Return of the prairie dogs

 

They're back. 

Here we are, just barely into the new year and a long way away from spring (this photo was taken in summer a year and half ago), and the first little sentries have emerged from their burrows to check out what's happening in the snow-covered upper world and grab a bite to take back below, to the nurseries full of new pups and proud mothers, safe from the fox and coyote that currently own the wintry Colorado landscape.

We've shared our property with several colonies of these little subway diggers for two and a half years now, and last year, which was exceedingly dry, they discovered and ravaged my behind the house vegetable garden that I imagined I'd skillfully managed to conceal. Which means: this year, fencing. There just wasn't enough for them to eat in the other two acres of the property, and what there was had dried into tasteless, barely nutritious scrub, and as the heat persisted, they ventured closer and closer to the house, eventually discovering our trove. 

These guys are considered pests by the farmers and ranchers in the area, but we've grown attached to their chattering signals, their gossip, their warning calls and seemingly hysterical laughter. And we recognize that they're a keystone species - who knows what sort of hardpan we'd be dealing with if this crew wasn't constantly engaged in aerating excavation work. We don't mind sharing the land with them, but it would be nice if they left us just a small portion of what we're able to coax out of these arid and alkaline soils.

Another Year

Ordinarily we send out cards at Christmas and a brief letter to friends and family letting them know how our little project is progressing, with best wishes for the year to come. But, of course, 2020 was no ordinary year. One year later, here's where we're at:

And so, that happened . . . 

20/20 vision is supposed to be a good thing, possibly the best kind: sharp, clear, focussed. Near and distant. Good news from your opthalmologist or optometrist!  Hindsight, it is said, is 20/20 – meaning, that as you look back on the landscape you've traveled through, things make sense – both the paths taken and the ones that were obscured from view at the time.  Ah, nowI see.  If only we'd known . . .

The new year started with a bang (remember?), a U.S. drone strike at Baghdad International Airport that killed top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. So, another Middle East war appeared to be in the offing, this time with Iran. Oh, and the Chinese government had just let it slip that it was investigating the outbreak of some kind of respiratory illness in the city of Wuhan. But, y'know, nothing to get concerned about, because . . .

The House of Representatives decided on January 15^th to impeach the President on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.  Sent the articles right over to the Senate.  Where they soon died, after Senators voted not to hear from any actual witnesses. At the annual Davos conference of the rich and powerful, President Trump proclaimed, “We have it under control. It's going to be just fine.” He was talking, of course, about the coronavirus. China had just quarantined the entire city of Wuhan. By the end of January, Trump had banned travel from China and, as we now know, actually considered the disease much more dangerous than he was publicly letting on. He just didn't want us all to, you know . . . panic.

In February, Trump delivered his State of the Union speech, a first salvo in his re-election campaign (“Just have a look at that stock market, will you?” which later morphed into his “This election is rigged!” campaign), and Nancy Pelosi tore her copy of it in half behind his back. A day later, the Senate acquited Trump of the impeachment charges, which freed him to start punishing (i.e., firing) people who had testified against him in the House proceedings. By the end of the month, we'd had our first reported coronavirus death in the U.S., but we can honestly say we weren't paying that much attention – were you?

Because all of the top Democratic contenders for Trump's office were dropping out of the race in March – and many of them were endorsing Joe Biden. So long, Bernie. Goodbye, single payer health care – we've got other things to worry about. 

And then there was that Monday, early in March, when we happened to glance at the stock market chart and noticed that it had plunged 2000 points. That'll get your attention – for us, it was like spotting a tsunami on the horizon, wondering how tall the wave would be when it finally crashed ashore. A couple of days later, the World Health Organization officially declared Covid-19 a pandemic, and people started seriously talking about lockdowns. The Dow fell an additional 2300 points, and President Trump declared it (the coronavirus, not the stock market) a national emergency. Later, he decided to withdraw from the World Health Organization. During a pandemic. 

Meanwhile, in Louisville, Kentucky, the police mistakenly broke into the apartment of an unarmed black woman named Breonna Taylor, firing mutiple shots and killing her. None of the officers involved was charged with her death. The beginning of a long hot summer of Black Lives Matter protests, riots, and additional killings (Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, George Floyd in Minneapolis, and others).

Worldwide, everything was shutting down, and hospitals – especially in the big cities and in whole countries – were begging for personal protective equipment, ventilators, testing, and contact tracing which govern-ments seemed unable or unwilling to supply. By April 10^th, my 71^st birthday, the U.S. became the first country to report 2000 coronavirus deaths in a single day. It took us until June to become the first country to reach 2 million infections, by which time people were begging to be released from imposed lockdowns; and a steady Internet chatter of partisan belief swelled, under the stress of record unemployment, business closures, and a bitterly contentious election, questioning the science of pandemic spread and fueling bizarre conspiracy theories.

And so, all that happened. And more, much more – a summer and fall of catastrophic fires, floods, a record number of hurricanes – the collateral damage of a rapidly changing climate. During the heatwave here in August, everything turned crispy dry, and an army of hungry prairie dogs discovered and consumed the backyard vegetable garden. As we write this, at the beginning of December 2020, our little mountain community of Paonia, Colorado, to which we moved in the summer of 2018, is somehow managing to stagger forward, aiming at arbitrary targets – Christmas, the New Year, the start of a new presidency. In the month just passed on the national stage, sabres are still being rattled with regard to Iran; coronavirus vaccines are being prepared as the pandemic rages; and our one-term incumbent leader is still claiming that his opponents stole the election and is refusing to concede. Here in rural America, political signs have come down, but deep divisions remain as winter approaches. 

For us, personally, this long season of social distancing and isolation has slowed to a crawl our plans for building a home – and a homestead. At a time when the years remaining to us seem more precious and irreplaceable than ever, we appear to be hiking up a very long steep slope on an unmarked trail. Turning around and looking back over the landscape reveals few clues as to what may lie ahead. Is there a kind of vision where 2021 brings order to chaos, snapping into focus a shared and trusted set of values? 2020 offers no assurances – just hope and a sincere wish for reconciliation, for whatever love and connection the coming seasons may bring to you, your family, and all of our friends and neighbors.