My friends, do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world now. Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people. You are right in your … [Read more...]
Rediscovering ourselves in nature
When we no longer shudder at the ecological warning calls of science, the only voice left that can awaken us belongs to the poets. To hear that voice is to hear the language of the soul. Author and activist, Ian McCullum shares how we are impacting our environment and what we need to do as a human race to reverse the negative effects of over-population and our lack of care … [Read more...]
The kindness of strangers
You are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, the earth needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades. This … [Read more...]
Nuclear confusion a smokescreen?
We were shocked by the article circulated on the internet where a serious environmental author, George Monbiot (pictured), author of 'Heat - how to stop the planet from burning' turned pro-nuclear since the disaster in Japan. Many people were confused about this sudden turn and concerned that Monbiot had used his good name to potentially damage the anti-nuclear … [Read more...]
Boiling Point
The Ruth First Memorial Lecture: When you tug on a single thing in nature, the conservationist and writer John Muir once wrote, you find it attached to the rest of the world. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the climate crisis. Tugging on a thread of our shared atmosphere in China or the US, by shunting pollution into the skies there, is causing the fabric of local … [Read more...]
The fire dogs of climate change
How do we deal with an environmental crisis so dire that it threatens all life on Earth? In The Fire Dogs of Climate Change, Sally Andrew engages emotionally, philosophically and practically with global warming. Her creative essays are alive with fire dogs (guardians and watchdogs of the earth), singing dogs and sleeping dragons! The book contains personal stories, fact … [Read more...]
Bird hide
this hide, with this bench and window ledge where you kneel, to rest your elbows and cup your hands to the twilight, serves as a communion rail in the cathedral of lagoon and sea. the setting sun is choir master to the fluttering of a thousand wings. a flamingo in priest's robes blesses the wine-water and the bread mulch in the reeds. I ingest in silence the … [Read more...]
Nature, melody and poetry
I am walking with John Roff up the slopes of a krans on the Hilton College Estate, some 600 hectares of wild land that lies between the school and the Umgeni River where giraffes, zebra, buck and blue wildebeest roam. John is the environmental education officer of the school. I have come to the College as writer in residence and John takes me into the wilderness so I can … [Read more...]
Weather & season song
in this cape of storms waves rear on hind legs like polar bears slashing the sky. gale wind drives rain parallel to the earth through the vineyard, splitting the oak, flooding the Flats, cracking the sea wall like an egg shell. sweating dog summers pant and howl in the face of a fynbos fire that chokes the air and hurls pine cone grenades at houses and sears … [Read more...]
