March 1, 2010

Light the fires of Spring!
by Melanie Parker

Early mornings I like to come to the homestead and light the boiler and get ready for the day. There is something utterly satisfying about confronting our need for heat in the building by chopping wood, lighting the fire, and tending the boiler. Almost every time I do, there is some magnificent morning sky to greet me, like this one.

Sure, I wish things were a little different, a little better. Some days I really wish we had a propane backup system so that we didn’t always have to tend the fires. Some days I wish we had the money to convert the whole barn to solar so we didn’t import coal fired energy to run the computers and phones. Some days I wish for this or I wish for that.   

As I look around this late winter and see how fast the snow is retreating, and read of our low snowpack, and hear about the ice caving off from Antarctica, I wish that it were different. But if there is one thing I’ve learned in my short tenure on this planet it is that we have to profoundly accept where we are AND work like the dickens to change it. So, I just chop wood and carry water and get ready for the day, the week, and the year.

This week, just like any week at NwC, we’ll be working like the dickens. We’re collaborating on new experiments with community ownership of former Plum Creek lands; we are meeting to plan this summer’s bear DNA work; we are working with our colleagues across the Seeley-Swan-Blackfoot to plan a one day stewardship summit on biomass, and we are getting ready to visit the nation’s capital at the end of April. Many other project and endeavors are underway as well, but those are the projects that are high on my list and that dance in my mind as I gaze into the fires of the boiler in the early morning hours.

And this week we greet our friends and colleagues from Aerie Backcountry Medicine. Their semester students journey up from Costa Rica mid-week and settle in for a month of life at the barn. Welcome Aerie staff and students!

Walking back up to the office I hear several bald eagles calling from down in the river bottom.  I hear a pygmy owl calling out from a tree top, and I hear a few Canadian geese chatting amongst themselves. It’s supposed to be in the 40’s and 50’s all week, so this snow in the meadow will soon be melted.

It’s early spring here at NwC; it just is.