Dinosaurs and Dynamite -- Part II

My colleague Colin Barraclough has just this week succeeded in getting the editors of the Financial Times to publish his travel article about our January 2008 expedition traversing the Río Pascua watershed. The occasion is perfect for a Patagonia memory lane sort of meandering. I thought I might look back and reference an old blog and see if the trip really was as big a deal as Colin says it was. A few years ago I wrote and posted on this Voz Silvestre blog a short composition in español that I titled HidroAysén--Un Tema de Dinosaurios y Dinamita. No one ever read it then, nor will many read it now, but it helps me put Colin's published piece into perspective.

Yes, in perspective, one can say that the Pascua is a kick ass wild place, on the edge of the Southern Patagonia Ice Field, at the southern tip of the planet, a big roaring river in a canyon so steep and full of cold jungle that no one even gets down in there. It is ludicrous to think putting mega-hydroelectric generating facilities in that canyon would be anything short of ecocide. Three dams too many. Three mega-dams? Only dinosaurs with dynamite would dream up that kind of destiny for the wild Pascua.

It was a long wait for Colin's article. Three years of waiting, in fact. In the months after our expedition he was published in newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle with an article about the issue, but this Financial Times piece was hard in coming.

And it probably never would have been published if it were not for the way the Chileans have massively denounced the May 9, 2011 approval of the HidroAysén environmental impact analysis. A month later and the movement against damming wild rivers in Patagonia is gathering legal traction. For the first time in years of legal challenges the project has met a real and substantial legal injunction from an appeals court, paralyzing the project.

That is the kind of thing that makes the capitalist curmudgeons at the Financial Times sit up and take notice. They sat on it for years. Guess they better run the article after all!

The Pascua is the lesser known of the rivers drooled over by the river dammers in the big mining business plan for the world. It may be unknown, and only so many people have traveled back there, but this jewel of nature's intact legacy is not going to be lost to the Chilenos if they have any say about it. They are even idealistic enough to say "Save Patagonia and You Can Save the World!" I know, it sounds so trite, but I tell you, I think that is pretty right on!

I wrote back in my previous blog:

Dinosaurios y dinamita son los dos ingredientes primarias de la propuesta de hidroAysén—nos queda ver si Chile los traga entera o si se despierta en buena hora para defenderse de una propuesta explosiva y destructiva.

I would say that Chile is waking up and defending itself from this transnational corporation onslaught. Up here en el otro lado, in the land of the redwoods, in the watersheds of the Eel and the Klamath, we celebrate this awakening, and the real possibility of turning the tide on the dinosaurs, and their dynamite. Now it is our turn to do the planet the same sort of favor.

No need to blow up the few refugios silvestres que nos quedan allá fuera. We are going to take care of the global seeds of planet wide restoration. And we won't hold any grudges against the dinosaurs who have been threatening so much damage with their dynamite.

But I do think the old dinosaurs need to try a few

Explosions in the Sky

Ríos Libres Comunidades Vivas ~ Patagonia Sin Represas

Pictures are worth thousands of words. On May 9 of this year the Piñera government in Chile gave approval to the HidroAysén project after three years of irregular and fraudulent review of the dams proposed for the Baker and Pascua rivers in the Aysén Region of Chile's Patagonia.
Suffice it to say that the Chileans are not going to take this laying down. The largest protests since the dictatorship was ended in 1990 have been taking place over the last week, and there are more coming. Reports of up to 80,000 people on the streets in Santiago Friday night demonstrate that Chile knows that the world values Patagonia.

Follow the campaign on the International Rivers website where colleagues continue to do first class work getting the word out. We will not lose this wild corner of our spectacular planet! The world says NO to HidroAysén!

Wild Iris Redux

It is done. The move is complete. We have removed ourselves, and our belongings, from the unambiguously safe shelter of that wonderful rustic home. Amidst the explosion of Wild Irises that happens every spring in the magical mixed forests of the rural Humboldt refuge, I have always found at least a moment of inspiration for my less than prolific blogging. What can I say about taking a new job and moving to Arcata, where the fog always shines? But I have been hanging in Arcata since forever, and I can feel at home because it is a lot like Valdivia in that coastal temperate rainforest way. As a family we are excited for new projects and expanded community, but there is nothing that feels more precarious in this day and age then going down the hill to live on the grid. Sketchy. Do you know where your iris comes from? Kiara's comes from amongst the california fescue on the oak forest floor. Thank you, and onward. We will be back!

MANYHUES MAYDAY UPDATE:
Here is the best series of fotos with Kiara from the wild iris refuge--
how do you say mariposa?

A Real Touch of Winter

We have enjoyed the real touch of winter that has landed on the landscape over the last 24 hours. It is not like we just got back yesterday and had to immediately adapt to the real winter conditions in redwood country; we did enjoy the summer sunny high pressure of a classic California warm spell, including a solid week enjoying the Mission District of San Francisco in full sun for the first week of February. Of course, that was after the forced vacation in glorious México. Yes, we were gone from home, family is like that. It was not all just sitting around on the beach. Though just enough of it was. And it makes the snow day all the more spectacular, the knowing how great the beach was!

Under the Watchful Eye of Raven

There is no doubt that we live in a still wild and being rewilded little corner of Northern California. It has been a great place to bring Kiara's spirit into the world; here we have hawks, and even the bear roaming through from time to time. The mariposas have accompanied us all the way through an amazing spring-summer-fall sunny season that was not too hot or too dry. The wildlife has had a healthy year; the birds, for instance, are feasting on the huckleberries. The ravens are particularly present as neighbors in the little draw of a valley that protects this home. They are always checking us out. I think we can safely saw that it is under the watchful eye of raven that Kiara has completed her first year!

I probably deserve some heckling for so few posts on this blog, a real lack of prolific blog pontificating on this vozsilvestre site. Still, no one can heckle the spectacular subject of the random series of blogs I have posted over the course of the last year. What a really special year it has been. We have so many good memories, and we do have the true sensation that living a bit simpler and closer to the earth has been good for Kiara herself and for us as a family (and for me as a new papa!). I wish I could type and post a lot of the stories, but I also believe that a picture does speak a thousand words, and these pictures of the birthday girl say it all, especially since blogging here is a rare and fancy way to pass the time. Anyhow though….the heart of what I want to say is:

Happy Birthday Kiara! And happy first birthday for Isabel too, her first anniversary of mamahood! I wish you the very best for the next year, and thank you all the goodness!

The Empty Space of the Internet Looks Better With Kiara's Fotos

This blog could be an example of the lamest blog ever -- except for the subject of the fotos! If it were not for my daughter, I really would not have any reason to be posting on the Internet. The net can be nasty for a slow thinker like myself. I continue to have experiences where I attempt to contribute a difference in opinion to the comment section of a blogger or writer in which I get totally flamed in the net wars. Perhaps it is because I fall prey to trying to be a smarter ass than the ass who entraps me with their competitive style, which is not really my preferred style of communication.

The Internet is an amazing tool, but the on-line community continues to sap my soul of much faith in the future. Perhaps it is my own incompetence as a communicator, perhaps it is because the alienation of a computer centered life really is eating at the very essence of what is magic about human community and there are a lot of sad and frustrated people out there. I hate it when I write something and I note that I ended up sounding like them. It is like the Internet can bring out everyone's most base communication. Fortunately, the landscape and the family and the immediate real community around me continue to be fun and encouraging and tangible and present, helping shake off the disappointment of being involved with rock throwing contests with people who are just more versed in such communication than me.

Though I have the right to opine in these pages about the pros or cons of this or that political phenomena, the fact is such ranting and raving only hurts my soul. I am tired, let's let Kiara do the talking. Here are some photos that I should have posted a long time ago.

How Wild Is Your Iris? Part II

It certainly is a competitive world in the blogosphere. I have been encouraged to be more productive from several different angles! Well, it might be a while before I post here again, but I am here to share a graffiti photo of petro-locura from travels past, and to let you all know that I was a guest on the Environment Show at Redwood Community Radio-KMUD last night. We discussed the work of EPIC and other collaborators to promote conservation and appropriate stewardship of our regions State Parks, especially as Richardson Grove becomes an inconvenient speed bump for the petro-locura that has gripped our planet.

Give it a listen!

PS. We have managed to get coverage of the Patagonia dams issue in the ever so glossy Outside Magazine, both online as well as in a feature article in the print version of their June 2010 issue. Check it out when you can, the article is really quite good and pro-Patagonia.

PSS. And as a last addition to this post, check out this video that is a brief and creative expression of the responsibility that we can choose, or not, to accept for the planet.

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!