April 2010 Archives

This week, poking up from the aspen woods, came the first tiny green umbrellas of lupine. In mid-June the forest will be filled with sky blue to lavender-colored blooms; by the end of August, elk and black bear will be nipping at the plant's seed pods.

Lupine takes its name from the Latin word for wolf, lupus, so called long ago by farmers because the plant was thought to "prey" on, or "devour" soil fertility. This idea originated from the fact that lupine is often seen growing on thin, rocky soils. With time, though, scientists discovered that not only does lupine not diminish soil quality, but actually increases it significantly by fixing nitrogen - the ultimate natural fertilizer.

I've long thought of this association between plant and wolf, but never more so than over the past fifteen years, since wolves were reintroduced to the northern Rockies. While our erroneous assumptions about the plant have largely faded, not so many of the more harebrained myths about the animal. We continue to hear people making claims of exploding wolf populations (numbers region-wide have actually been flat for two years, while the number of breeding pairs in Yellowstone, six, is the lowest in a decade); or that elk populations are being wiped out (in 2007, the Wyoming Fish and Game Department declared elk numbers to be near their historic high). Wolves can and do cause problems, of course. But how many generations will have to pass before the more delusional, sordid claims about their behavior wither and die?

The sandhill cranes are back. Last week we could hear their primitive, comforting chortle somewhere high above the skies over Rock Creek. This week, though, they dance - performing an annual bonding ritual that's arguably the oldest ballet on earth: rising just off the ground and then falling gently with open wings, circling one another - the male casting a single warbled note, the female responding with two of her own.

Strange as it seems, the first Earth Day in Montana, beginning just forty years ago, was part of a time when late April barely marked the end of winter. Back then there typically would've been a foot of snow still in the aspen woods; now the ground is bare, already stitched with buttercups. Across the mountains, in northern Yellowstone, the recent years of drought have brought the amphibian population to its knees. Alpine meadows are receding. The whitebark pine groves - a favorite food of the grizzly - are falling to insects and disease. Last week the federal weather centers predicted a dry summer for our region. And so yet again, we find ourselves wondering when the land will begin to burn.

But out in the sage flats beyond Willow Creek, in the long runs of blue grama and western wheatgrass, are the sandhill cranes. And as for them, they dance.

A lot's been written over the past five years about growing interest in healthier, more sustainable food choices. For one thing, having suddenly found our misplaced taste buds, almost everyone seems to agree that locally grown food, especially produce, just plain tastes better. On the other hand, the food we eat is also providing millions of people with a way to cultivate a basic awareness of how our daily choices affect the planet. It's sobering to think that the average meal travels more than a thousand miles to reach your dinner plate. Or that large-scale animal feeding operations are producing one-fifth of the pollutants responsible for the deterioration of 175,000 miles of American rivers and streams. (In this country, livestock produces 13 times more waste than people do.)

All of which is why I found the "food show" this week a little troubling. A number of years ago I became part-owner in a fine little café near my home in southwest Montana, specializing in fresh, hand-made food - quite a bit of it organic, much of it locally grown. No matter where your restaurant happens to be, or what food you serve, one of the rituals for owners and chefs is a spring pilgrimage to the regional food trade show, there to be courted by hundreds of producers and distributors - the companies who supply much of what ends up on your plate in any given restaurant. Now don't get me wrong. Since I first attended one of these shows, also in Montana, the amount of square footage devoted to healthy food has grown considerably. (This year, for example, you would've seen tables of produce when you first walked in the door; five years ago, it was ten-foot tall towers made out of stacked jugs of fry oil.) But while things are clearly moving in the right direction, in this part of the country the show continues to be dominated by fat, sugar, corn syrup, and water-injected hams - the vast majority of it coming from factory farms and industrial agriculture. At most of the booths, sales reps were prepared for one discussion, and one discussion only: the cost per serving.

Today Americans are spending more than $325 billion a year eating out (about $110 billion of this is for fast food). Potentially, that's an extraordinarily powerful force for cultivating earth-friendly habits. Every now and then, when you go out to eat choose the free range egg, the locally produced beef, the ice cream from a local dairy, the beer from the microbrewery down the road. Or just get plain crazy and try a meal now and then without any meat in it, keeping in mind that worldwide, 20% of greenhouse gasses are the result of meat production - a figure greater than that produced by transportation. Encourage your favorite restaurant to offer healthier, kinder choices, and give a hearty thanks when they do. What you put on your fork, it turns out, is every bit as important to the earth as the car you drive and the house you live in.

It was a long time ago in the land of trees, and Spirit Woman had given birth to human twins. The animal people were incredibly fond of these twins - always doting on them, eager to keep them warm and fed and happy. Dog, for one, never left their side. Sometimes flies would come and pester the children and Dog would snap to make them fly away. He nuzzled their bellies with his nose, and jumped into the air and did all manner of tricks. When the twins were hungry, Wolf and Deer gave their milk. The birds sang them to sleep at night. Bear warmed them through the wee hours with his coat of fur.

But in time it dawned on the animals that something wasn't right. "We feed them and care for them like our own," said Bear, "but still they don't stand. They don't run and play." Nanabush is coming, Bear continued. They would ask him for help. And so it was that few days later Nanabush, son of the West Wind, did arrive, and the animals wasted no time explaining their problem. In the end Nanabush said they'd cared for the babies well. Too well. "Children grow by reaching, striving for what they want," he said. "Not by having everything given to them. I'll have to go ask Great Spirit what to do."

So Nanabush left the woods and went high into the hills many days to the west, seeking Great Spirit. When Great Spirit heard the predicament he told Nanabush to scour the slopes for a certain kind of colorful, sparkling stone. "Gather as many as you can," He instructed, "and place them in a pile on the highest hill." Which is just what Nanabush did, collecting until he had an enormous pile of the colored stones. But what was he supposed to do next? Hour after hour he sat there, hoping for some further instruction from Great Spirit, but no word came. Finally, out of boredom Nanabush began tossing the stones into the air, first one at a time, then big handfuls. Then, in the fading light of afternoon, he tossed several of the stones high into the air - only this time they didn't come down again! Instead they changed into the most beautiful winged creatures. The world's first butterflies.

When Nanabush returned to the children in the forest, he was surrounded by a flashing, fluttering blanket of butterflies. The twins were overjoyed by the creatures, and wasted no time trying to catch one in their chubby hands. For a time they crawled after them, then stood on their tiny feet and tottered; finally they were running through the forest, hoping to catch even one of those beautiful winged creatures.

And that's how butterflies taught children to walk.

The last ice bridge of winter, which for four months has linked one side of the creek to the other, has finally fallen, the remnants melting away in open water. Just last week the white-tail deer were still walking across those bridges, moving effortlessly back and forth between the aspen woods and the cottonwood groves across the way. From here on out, though, they'll have to wade. Six weeks from now, in high water, some will be swept away. Each year I catch sight of one or two floating past the house in the big currents, struggling to get footing on the rocky stream bed - rarely frantic, but with eyes wide and nostrils flared.

Before all that, though, there will be more winter. (At least we hope so.) Yet in between the white sheets of the snowstorms there is now an unmistakable sense of spring - in the slant of light, in the smell of cottonwood sap, in the growing chorus of black-capped chickadees. The new season, if not quite rustling, then surely taking breath.