The Power of Nature

Nature is powerful!

If you pay any attention to the world around you or to the news, you already know this.

If nature’s power were not enough, we see that nature is changing because climate is changing.

Wildfires rage in the western United States.

Floods that used to occur once every decade are now occurring with more frequency, at least once a season, or with even more frequency and ferocity.

During the last five years alone, in the upper mid-west, we’ve seen regularly occurring snowstorms in April as well as hot, summer-like temperatures when it should be rainy with fifty degree days.

Cloud formations are oddly shaped and colored at times.

Smoke from wildfires thousands of miles away drift across invisible state lines to color our blue skies gray and obscure the sun. Sunsets are seen behind a veil of air pollution, and offer unreal colors like bright orange or pink.

Tree limbs come down in the high winds that used to whip across our prairies and fields without causing much damage into new backyards and young orchards, now crippling the growth with open sores on stately trunks.

Water rages in the rivers caused by storms more violent than we’ve seen in the past. Rain comes in torrents with horizontal winds in such amounts that storm drains can no longer handle the disposal so it pours into our streets and down the hills, flooding valleys and plains with not inches, but feet of rain.

I’m about to embark on a nature journaling lesson with my writer’s circle students. It should be about slowing down, noticing our surroundings, and coloring our world with details on the species we see thriving in our midst.

It should be…

I hope it is…

a happy and restful chance to reset amongst a climate of change.