Wildflower Stew

This must be deja vu all over again. That’s what I thought when I started hearing all the talk lately about nuclear power plants being “clean” energy and read that there was a clause in the energy bill before Congress that would guarantee loans enabling investors to build new nuclear power plants.

It’s been almost 30 years now since MUSE - Musicians United for Safe Energy - was founded by Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, Bonnie Raitt and John Hall. The Three Mile Island nuclear accident had just happened and the movement that was launched with a series of No Nukes concerts stopped construction of nuclear power plants dead in its tracks. But now it seems like someone is trying to raise the dead.

“One of America’s most critical financial and ecological decisions is now before Congress. The atomic energy industry wants at least $50 billion in loan guarantees for a “new generation” of reactors that have already begun to fail, and that Wall Street won’t finance. If these subsidies pass, scores of new radioactive terror targets, thousands of tons of radioactive waste and untold billions in bad debt could haunt us and our children for a long time to come.

On the brink of winning a green-powered planet, we intend to do all we can to avoid another radioactive dead-end. We hope you will join us.” from “Stealth Nuke Effort Should Be Stopped”

The group’s new music video on their website inspired me to keep on fighting back, one more time:

Nukefree.org

The thing I liked best about living in the country was the continual accompaniment of the rhythms of the natural world. In early morning, before dawn, I would wake to the soft sounds of doves calling me out of sleep into a pearly light as ethereal as a feather. I would quietly make a cup of coffee and slip out the door to walk to the river.

Deer would come down to the river, delicate and alert, reverently bowing their heads to the water and drinking, stepping back quickly to look around at the slightest sound, then bowing to drink again, and then they would all together, as if on cue, rush suddenly away.

The great blue heron would appear, stately, staking out an auspicious place in the shallows to stand and peer for hours and then like a flash to dip and catch a wayward fish that had flickered into its pool, swallow it down, and solemnly return to motionless standing until it tired of that spot and, with a hideous squawk that sounded like it could have come from a prehistoric dinosaur, rise up on its magnificent 6-foot wide wingspan and swoop away down the river.

As the sun broke the horizon, the song birds would chime in. First the tentative calls and twits, then the full-throated operettas of those who were so disposed. For about an hour the resident bird population and those passing through put on the morning concerto as I put on the morning breakfast and began my work for the day. This was also the hour for the insects to appear, a fact I would be particularly aware of if my work for the day was in the garden, and the bird/insect feeding cycle would begin.

The red tailed hawks and vultures would appear later after the sun had been up for awhile, hitting the thermals for warm up rounds, getting ready for a day’s cruising for fresh meat or last night’s road kill. By noon only the buzzards would remain, the carnal garbage collectors, an ever present reminder of the nearness of death in paradise.

Late afternoon would bring cicadas, a signal to me to start winding down my day and think about dinner. On a good year, cicadas rock the woods. I love them. To my ears they are the string section just tuning up. After a rain they are joined by the syncopated percussion of the frogs and the persistent whine of mosquitos. Which drives us inside where we hear the persistent hum of fans.

Finally the twilight comes. Deer graze across the way on the far side of the pasture, watchful but at peace. The cicadas fade out, the air cools and a soft breeze comes up. Fireflies peek out here and there sending indecipherable messages as if a few stars had fallen and tried to speak. I look up in the clear summer sky, a carpet of diamonds unfolds. As above, so below.

Rebecca Swan
Summer 07