My Grandsons Wesley and Sabien joining a Walt Ranch protest in 2016
Was 2014 only my awakening to the need for environmental activism in Napa County, or was it also a considerable citizen shift in consciousness? 2014 was the year Walt Ranch hit the public eye. I learned about Walt Ranch only when I sought help after new neighbors decided to plant vines in an ancient oak… Read more »
Sophia Photo Art by Bill Fulton
Twelve years ago next month, I published a blog about the death of our goat Sophia entitled “Goats and Grief.” There is seldom a day that that blog is not read, and usually at least two or three times. I have been curious why this blog, among the hundreds of others I have written over… Read more »
San Juan River, Utah
Last week I returned from a rafting trip on the San Juan River in the Four Corners area of Utah. We floated through steep canyons on thick brown water for seven days, immersed in beauty. From the sunrise to sunset, the kaleidoscope of golden to deep pink-red cliffs guided us, their petroglyphs and pictograms offering… Read more »
The thinned oaks and madrone along our driveway.
My friend Norma says the forest looks like a painting with its lithe, dark trunks of oak and madrone silhouetted against the sunlight. The crew has thinned out young bay laurel and the bushy, tall stands of poison oak and invasive Himalayan blackberries. Yes, I always thought of the forest as verdant, but the over-the-top… Read more »
Recently she reappeared, this figure the height of my grandson who stands solid and white on the western-most reach of our 100-foot defensible space about our home. She was given to us by Donald’s youngest daughter, Genevieve, a gifted ceramicist, when she moved from her Sonoma home to a smaller space. I have always liked… Read more »
Bramble Berry bemoaning no walk: too much smoke.
This latest round of fires began in the early hours Sunday. I wrote this that morning before the flames would spread over the mountains east and west. As I write, we are notified yet another red flag warning may be issued tomorrow. We are all on alert. Yes, this is climate change, California style. It… Read more »
I like to think I have a lot of tolerance for chaos, but in this time of wildfire, pandemic, and political maelstrom, I’m being tested. Here we are, “we” being my family, sequestering in place together, and holding a pretty strict protocol. We have had very little direct outside contact for eight months now. Groceries… Read more »
Before this all began, I dreamed of snakes again. In one dream, a fat black, rather short snake was above my closet on the wall and fell to the floor. I was considering putting a laundry basket over it so it didn’t escape into the house. Ten days later, I dreamed a snake had woven… Read more »
Talking with Sophia
The First Step to Mitigate Climate Change “Nature must not win the game, but she cannot lose.” This quote from C. G. Jung’s Alchemical Studies (❡229) is engraved on the wall of a subway station at 42nd street and Avenue of the Americas in New York City, an installation termed “Under Bryant Park”. The quote is… Read more »
Terraced fields in the Pyrenees.
When People and Land Lose Each Other These days we in the Napa Valley are spending a great deal of time on the politics of land use. I am running some previous blogs on the relationship of people and land and what happens when they are separated. Migration has torn our relationship to land, leaving deep wounds in the… Read more »
© 2024 Patricia Damery.
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