Courage and Spring

Today I watched a short video prepared by Frances Moore Lappé of the Small Planet Institute. Years ago I read her book Diet for a Small Planet, along with that by Susan George, How the Other Half Dies. Both books changed my ways of thinking about world hunger and over-population. But that's another subject.

Lappé's message in the video was simple: to counteract evil in the world, we need courage, the courage to stand up and speak out when lies are trotted out as truth, the courage to stand up for our convictions.

In a sense, it was a message of hope. If we all acted courageously, as if we had hope, and speak our truth to power, things could be different.

A bit later in the day I walked in a small local park, Peter Jannink Park.

The park is a pocket park sandwiched between Salmon Arm's sewage treatment plant and industrial zoned land on one side, and the lake on the opposite side.

Environment Canada weather station, Peter Jannink Park

On the third side is land under the jurisdiction of Adams Lake Indian Band, and on the fourth is new residential development currently under construction.

This little pocket park is truly multi-use. Environment Canada has a weather station here.

Bench, Peter Jannink Park

The park has a history of having been an area to which industrial fill was dumped, so consequently has a weed problem.

Tansy and Poison Hemlock Seed Heads, Peter Jannink Park

New development bordering Peter Jannink Park

The shallow waters of Shuswap Lake immediately in front of the park are a haven for birds in the spring and summer. Birders often find better birding here than at the wharf in Salmon Arm.

Bird box typically used by swallows, just below Peter Jannink Park. Hard to imagine, but the lake rises to the point that last year water came to the base of the box. Volunteers with SABNES and the Shuswap Naturalists are extending the posts to raise the boxes higher.

 
The Park is popular with people because of the covered shelter which is a rarity in parks these days.

One of the people honoured at the Park is Mary Lou Tapson Jones, a founding member of the Shuswap Naturalists whose passion was botany. I still consult her book "Perilous Charmers", on poisonous plants of the Shuswap. The extract from Blake on the rock below speaks to me of the attitude we need in today's world. "To see a world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wildflower."

We can so easily get caught up in the magnitude of the crises on the planet, the big picture. If we look at the grain of sand, the wildflower, the opening bud, and view the perfection within each, we can find the courage to counteract our despair, to stand up for nature, for truth, for justice.

Buds, Peter Jannink Park