Tag Archives: weather

It’s very hot, but I’m frozen

It’s 5:40 a.m. and 79 degrees outside. I’m up early, so I can go on a walk with my kids before it gets too hot to be out. At around 6 p.m. yesterday evening—otherwise known as 98 degrees Fahrenheit—I left the living room where my family was gathered, went to my bedroom, and closed the door. Then I sat on my bed and wept.

The best way to describe how I’m feeling right now is like the other shoe is dropping. I have known this was coming—not just intellectually, but in a deeper part of me. I could feel it. For decades, but especially since 2009, summers have been … different. Warmer. Drier. Longer. Other people’s comments—“Strange weather we’re having, huh?” or “Wow, what a great summer!”—would confuse me. Weren’t they feeling what I was feeling? Wasn’t it obvious that this was ominous rather than amazing?

As the intensity of the crisis has increased, my motivation—or rather, my ability—to respond has decreased. I can’t face the deeply disturbing changes or the misery they are causing, so I turn away. I retreat into my escapes—basketball and books—and obsess to the point of paralysis about my personal choices. I wash and reuse disposable plastic bags and then wonder if using the extra water is better or worse than throwing away plastic. I wander the grocery aisles searching for food items that aren’t wrapped in plastic, don’t contain palm oil, weren’t shipped from thousands of miles away, and on and on, until I can’t settle on a single food. Yesterday, I found myself arguing with my spouse over the carbon impact of buying a fan.

Meanwhile, our state continues to build highways, and corporations continue to destroy our shared planet with impunity.

I don’t have control over that. So I channel my energy into things I can control, like planning my family’s entire Saturday around four hours of bus travel, so we can attend my nibling’s birthday party in Tacoma without renting a Zipcar.

I don’t know what to do about the fact that our rivers are overheating, killing salmon and starving Orcas—or the incredible reality that the Olympic rainforest now has dry spells. So, I haul buckets of water to young trees my family has planted at various planting events around our neighborhood. One summer, during a particularly long dry spell, my kids and I spent hours, day after day, hauling water from the faucet in front of their elementary school to the mini-forest where we had planted trees a couple of years earlier—a good quarter mile each way. (We eventually figured out a more effective—and less strenuous—guerrilla watering strategy, but, much like Smooth Jazz‘s identity, it shall remain forever secret.)

These days, we are “forest stewards” (a bit of an inflated title, to be sure) at a park about five blocks from our home. On Thursday, in an attempt to repeat our previous baby-tree-preservation strategy, I used our hose to fill two buckets and carried them over to the park. My plan was to water a couple of the newer trees. But when I got to the planted area and saw how dry everything was, it felt stupid and pointless to be standing there with two not-quite-full buckets. What was a few gallons of water going to do against 110-degree heat? Who was I to pick and choose which of these distressed plants deserved a drink? What was even the point?

I told myself that it was better to do something than nothing as I dumped a bucket on sweet Shirley, the grand fir we named for my friend C’s mother.

Shirley the grand fir, after her Thursday drink

The next day, I returned with two more buckets, repeating, like a mantra, “It’s better to do something than nothing,” during the difficult walk to the park, and again as I walked by all of the dry, desperate plants I was not watering.

But is it? Was what I chose to do helpful, or did it just make me feel better? (To be honest, I’m becoming skeptical about the effectiveness of tree-planting efforts in general. But that’s a post for another time.) Did the watering just give me something to focus on, in the same way not driving gives me something to focus on—something other than what I know to be true: I am part of a culture that is making survival impossible for many of the species we share the planet with, including our own.

All over the world, humans are dying because of climate change. In my own city, people are working in dangerous conditions and suffocating in overheated apartments—if they are fortunate enough to have an apartment. Thousands are living without shelter, exposed to the extreme temperatures with few options for relief. The smoke will be here soon, and those of us who are able will again find ourselves hiding inside while others suffer and even die.

I don’t know what to do about any of it. I make donations to resistance efforts and mutual aid funds, invite neighbors to cool off in our downstairs.

Much more is required of me. But what?

What I learned on my ride home

1) If you’re leaving work in the middle of a rainstorm, and the wind is blowing the rain right under your umbrella (assuming you can even keep your umbrella open), and you have a 10-minute walk to the bus stop, and you’ve already ruined one cell phone by walking to and from bus stops in the rain, you can protect your current cell phone (et cetera) by putting your bag on under your waterproof jacket.

(Note: To some bus riders, the above discovery might appear elementary. To this one, it was revolutionary.)

2) If you’re riding on an articulated bus in the middle of a rainstorm, and that articulated bus is rerouted to avoid a fallen tree at 23rd and Republican, and the reroute involves sharp turns and narrow streets, and you happen to be sitting in the middle section, inside that accordion thingy that you liked when you were a kid even though it made you car–well, “bus”–sick, and that accordion thingy is full of water and bending in ways nature never intended, you will get wet. So, unfortunately, will that cell phone you worked so hard to preserve.

Can bus chicks hibernate for the winter?

I have a pretty cool work schedule: On Mondays, I don’t have to go to my office, and I get to spend the entire day working on personal writing projects. Today’s agenda: A morning coffee in Belltown with a new friend (hey, Cherie!), a few miscellaneous errands in NoDo (my new name for Belltown/SLU/Lower Queen Anne), and then an afternoon of writing at home.

I woke up this morning with a sore throat and a stuffy nose but decided to brave the rain anyway. Would that I had just stayed home!

I was early for the coffee and so decided to use the extra time to stop at Nordy’s and pick up a recently tapped pair of boots. This meant a wet walk (balancing bus chick bag, paper shopping bag with fixed-up boots, and umbrella) back to 3rd Avenue; a soggy, steamy ride up to Belltown; and another wet walk (dodging puddles and traffic tsunamis) over to the appointed meeting place on 1st. After coffee, I stopped at a knitting store a few blocks south of the coffee shop. There, after purchasing a book of patterns for my mother (though not a bus rider, my mom is a hardcore practitioner of the new “it” bus pastime), I exchanged my soggy and rapidly disintegrating Nordstrom shopping bag for one of theirs (also paper) and then hoofed it the four and a half blocks to the nearest (shelterless) 28 stop. At this point, I called Bus Nerd (balancing the bus chick bag, new soggy paper bag, umbrella, and phone) to find out the exact address of the projector repair place I was headed to. Fifteen minutes later, the 28 came. (It was on time; I had just neglected to check the schedule in advance.) The windows on the 28 were so fogged up that I missed my stop and had to walk two wet blocks back to the repair shop. Then, it was another four-and-a-half block walk (wind whipping, cars splashing, bag ripping) to the 8 stop on Denny and Aurora. Four hours (and a couple of lifetimes) after I had left my house this morning, I finally arrived home.

I realize that this insanity was as much about bad weather and bad decisions as it was about buses, but daaaang. I spent too much time, got too little accomplished, and got a little too much exposure to the elements. At no point during the ordeal did I find myself wishing for a car. (Driving in the city in the rain and searching/paying for parking? I’ll pass.) I did, however, find myself wishing for summer (Oh August, how I miss you!), and maybe a train–anything with indoor stations and predictable schedules.