How Wild Is Your Iris?

It rained again today, solidly. Though the front has let up, the afternoon is grey, and cold, and we are just barely getting a solar charge for the batteries—and all the while the mixed forest of the hills is drinking up the moisture, the mist, the drizzle, the fog. This later May maritime system is a total miracle of precipitation, diffused light, and celebratory frog song. Unstable as it is, in terms of low atmospheric pressure and heavy weight of h2o on all the flower bearing branches out there, it is still a welcome gift—water is life!

How lucky we are, to have so much good wildness around us, falling today in the shape of rain. Sometimes, though, I wonder—does familiarity breed contempt? Is that why we can get sick of the rain? Or do the elements and special places of nature really seem more potent when they are new? And less significant when one has already seen them a thousand times? What has happened to a person when they are tired of seeing the bloom of the wild irises?

Seeing the everyday splendor of our planet in a late May rain in Humboldt County is a part of understanding the harsh realities that wild nature everywhere is facing. Even though my quiet reality at home is so aesthetic, it is not so difficult to feel the fragilities of our existence when looking at the Golfo de México and the Redwoods (or even back once again to Patagonia!) through the iris of a person who is about to complete seven months of life. What will happen to our planet in the next seven months, seven years, or seven decades? What will Kiara see in her life that I have always feared we would see? Can your iris to the world see the interconnected complexity of the issues confronting the next generation? With which lens do you see the planet, and your place on it? Frankly, while I ask "how wild is your iris?," I know that my wild iris is looking a long ways ahead.

And, because of todays rain, Kiara is smiling every step of the way!

P.S. The first foto is from Cuernavaca, Morelos, México, Kiara's first holiday down south! Though I started this blog what seems to be quite a long time ago, I don't always get fotos up in a timely fashion. Such is the internet for me--too much work and not enough play. Hopefully this post will whet people's appetite for a while, or maybe not? We will have to see...in the meantime, enjoy the images!