WeirdKatharine

Saguaro National Park, Tucson, Arizona

Now, I can't tell you that you should, for example, leave a comment about your concern for the way Grok has been promoting white nationalist beliefs, but public comments in the regulatory process are a key step and they shape what comes next. If the regulatory agency doesn't fully consider the comments and form a reasonable response to the ones it disagrees with, that can form the basis for overturning a regulation in court.

My sycamore tree began life in the gravel at the edge of a parking lot. If trees can feel pain, that is a painful, unlucky death. I carefully dug it up and put it in a pot I made out of a disposable cup.

Hello small one. This world may be cruel, but I will not be.

I decided to take care of it, not expecting it to survive, and when my sycamore tree unfurled one tiny leaf and then another, it chiseled a tiny foothold in my terrified brain, the kind of brain that doesn't remember a world before the atomic bomb and before 9/11.

I googled the lifespans of trees. My neurons had to stretch and expand to accommodate what I learned: My sycamore tree may live five hundred years. It's hard to think something so big. In twenty years, my baby sycamore tree will be three stories tall, and the home of many creatures. In five years, my sycamore tree will be taller than I am. In one year, it will be summer.

There's this concept called sense of foreshortened future where people who have lived through trauma can't conceptualize a future for themselves because deep down they don't expect to survive, When I look forward, all I see is fire and death, melting ice and burning sky. We were raised Evangelical. All we see is Judgment Day, except there is no heaven.

But now there is a tiny gap in the wall, a crack in the door of my cell

and on the other side, I see a tree

There is, in the future, a great old sycamore tree, full of clean winds and the stir of a thousand wings. A hundred years from now. Fifty years from now. There will be forests in that world. There will be a world.

It takes courage, but we have to imagine it.

Most tree species can live in excess of three or four hundred years. I think I'm learning something. I think there are ancient voices saying hello small one, touch the dirt and the leaves, for now you are part of something that cannot die

in 2030 I will be thirty years old and the world will not have ended and there will still be hummingbirds, and we will have photos of the stars more beautiful than we can now imagine.

I planted an Eastern Redcedar; they may live nine hundred years. There will be nine hundred years. The people in that time will remember us. Maybe we will meet the aliens (hi aliens!).

I will blow out the candles on many birthday cakes in a world where there are wolves in dark forests far from home. I am learning to imagine the future. I learned recently that elk were reintroduced to the Appalachian Mountains after over a hundred years of extirpation, and that they are expanding their range.

That tiny crack I can see through now opens a tiny bit more:

Maybe elk will pass through my hometown, maybe there will be a forest where the pasture is on the high hill that I can see from my home

say it, say it, say it: ten years, thirty years, a hundred years from now

LAKE MAJESTY - cygnus monarcha

Heralded by great wingbeats and dark ripples across the surface of the lagoon, the Lake Majesty is the ruler of still water. Most large bodies of water across the continent have a resident pairing of these great birds, watching over the glistening waters from the comfort of their enormous regal nests. Two majesties will mate for life, one breeding pair claiming a lake as their “kingdom” and ruling over it across their long lifespan nearing a century. Despite local folklore around these birds usually referring to historical pairs as “The Lord and Lady of the lake”, the lake majesty is a hermaphroditic species, with each individual bearing both sexual organs necessary to reproduce.  During springtime, lakeside adventurers may stumble across the great spawning pools dug by these beasts, a shallow pond that holds the ruling pair’s clutch of nearly a thousand eggs. When the eggs hatch, the young princeling cygpoles have a tough start to life ahead of them. Within the spawning pools it is eat or be eaten, as the half tadpole, half cygnets establish a brutal pecking order beneath the warm waters. When they reach the age that they grow their rear legs, only about four to six princelings will remain. This upbringing leads to a very territorial mindset, and while the young will remain in their parents' kingdoms as they mature, the moment their bright white flight plumage grows in the new majesties will take to the air, looking for a lake to call their own.  The size and power of these beasts, as well as their territorial claim to large bodies of water, has led to a rich folklore from local fisherman and waterside residences. Most who wish to fish within their waters or travel safely by its edge will bring tribute to the ruling majesties. From offerings of food, decorative gifts, to tending to small wounds or repairing the royal nest, local peoples make it known to the majesties that they are a helpful and docile resident of their kingdom. Those who do not bring tribute..? Well, I have yet to hear a firsthand account of a traveller foolish enough to do so, and perhaps that is for good reason. With how far the young will travel to locate new waters, majesty kingdoms can be found across each corner of the continent, and for each comes its own set of tradition, ritual, and story. There are many notable pairs known that currently reign across our world. The Lord and Lady of Green Crater, the Frozen Queens of the Plateaus, The Darksand Oasis Lovers. A peculiar case is that of the Six Kings of Marrun, six rival kingdoms that have been warring for control of a great crimson lake within the depths of living Marrun, that land that is as much flesh and blood as any other creature. The kings clash on the red waters, white wings flecked with blood, beaks full of teeth, and the night air filled with hisses. So whenever you next find yourself at the lake’s edge, remember to bring tax to those that rule from a distance. You are a visitor to their land, and while you swim their waters, you are bound to their laws.

(still rendition)

Other creatures of The Continent:

LOST BLADES (FERRUM MONOCEROS)

HOOKJAW HERMIT (PAGUROIDEA NERKA)

SPECULAR SAILFIN (MAKAIRA TINCTUS)

"I'm really sorry that lockdown and the ongoing pandemic interrupted pivotal educational and social/emotional development moments for you. You have an uphill battle towards adjusting to a lot of community based efforts because you experienced a mass trauma during an incredibly important time in your life where you should have physically been around your peers learning to engage in shared community. There is no "but" here, I'm genuinely really sorry. Something many of us consider key points in our interpersonal growth as youths was taken from you, not without reason but without care for its impact on you. I hope you know we are eternally allies in our struggles and if that is something you struggle to know I hope you can learn it someday."

Because so many of the angriest, most disenfranchised people I see on this website are under 24 and I often try to put younger people's behavior in the context of where they might have been 2020. I've seen the impact on my siblings and their peers+friends first hand, all ages 18-24. We've talked about how its impacted them, the isolation, the attachment to the internet, the anxieties and phobias and fears it developed in them due to the pandemic, the political unrest, and the responses to both that we've seen since. I know they're not the only ones and I know how much being marginalized also influences that impact too.