In March, the event I’m always the most anxious for is that first smell of spring cottonwood. In the South Thompson Valley, the cottonwoods have been breaking bud for the last several weeks and I’ve been reminded of how much the events of other species’ lives ground me in place, in this valley. As an essay, Dispersal Lessons took far, far too long to ferment into something worth sharing, but I’m delighted that it’s now out. More and more, I find myself valuing the lessons I learn as I try to think alongside, not just about, plants.

Two months and one week ago, like so many, I woke to a new way of living:  working without leaving the house.  Notes that I made as my normal 8:30 am lecture time came and went–me still at home; the four walls of my normal lecture hall stubbornly empty–reveal a mix of emotions:  wonder and worry circling around one like awkward dance partners.  Wonder that such an event could come to pass (even though I had read David Quammen’s Spillover and knew the events that were unfolding have long been possible).  Worry about those in my community particularly vulnerable to what we understood–back then in what seems a lifetime ago–about the biology of this novel virus.  I might have also been a tiny bit relieved. All of a sudden my normal spring list of obligations was thinned, pared down to only that could be completed without venturing too far outside the house. It’s hard now to even remember everything that got cancelled:  presentations in local schools, a workshop at a nearby university, helping to organize an undergraduate student research conference, reviewing student presentations for the conference, attending our annual end-of-year faculty-student roast, arranging my botany class ‘local-food’ potluck, coordinating our university’s ‘Bee Happy Garden’ clean-up. I do remember thinking that maybe my secret relief about the occurrence of a global pandemic might be a sign that I needed to reconsider my time-management choices.

In the weeks since, I have ventured outside the city limits of Kamloops three times:  the first two happened early on, when I was still in denial.  I didn’t go far–only thirty minutes away to capture images from a middle-elevation lake still caught in the grip of winter.  And then weeks later, out with Marc and Maggie, to sit for a few hours in the glory of our spring bloom.

Multiple lessons have reverberated through this strange time. As spring came slowly, but surely, back,  it felt odd that our species was so afflicted when others–the chickadees and the juncos and varied thrush (!first time ever in our yard) and the snowdrops and dwarf daffodils–went blithely about their business.  But then I realized this is what the last 500 years must have felt like for so many of the more-than-human species of this world.  What it must be like to lose your kin, to worry about your elders and your neighbours, while another species profits with little apparent concern for your well-being.  My ornithologist colleagues say that this past winter must have been good for bird recruitment. For the last 10 weeks my neighbourhood has swelled with birds and for the first time in 15 years, I have been home to see it.  All day, every day.

On a cloudy Saturday afternoon, I’m out in Tranquille, along the trail to Pine Park, with field journal students. In between side-stepping the ever-changing pattern of water seeping from broken irrigation pipes, four exercises lead us into this place.

First–colour swatches.

In middle September, the first scattering of brown leaves lie beneath a canopy of still cottonwood green.  As the next step into place, we make a sound tapestry, doing our best to translate the sounds we hear into images in our field journals.

The next step is an illuminated contour drawing.  When I tell workshop participants, the point of this exercise is to draw an object WITHOUT looking at the page, I get some raised eyebrows, but it takes only a few minutes for our group to fall into sustained concentration.

And then, before we have to pack up and go, we use our used CD cases and erasable pens to trace the landscape surrounding the beaver pond.  Once our tracings help us find the relative size, location and proportion of the landscape elements, we transfer our drawings into our field journals and use our water brushes and water-colour sets to finish our landscape drawings.

Together, the four exercises fill a double page-spread.   All too soon, it’s time to pack up and return down the Pine Park trail.  Driving away, I’m grateful for the good company that brought me out today.

Each fall, in my academic calendar, I take students into a landscape I hold dear.  Earlier this winter, Terrain.org published my account of the lessons I’ve learned while visiting.

Take a look:

The Collecting Basket by Lyn Baldwin

Our recent trip to Moul and McDiarmid Falls in Wells Grey had me thinking about

Here’s some of what I found:

and finally,

Together, the page spread in my journal looks like this:

More than a year ago now, writer and naturalist John Tallmadge and his family came from their home in Ohio to visit, giving me the excuse to relish Wells Gray above the treeline.  Today as the snow falls–small and white and insistent–these pages give a glimpse into the other side of our yearly orbit.

I came home from our visit brimming with the smells and colours and sounds and textures of an ecosystem at its floral peak, straining and blooming to do what’s necessary before the cold returns.  Of the many gifts good visitors bring, the one I value most is their fresh eyes.  The landscape of Wells Gray is not one I inhabit, but over the last twelve years, it has become part of my yearly round and it’s good to be reminded of the splendour that awaits.