Finding healing in the midst of climate chaos

I woke up this morning with a gnawing sense of depression, the wildfire smoke blurring the mountains into gray shapes and biting at my nose. Wildfire season in May. This is so messed up, I kept thinking. The cottonwoods have fresh green leaves and the birds are returning. The streams in the Helena Valley are bank full with raging, muddy snowmelt; the landscape is bursting with spring flowers. But north of us, in Alberta and British Columbia, spring has come hot and dry. The forests are burning up, and strong southbound winds are carrying the smoke to central Montana.  By mid-morning, the smoke was still a creeping gray blanket over Helena. But for some reason, after hours of feeling claustrophobic and sick at heart, after wondering how the hell the millions of spring migrant birds on the move are faring in this storm of smoke, for some reason my depression transformed. I think it was the dandelions. I love dandelions. I love seeing them in the middle of Helena, growing among the sidewalks and pavement. I love remembering the American goldfinches and chipping sparrows that I used to see on my dad’s lawn in Idaho, feeding on their seeds. Dandelions remind me that as tragic and destructive and out of control as life can be, we, the living creatures of the earth, are persistent.