They are the two constants here in summer, the powers of water and sky: elemental forces that reflect each other, that work together to keep the land alive.
We got plenty of water overnight, several straight hours’ worth of rain. No blue skies in evidence, of course; the dark took care of that. But the forecast predicts more for this afternoon, and if it comes to pass, we shall have the seasonal gift of watching these forces at work.
At the moment, there are no clouds, not even around the horizon — only a faint muddy haze to the west, a sign not of earth but of the smoke of the latest wildfire. It is also the season when those elements conspire, and if managed properly, all four ensure the earth’s survival.
Outside the lands now designated as “tribal,” proper management has not been much in evidence for generations.
This fire, as it happens, was not caused by human malfeasance; it’s been classified as the result of a lightning strike. That, too, is common here at this season. Indeed, in the middle of last night’s storm, the bolts traced the height of the southern sky, shaking the earth before moving overhead to light our world on all sides. Even in the midst of an ordinary monsoon season, which this most assuredly is not, it’s not unusual for lighting to spark fires in the back country; this drought has been too deep and too long, and the forests and underbrush remain overgrown with dry tinder. There was a time when Indigenous methods of management would have mitigated their effects, and indeed used the lightning to aid in the land’s stewardship, but a half-millennium of colonialism and a quarter of one of industrial capitalism have effectively neutralized much of the good that such practices do.
It’s hard to maintain the proper pace of controlled burns when climate change steadily whips gale-force winds entirely out of their usual season.
We see the effects daily, in the browning of the grass and the early gold among the leaves; see it, too, in the way the foliage stands a little taller, a little fuller, a little greener after only half a night’s rain. We see it in the sky, bleached pale in the heat, and in the three tiny white clouds that have suddenly formed out nowhere, materializing in under a minute, adrift now over the vale between Pueblo Peak and the Spoonbowl. We see it in the smoky haze and the lowered water level in the pond, and in the absence of our usual wildlife in their usual numbers.
And yet, there is cause for hope. As of today, we have the water; in recent days, some has merely flowed into our own ditching system on its way downward to other lands. But now, the flow will be high and steady, and for four days, fields will be irrigated, pond filled and pumped and filled again. The sky will hold the blues of the rain even as the pond embraces the blues of the sky above it. And the cycle of precipitation, absorption, evaporation, and precipitation again will, with a little luck, continue more days than not over the weeks to come.
It is not enough to mitigate the drought, of course. But it is enough to let the land survive, one more season, one more year. In a world so uncertain now, that has to be enough.
The sky is eternal; we must hope, and pray, and work to ensure that the water is, too.
~ Aji
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