I was out at my cottage near Kingston on the weekend — this is where I usually write — and I was really shocked at how badly the trees out there are faring with this drought. Almost every maple is dead or dying. Some of the thirty foot pines, ones that you know have weathered almost everything for a hundred years or more, look to be on their last legs.
I saw a small spotted white fawn running along the fence-line as I drove in (no sign of mom, but I’m sure she was close by). I saw a tiny little turtle, not much bigger than a loonie, resting on a log in the lake when I paddle-boated by.
It’s such a glorious place, my lake, that I confess to being fearful that a prolonged drought may alter it forever. A single cigarette butt, a lightening strike, or simply more days and weeks like this without rain, could have the same impact as a tornado.
The Hopi had rainmakers; so do some other indigenous cultures. I hear that climate change is interfering with the signs they used to examine to understand the weather, like the movement of ants and tiny changes in leaves.
So I guess we’re on our own. Fingers crossed.
