I have been thinking about this for some time. I have had this sense that, yes, time is going by faster. I do think that my perceptions are partially related to age, but only partially. I think that also, climate change is involved.

I came up with this theory on a walk in the nearby woods. This spring has been hotter than usual, and additionally, there has been less rain. I first noticed that the dandelions bloomed faster than in previous years, then quickly went to seed.

Alys heading down the hill from Grizzley Camp

The same is true of the wild roses. They opened earlier than usual, went into full then late bloom. And the same with the fiddlehead ferns. The cow parsnip always grows fast, but this year, it has attained higher than usual height in a shorter amount of time.

Heat and a lack of rain are indeed the culprits.

Every year, come spring, people around here whip themselves into a frenzy, the reason being the dramatic change in the weather. But this year, many have seemed to whip themselves into a froth.

I suppose that everyone is also aging faster.

What to do? We are beyond the point of no return. No one that I know has cut back on their gas consumption. And the major polluters just continue to do what they do, unchecked. Their rallying cry is, “less government intervention.”

We’re all going down; the question is when? Memories of the way things used to be is what will ultimately kill us.

I had planned to take a day off, so as to spend time with my horses and maybe get a few woods rides in. This did not happen. Turns out that I had to attend a Bright Lights Book Project grant meeting. We didn’t have an agenda. It turned out to be a rather unfocused session in which our foursome broke into two groups, each group talking about what they saw as being priorities.

After, Pete called it a brainstorming session. I didn’t think that I wasted my now precious time. But I thought that we might have been somewhat more productive.

We later stashed more books in the U-Haul locker. And we later stashed more books in the Meeting House. We still have enough room for the books coming in on Saturday.

We also dropped books off at Alaska Family Services. They were most appreciative, which raised my deflated spirits some.

On our return trip home, we stopped at our neighbor Jim’s place and talked for quite a while with the women I dubbed the three sisters; although today there were just two sisters present. I have been thinking a lot lately about abundance, and here we had more of it. Jim kept his garden tidy, but the inside of his place was filled with crap. For example, he dressed in clothes patched together with duct tape, but had a closet filled with nice flannel shirts.

I brought home a handful of early blooming perennials. I’m not a big plant person, but I could not let them die.

Next: 158. 6/922: There will come Soft Rains