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New Mexico Postcard: The Call of the Sandhill Cranes

by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Sandhill Cranes in flight, Gila River valley, NM
Sandhill Cranes in flight, Gila River valley, NM

I arrived in the Gila River valley in New Mexico in mid-September to stay at a friend’s property for a few months. Shortly afterwards, migrating Sandhill Cranes began showing up too. I heard them before I saw them, and my first reaction was, “What the heck is that?”

If you haven’t heard the calls of a Sandhill Crane before, you might not immediately identify them as coming from birds. They have been variously described as “loud, rattling bugle calls,” a “deep chesty squawk” and “kar-r-r-r- o-o-o.” I’ll take a stab at the challenge and offer: “a moody trilling trumpet.”

You can listen to recordings online here, here, and here, among other places.

These helped jog my memory as I was writing this piece (since the cranes here don’t vocalize on command) but they all seriously lack compared to the real thing. They might capture the sound but not the spirit.

The first time a group of them flew overhead, I couldn’t help but to stop and stare in awe. Their silhouettes were certainly striking—with necks extended forward and legs stretched out behind—but it was their voices that really took my breath away. I will offer the words “haunting,” “otherworldly” and “preternatural,” though they all fall short. I felt like I was hearing the echoes of dinosaurs (and given birds’ evolutionary heritage, I guess I literally was).

But of course there is nothing alien about these creatures or their noises. It is I, raised in cities by a dominator culture, who doesn’t belong here, or rather, who doesn’t know my place, or how to find it. Such is the tragic estrangement of Western Civ.


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Rare Wildflower vs. Green Energy & Human Hubris (Part 2)

by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Tiehm's buckwheat [Photo by Gary A. Monroe, hosted by the USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database]
Tiehm’s buckwheat [Photo by Gary A. Monroe, hosted by the USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database]

This is part 2 of a two-part series. Read part 1: “Rare Wildflower vs. Mining Company.”

In part 1 of this series, I told how Tiehn’s Buckwheat (Eriogonum tiehmii) is a rare species found only on ten acres of land in Nevada and how its existence is threatened by the mining activities of Ioneer, an Australian Company. I also discussed the efforts by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) to save the species by petitioning the federal government and the state of Nevada to give it legal protection. Additionally, I provided information for the reader to support the Center’s efforts.

What I didn’t mention is what Ioneer is hoping to extract at the site: Lithium carbonate and boric acid.

Though a variety of industrial applications utilize lithium carbonate, demand is rising primarily due to its use in batteries, especially for electric vehicles. In other words, Ioneer’s operation could be considered part of the “green” or “clean” energy industry. Indeed, they make use of one of the monikers themselves: “Lithium is a strategic element linked directly to high technology and clean energy. It has been described as the new oil as it is a key component for batteries fueling the electric vehicle revolution.”

But “green” and “clean” don’t mean “no impact.” All extractive activities have destructive impacts on the natural environment, including lithium mining. Some would argue that fossil fuels are the worst, and that anything is better—that a lesser cost is preferable to a greater cost. Yet in this case, what is the cost?


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Rare Wildflower vs. Mining Company (Part 1)

by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Tiehm's buckwheat flower by Patrick Donnelly/Center for Biological Diversity.
Tiehm’s buckwheat flower by Patrick Donnelly/Center for Biological Diversity.

This is part 1 of a two-part series.

In a remote corner of Nevada is a wildflower that grows nowhere else on earth. Named “Tiehm’s Buckwheat” (Eriogonum tiehmii), it has been found on only ten acres of public land in the Silver Peak Range of Esmerelda County, and is virtually unknown except to a handful of botanists. Tragically, it is at risk of extinction due to mining activities that have just started in its habitat.


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Reading from my book on “Environmental Coffeehouse”

by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Sandy Shoelles, host of "Environmental Coffeehouse"
Sandy Shoelles, host of “Environmental Coffeehouse”

Sandy Schoelles read a chapter from my new book, “Roadtripping at the End of the World” tonight on her show on YouTube, “Environmental Coffeehouse,” and it was awesome! She is an enthusiastic host and an expressive reader. Very entertaining. I’m looking forward to going on the show sometime. Check out the reading here.

“Roadtripping at the End of the World”

by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

My new book, “Roadtripping at the End of the World,” is now available! For a limited time, you can order an autographed copy direct from me. When these run out, the book will be available only on Amazon.

When you order the hard copy, you will also get the book in all its digital versions (PDF, epub, Kindle). Or you can order just the digital versions.

This book is a collection made up of eight essays inspired my travels around the USA and six interviews with activists I met along the way. A few appeared online previously, but much of the material is brand new.

Check out this excerpt: “Virgin Prairie: Rarer Than Old-Growth Forest”

The book is available at four prices:

If you would like to order multiple copies, please contact me.

Virgin Prairie: Rarer Than Old-Growth Forest

by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Purple Poppy Mallow (Callirhoe involucrata) – Photo by author

The following is an excerpt from my new book, “Roadtripping at the End of the World.“

I was born and raised in Nebraska, but my curiosity about the native prairies was not piqued until years later. In September 2018, over twenty-five years since the last time I lived in the state, I finally visited a remnant of original, unplowed prairie, located outside the city of Lincoln and entirely surrounded by the farmland that replaced most of it. I was entranced by what I found.


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We Should Stop Insulting Animals and Own Our Own Humanity

by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Sheep in Lake County, California, Spring 2019 [Photo by the Author]

People are not sheep
Cops are not pigs
Generals are not hawks
They are all humans

The English language contains hundreds of idioms that mention animals: ants in your pants, bull in a china shop, clam up, fish out of water, free as a bird, the lion’s den, like a moth to a flame, playing possum, quick as a bunny, squirrel away, stir up the hornet nest, strong as an ox, and many many more.

These examples are innocuous, but many evocations of animals are not, and that’s my focus here.

Talking politics often includes unfavorable characterizations of one’s adversaries and using animals to insult humans is very common in this context, both online and IRL. But this is neither fair nor accurate, and I often find myself tacking on a comment to that effect, such as: “Describing Republicans as rats is insulting to rats” or “Calling cops pigs slanders pigs.”

Rats are communal creatures who help take care of each other. Pigs are highly intelligent, with some scientists ranking them fourth smartest in the world, close behind dolphins and apes, and before cats and dogs. They are also clean and highly social. Neither one acts with the malevolent intent of either politicians or policemen. Instead of dragging these animals into the discussion, people should cut to the chase and say: corrupt, cruel, dirty-dealing, forceful, greedy, maniacal, rapacious, two-faced, vicious and unethical.


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“Home” as a Season, Not a Place

by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Painted Lady butterfly, bg: California Poppies

The other day (May 24, 2019), I saw a Painted Lady butterfly (Vanessa cardui) near the town of Dinsmore, California. That’s in the northeast corner of Humboldt County, near the Trinity County line, just off the 36, on the edge of Six Rivers National Forest. The terrain is hilly, fairly steep and treed with Firs and Oaks of various species. Though this spot was only a little over 50 miles from the 101 to the west, it takes close to an hour and a half to drive there, due to tight curves and steep climbs. It’s out in the boonies for sure.

The butterfly had seen better days. One of their lower wings was over half gone and the others a bit raggedy-edged. Earlier this year, in southern California—specifically in Anza-Borrego State Park—I had seen thousands of them every day for weeks. There had been a bigger-than-usual migration (see here, here and here). For awhile there, I couldn’t drive anywhere without my windshield getting streaked with yellow and my grill filling up with dead bodies. Try as I might, it just wasn’t possible to avoid hitting them, there were so many. I felt a little less bad about it one day when I came out of a store and saw a couple of small birds on my bumper, gorging on the corpses.

Other times, sitting in the desert, a cloud of them would pass through, literally hundreds a minute, alighting on the many, many flowers and passing on. (A “superbloom” was in effect too.) For as many as there were, it was tricky to get good photos. They were shy of close human presence and never landed in one place for long. What I had to do was a pick a good spot and sit still with my camera turned on and pointed, waiting for one to flutter within focusing distance.
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The Burning Cathedral and the Dead Turtle

by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Like many people, I was shocked when I first heard the news that the Cathedral of Notre Dame was on fire and saw the photos of smoke pouring out of the iconic structure. Though I’ve never been to Paris, I can imagine something of what was lost, since I have visited other architectural wonders in Europe including St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican City and the Duomo di Siracusa in Sicily, which incorporates columns from the fifth-century BC, Greek doric temple that it replaced on the same site.

Such places undeniably have a power when experienced in person. They are at once both monumental, with their soaring roofs and larger-than-life scale; and intricate, in their detailed ornamentation in stone, glass and wood. A palpable sense of history also inhabits these spaces. Certainly, damage to them is a real thing. But how real? And compared to what? In a world on the brink of multiple planetary-scale disasters, it is fair to ask such questions.


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Counterpunch review of my book

by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

I was thrilled that writer Nick Pemberton reviewed my book, “The Failures of Farming and the Necessity of Wildtending” on Counterpunch. Here is an excerpt and a link:

Kollibri’s book is wide-ranging. He shows us how agriculture is unhealthy for us. He exposes the health effects of agriculture as well as the sevre environmental impacts. He interviews a Native Americans about Western world views. The format varies but the themes seems fixed. Kollibri successfully links the rise of the so-called modern world with the rise of the West and the rise of agriculture. Thanks to the many formats of his chapters, Kollibri can take the reader to places both specifically scientific and broadly historic. I won’t give away the details here. But much of the book’s strength lies in the way it addresses accepted and practiced everyday truths by pointing to an alternate history seldom explored by our history books.

…The term intersectionality, while extremely useful, is often used in a superficial way. What struck me about this book was how well it used intersectionality in a material sense. This is an uncompromising book in regards to the patriarchy and U.S. history. There is a certain deep imagination here that uses history to point to the development of present conditions and assumptions.

The most unique and rewarding part of the book is the specific details about how the world actually works in a scientific sense. There is great detail and well-organized science in the book. Such material is not necessarily the internal biology one learns in school. Rather, Kollibri is most interested in real world application. Upon learning about the earth and the way it functions the reader is met with shame. How ignorant our modern world is. But the book is not there for that purpose. It is there to uncover the truth in both a historical and ecological sense.

Read the whole review here