategies to deal with the weather and pests to keep our plants alive. I am coming to think that food production may need to be under cover so we can better control the environment. I’m spending time learning and thinking about passive solar greenhouses. All that is to say that I feel we need to keep faith that we can continue to honor nature and the earth, moving forward to a new better way of being.
Hello Brenda,
Thank you so much for sharing what is happening in VT. I’ve been talking to Fearn about the many floods in Vermont and it is sad to see how much these floods are reshaping your ecosystem. I’m glad that the tools in the Land Healing book are helpful to you. I agree about resilience–cultivating resilience, growing food, being on the land, being on the homestead are all good ways to help me root myself in the earth and overcome fear and depression and anxiety. Absolutely we need to keep faith and use all of these experiences as a way forward to the new paradigm that is emerging!