Can I offer you a fox in these troubling times
Fox of the week, hurricane of the week, essay of the week, new hobby of the week, plant of the week
I’d been having trouble finding the energy to write lately. But then Priya sent me a video of a fox rolling around outside her office yesterday.
And I felt like this fox needed a bigger audience. People need to see this fox.
The fox knows it’s still summer, and it’s getting its frolicking in. May we all do as the fox does.
Our first hurricane watch
We spent most of Sunday in a state of nervous anticipation and hatch-battening as Hurricane Henri bore down the Gulf Stream straight for Rhode Island. Like a bowling ball pitched straight down the lane without enough momentum, it seemed to first wobble this way and then wobble that way, but still seemed almost guaranteed to blow down dozens of trees in Providence and knock out our power for the week. I took the air conditioning units out of the windows, so that I could batten the hatches (close the windows) good and proper. Then at the last minute—again like a poorly thrown bowling ball—it hooked left after landfall in western Rhode Island and made a beeline for Hartford, CT. The most we saw of the storm was some occasional gusts and a smattering of rain.
After the tropical storm watch expired, I went for a short bike ride on Sunday evening, I guess thinking that I could then say I rode my bike “during” a tropical storm. The bike path surface was dry by then, the rain had been so sparse. There was a steady wind on hilltops, but nothing more impressive than a moderate thunderstorm. The local birds went about their business.
Don’t think I’m ungrateful! I’m glad that there were no injuries and scant property damage. It’s just that the forecast on Saturday indicated that 80-90 mph winds were a near certainty for the entire state. So to amp ourselves up for surviving a terrifying storm, and then to find that we just had to stare out the window all day at relatively mild weather—there’s something oddly frustrating about that. But clearly, less harm = good.
Being a person in a time of crisis
An essay by climate writer Amy Westervelt, “The Cult of Personal Responsibility is Killing Us,” examines how she experienced grief for her father’s death as news of the latest International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report broke (content warning: discusses suicide.) In these two threads, she identifies the poison of American individualism at work, seeping its way through every system we interact with and how we evaluate ourselves. The takeaway for me: we solve our problems together or not at all. Helpful to hear in a spate of weeks with relentlessly damning news and only so much a person can do on their own.
“Mountain” biking
I’ve rarely put the mountain bike I’ve had since I was a preteen to its proper use: riding off-road. The knobby tires, suspension and upright riding posture are nice but sort of overkill for ordinary spins around the neighborhood, but are essential once on a trail—something I realized very quickly the few times I tried to take my hand-me-down steel road bike on a dirt or gravel path. Ouch.
You might not expect it, but Rhode Island is full of mountain biking trails, as long as you have a broad definition of what a mountain is. To be clear, I have little interest in doing flippy-wheelie tricks on this thing or using it like downhill skis, like some braver people do. What I do find exciting, though, is the way off-road biking lets me cover more ground and see more of a place—analogous to cross-country skiing, I guess. A distance that would mean an exhausting, full-day hike becomes a trip of just a couple hours.
I’ve banged around the baffling spiderweb of trails at Lincoln Woods, just north of Providence, and done a fair-to-middling difficulty loop southwest of town in a place called Big River Management Area that sees a lot of mountain biking. It instantly became apparent how different the skillsets and muscle groups needed for mountain biking vs. road biking are. Instead of trying to maximize my speed, I’m happy to just be moving forward when I’m off-road, usually keeping the bike on a very low gear to stagger my way up steep little slopes and then carefully pick my way downhill. I like the relatively flat sections where I don’t have to think too hard about dodging tree roots the best. White pine roots? More like anti-mountain-bike devices (AMBDs).
The way that climbing a hill on a mountain bike forces you to work the handlebars as you push upslope takes a toll on your upper body. That’s led me to actually want to do a little strength training for the first time in my life, in the hopes that I’ll be a bit less exhausted by each hill. Having a point to exercise beyond just checking a box has always been a hang-up for me. The allure of seeing even more of a place on the bike makes a few pushups seem just slightly worth it.
Plant of the week: Common evening primrose
Currently livening up flower beds all over Providence, mostly without being invited, common evening primrose (Oenothera biennis) is a late-summer specialty. It’s distinguished from the pretty similar northern evening primrose (O. parviflora) by a slight difference in the ends of the sepals (the green parts below the petals, see this page for details). Both evening primrose species and a few others are around and in bloom right now.
Native American nations as diverse as the Ojibwe, Cherokee and Iroquois have made use of this plant. The nutritious taproots can be prepared like potatoes, and the leaves are edible, too. In traditional medicine, the plant has been used to alleviate pain, indigestion, and other conditions. Some recent studies have explored whether the fatty acids found in evening primrose oil could help treat chronic inflammation and other ailments.
Evening primroses are outstandingly tough. The diversity in species within the Oenothera genus, and then the genetic diversity within incredibly widespread species like O. biennis, lets these flowers live just about anywhere south of permafrost and wetter than a desert. Part of their secret to success are tiny seeds light enough for the wind to carry but packing hardware that lets them survive for up to 70 years in the soil before sprouting. Something to think about before you pull out the “weed” that just showed up in your tree lawn this week: it might be twice your age. Respect your elders, you know?
At this link, find ways to support Afghan refugees resettling in the U.S. Donate to the International Institute of St. Louis here.
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Possum Notes is a weekly newsletter about wildlife and landscapes around where I live. It’s produced on occupied Wampanoag and Narragansett land.