Category Archives: Nature Observation Writing

Coronavirus Nature Gratitude Letter To Me: Prose

Backstory: In the midst of the Coronavirus / Covid-19 pandemic in the USA, Mid-March, 2020, a friend in Florida posted an idea she got from her friend in Oz: “Friends who are self isolating and looking for a way to occupy their brains, I challenge you to write a letter in Victorian inspired prose, describing your experience of the world right now. Go on! It will be fun!” I took the challenge:

Dear David Kuhns:
I hear, in most places, that silence fills the city streets. Where there was once shouting, honking, screeching, frantic waving, in Wuhan, Milan, Seattle, Montego, Chattanooga, Somewherebya, there rolls an endless void, hanging still, like death’s fog, over the sterile world.

I pity those who live there. Through no fault of their own, they stay inside, trapped, isolated, millions alone together.
Cardinal on the back deck bird feeder, March 2020My world is not their world. Not at all. Oh! How I wish I could share the noise that surrounds my house on this hickory’d hill. For where they have city silence, I have none but nature’s noise. Just this morning, I stepped outside to a cacophony of chirping, squawking, barking, and sweet voices laughing, calling.

Our feathered friends, welcomed back to this once sterile, lawned place, now covered with wildflowers, brush piles and birdfeeders, compete with each other to sing the longest and the loudest.
The mockingbird wins.

Two dogs, one golden, one blue heeled, excitedly bark and yap as they chase down and sniff out squirrels, rabbits, vols and the occassional deer that languidly wanders across our lower pasture, which has, for the past couple of weeks, sent up bright green shoots, welcoming spring and providing food.

And the laughter and calling! Oh, David! My heart swells as I hear and see the neighbor’s children run across their yard to mine, where Marnie Pehrson Kuhns and I stand, I barefoot on an exposed and mossed limestone shelf, listening to the earth speak peace to us.

The children joyfully run to us, laughing and calling “Uncle Dave! Aunt Marnie!” And they lovingly wrap their small yet strong arms around us and hug us deeply, tightly, as though they would infuse all the love they carry in their hearts, into us, to calm us and protect us. For on our hill, in this space, there is no social distancing, no unusual isolation. We are family. Where one goes, we will all go. And that, gladly.

Yes, life here, in the oak and hickory woods, in the fields, in the wildflower’d pastures, is quite different. It is noisy, energetic, vitally alive.
It hasn’t changed much from when we moved here nearly three years ago. And I’m glad for that.

Rest well. Seek peace. Find hope.
Sunset and Moonrise on Hickory Hill during the Coronavirus, March, 2020: Same as ever, awesome!

Super Moonset over West Chickamauga Creek

The Setting Of The Super Moon: Two Haiku

Super Moonset over West Chickamauga CreekWhen you’re out of the/
daily grind, you can take time/
to watch the moon set.

AND

Super moon rises/
are grand. Did you miss them? There’s/
still super moon sets.

Super moon set over the West Chickamauga and a corn field, through a gap in the oak trees.

If you miss the rising of the super moon
in the late afternoon,
don’t forget:
When the grass is early morning dew wet,
there’s a super moon set.

Butterfly Welcome Mat From Nature’s Resiliency: Prose

Originally as a Facebook post in the Pollinator Friendly Yards Facebook group, Oct. 12, 2019
I hope what I say here gives people hope. In August, 2017, I moved into a home on over 6 acres near the Chickamauga Battlefield in Northwest Georgia. I was stunned at the LACK of birds, butterflies, bees, dragonflies and other pollinators. The property was surrounded by fields and woods, including the 5600 acre Chickamauga national military park, so I couldn’t quite figure out why there was such a silent autumn.
Turns out I was also surrounded by a sod farm. Nice people, but they do A LOT of spraying. A one-time beekeeper near me said “I stopped trying to keep hives because they’d all die after the fields near here were sprayed.”
Nevertheless, I did what I could in my own hilltop yard. I let the lawn go wild, I ripped up some of it, I didn’t cut down the crownbeard and other wildflowers as the bank / real estate company had, I trimmed the invasive privet back and created huge brushpiles. I planted mints, wildflowers, an organic garden. I dug up a square here, a round spot there, and planted native wildflowers. Not all at once, just a little at a time. I convinced my wife that it was okay to rip up the lawn and let it grow wild, and to not mow every other week like the neighbors do. You get the idea. (My wife was surprised when all the poppies sprung up in our yard, as some photo shows.)
Two years later my property has TONS of birds of all shapes and sizes. Hummingbirds buzz around constantly, coming right up to us as we sit on our front porch. The frogs are croaking and singing like crazy. I’m seeing A LOT of butterflies and moths, there have been several types of dragonflies, AND probably 3-4 different types of wasps. I haven’t seen many bees around (but I have seen some!) so I still have hope. And someone reminded me: From May to August more and more fireflies flicker every evening … probably 90% more than when I first moved here.
My point is that nature is resilient. It only takes a little work, a spot here, a point there, and the birds and bugs will notice the welcome mat you’re throwing out for them, and come flocking and swarming to your yard!
I appreciate the Pollinator Friendly Yards Facebook group — y’all inspire me! (As requested, I added more photos) — the one with the house is a field of white crownbeard — can you spot the orange butterfly?) — feeling inspired at Chickamauga & Chattanooga National Military Park.

Individual Eco-Activism By Degrees: IMprov Haiku

A friend of mine is a great example of individual eco-activism. She takes personal responsibility for the environment. During the past year, at great inconvenience (and, often, expense) to herself, she has avoided any plastic packaging (including food). Knowing how much recycling of plastic my family does, I can only imagine how hard this is. Yet, because she is into practical, invididual eco-activism, committed to the environment, that’s what she and her daughters do!

The other day she posted on Facebook about how her sister had joined her, and how they were finding uses for glass jars of yogurt. Her sister wrote about it in her blog. In stark contrast to people calling for corporate and government actions, and yet doing little individually, this woman is into individual eco-activism, doing something personally — which I believe is much more powerful than sitting in the middle of a busy city street intersection, or speaking at the UN, to protest climate change. I wrote this on her Facebook:

You can’t change the earth’s/
degrees, but by degrees you /
are changing our world.

OR

I can’t change planet/
degrees, but I can change by/
degrees my own world.

My wife made this FrontPorchSense.com video about personal responsibility and individual, practical environmental activism. It fits in nicely with her logical view of not waiting for the government to fix things you can take care of yourself.

https://frontporchsense.com/2019/09/practical-environmentalism

Environmental Activism Means Personal Responsibility

I wrote this blog post in NaturesGuy.com about the difference between being an Environmental Protester and an Environmental ACTivist with personal responsibility.

Fix the Environment Ourselves: Nature’s Guy Prose

I’m seeing a lot of news stories and videos about environmentalists striking and protesting about climate change. A 16-year-old woman took a boat from Sweden to New York City, skipping out of school along with millions of other of her classmates, to take to the streets and rally and protest and complain about climate change. Everyone wants someone to fix the environment.

All this environmental awareness reminds me of when I was a little bit younger than this woman, maybe about 13, and some Senator from Wisconsin organized the first Earth Day. Funny thing is, I don’t remember huge numbers of strikes or rallies or taking to the streets in massive protests. What I do remember is a bunch of concerned people wading waist-deep out into the extremely-polluted Milwaukee River and pulling garbage out and making a difference. A place where carp could barely survive and trash abounded, now sees salmon spawning. I guess what I’m saying is that I’d like to see a lot more people doing something instead of just saying something. Like with the #cleanCatoosa2019, or the #LDSEarthStewardship projects. These mean I have to get my butt off this rocking chair and go do something. Like rip out more of my lawn to plant it to wildflowers.

http://www.americaslibrary.gov/…/jb_modern_earthday_1.html

PS: When you listen to all these so-called environmental activists, like this woman (#Greta) from Sweden, all I hear them saying is “we (nations of the world) have to reduce emissions by X percent, we have to stop doing this thing by X percent.” They come up with these massive requirements that nobody can fathom and thus no individual can do. These activists are pushing the responsibility onto governments, on the climate change agreements in Kobe and elsewhere.

And that won’t fix the environment.

I don’t recall any of them ever standing up and saying “Will everybody please just stop using plastic for a year?” (Like my friend Cindy A is doing.) “Will everybody please just walk to school or to church or to work or take mass transit?” “Will everybody please just pick up one or two items of litter a day?” “Will everybody please just recycle?” Those are immediate, personal actions that will help fix the environment.

When we change the projects of “Fix the Environment” into the large percentage solutions and push those projects onto the government, we abdicate our individual responsibility. My personal call is this: This week, will you plant a flower, a tree or shrub? Will you pick up a piece of litter or two a day? Will you walk to your neighbor’s or your siblings or your friends a quarter of a mile or a half a mile or to school or work instead of driving?

I will. Because that attitude, and those actions, are what is going to fix the environment. I’m going to start tomorrow by ripping up some of my lawn and planting it to wildflowers for the bees, and transplanting some trees to where they will grow faster and add more CO2. Because I believe in doing instead of not doing, making changes individually instead of protesting and expecting the government to fix the environment.

Because individual actions change attitudes. And many changed attitudes, doing something, will change the world and fix the environment.