As I write this, another massive hurricane is engulfing the southeastern United States barely a week after Hurricane Helene. Some communities still don’t have power and water restored, and in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains some towns effectively no longer exist. Meanwhile, it was partly-sunny and 65° here today, a perfect Fall day. Today both Florida and North Carolina feel really far away. And while the Gulf of Mexico is geographically 3,500 miles away, I know more than a few people directly impacted by hurricanes Helene and Milton. Distance isn’t always measured in miles and we’re often closer than we think.
Today the surface level temperature in the Gulf of Mexico was 87° F, about 3.5° F warmer that is considered normal. 300 miles off the the Washington coast the Pacific Ocean surface temp was 62° F degrees, also about 3.5° F warmer than normal.
Storyteller Jourdan Keith asks; You are a body of water.If you knew this, would you protect yourself?The water in your body is part of the water cycle and connected to every other body of water.If you knew this, would you want to protect all the bodies of water on the planet?
A few weeks ago, before Helene and Milton, on September 22 the earth was perfectly balanced on it’s axis, an equal amount of day and night. The Autumnal Equinox marks the end of summer and the beginning of autumn, halfway between the Summer and Winter Solstices. For a few hours we balanced in-between light and dark. But it really is only a few hours, a few moments, of true balance, the rest of the time it is gradual shifting. A little more light in the southern hemisphere and little less for the northern. If Florida feels far away, the southern hemisphere is substantially further. And yet, we are in this dance of day and night, sunlight and darkness.
Poet Clint Smith writes; The redwoods are on fire in California. A flood submerges a neighborhood that sat quiet on the coast for three centuries. … A country below the equator ends a twenty-year civil war. A soldier across the Atlantic fires the shot that begins another.
Far away doesn’t really exist and balance is fleeting. The sun sets here and rises there. The waterways of the Puget Sound inevitably end up mingling with the waters off the coast of Florida, together they roar through the Blue Ridge Mountains, and eventually spill down my cheeks filled with grief for our world.
“The river that gives us water to drink is the same one that might wash us away.”
On Sunday we'll gather at Squaxin Park (formerly Priest Point Park) in picnic shelter #2. We will be present to the tension of day and night, autumn and summer, cold and warm, here and there, you and me. It looks like it's going to be another really beautiful Fall day. We'll meet at 4 pm for some words and music and then head off on a short walk. Veronica will be there to take the kids to the playground if they don't want to join the walk.
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