It’s a dry September morning and the sun rises orange through a thick mass of wildfire smoke. The smell of it is the first thing I notice as I step outside into my mom’s urban Missoula, Montana garden. It’s so dense that Mount Sentinel, three miles away, is just a vague blue silhouette through the haze.
But in the tangle of wild sunflowers (Helianthus maximiliani) and Rocky Mountain beeplant (Cleome serrulata) at the corner of my mom’s yard, the American goldfinches (Spinus tristis) and pine siskins (Spinus pinus) are feeding on sunflower seeds. Against the backdrop of forest fires and an increasingly hostile climate, there are still things we can to do provide habitat for our fellow living creatures.
Cats and wildfires
A car rushes past. Most of the goldfinches and siskins erupt into the air and seek shelter among the high branches of the neighborhood’s Siberian elms (Ulmus pumila). A free-roaming domestic cat slinks past, a well-fed pet with killer instincts, stalking songbirds for sport. The deer fence that surrounds most of my mom’s yard discourages the cats from entering. But the sunflowers are outside of the fence. And not everyone in the neighborhood realizes that free-ranging cats are the number one human-related cause of direct bird deaths, killing over 1.3 billion birds a year in the United States alone. Cats continue to roam the streets, and the sunflowers—although clearly of interest to the neighborhood’s songbirds—are not entirely safe.
The smoke is worse the next day, and the next. A thin film of ashes from the nearest wildfire, the Sharrott Creek Fire 24 miles south of us, covers my car. I sip tea made from peppermint that I harvested from the garden in an attempt to soothe my dry throat, irritated and rough with smoke.
Waiting for rain
I see a news article about wildfires in Bolivia, where in-person classes have been canceled in the schools in six of the country’s nine departments because the air is choked by smoke. Checking active fires and concentrations of fine particulate in the atmosphere, I’m dismayed to see that the current situation in South America is far worse than the already-bad conditions here in the western United States. From the Brazilian Amazon to Bolivia and Paraguay, a massive swath of South America is dotted with wildfires and oppressed by smoke. When I share the maps with my friend Margaret, she sums it up: “we’re fucking doomed.”
Meanwhile, the siskins and goldfinches continue feeding, day after day, in the cat-plagued sunflowers. A lesser goldfinch (Spinus psaltria) shows up, smaller than the siskins, and calls plaintively. A Wilson’s warbler (Cardellina pusilla) flits through the skunkbush sumac (Rhus trilobata) and the chokecherry (Prunus virginiana), hunting insects and calling sharply.
Rain music
Finally the rains arrive, carried by a fall cold front. I wake up to steady raindrops that drum playfully on the steel roof of the shed. The grape arbor over the door of the house sings the music of the rain. A hen mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) has appeared at the puddle along the edge of the street, quacking occasionally.
On the pavement of the street, the puddles run quickly into the storm drain. The rain we’ve been praying for flows towards the Clark Fork River, anointed with a sheen of motor oil.
In downtown Helena, the rains cause flooding on Last Chance Gulch. For an afternoon, the street becomes an asphalt river. And then the precious rain slips away, rain in search of plants and wetlands to hold it.
There are no puddles in my mom’s garden, no runoff. The green of the plants seems more vibrant now. Grape leaves and wild sunflower leaves, goldenrod leaves and Rocky Mountain beeplant leaves, Siberian elm leaves and last year’s dead leaves patter and drip with raindrops. The wood chips underneath, which help hold water during the droughts, soak it up now. In the soil, I imagine the roots and the mycelium rejoicing.
Climate change and mint tea
Drought and wildfire, heat waves, unusual warm spells followed by bitter Arctic cold as the jet stream gets weaker: climate change is stressing life, in this garden and on this earth. A fungal infection brought on by last winter’s sudden temperature change killed an apricot tree in my mom’s yard this year. By now we’ve learned to expect wildfire smoke every summer in Montana. This year, we’ve had two months of it. As a kid 20 years ago in neighboring Idaho, I don’t remember a single summer like this.
The siskins have returned to the sunflowers. I sip another cup of mint tea from the garden. In this time of great stress, the birds and the other creatures need our help more than ever. And it starts here, around our homes and in our communities.
Leah Rampy, author of Earth and Soul: Reconnecting amid Climate Chaos, writes:
“Before we offer our support to this Earth, we must dedicate ourselves to increased awareness of the lives around us. But more than that, we must learn from them…. Our challenge is to embrace a new-yet-ancient rhythm of deep listening as a prerequisite for creative collaboration with all life.”
Making it through
This collaboration, with the animals and plants around us and with each other, can help us make it through. I think of how my friend Cathryn Raan, herbalist and cofounder of the Missoula-based company Wild Wanders, taught me about the Siberian elms (Ulmus pumila). These trees, common in my mom’s neighborhood and regarded by many as weeds, give us a mucilaginous inner bark in the spring. Like the mint from the garden, it’s a soothing medicine for our smoke-roughened throats.
I remember how my mom and I gathered some of the inner bark in May of 2023, when smoke from wildfires in Canada was blanketing Montana. I decide to check on the young elm growing at the edge of the yard, near the alley, where we pruned a branch that spring to harvest the inner bark. The elm seems to be thriving in spite of adversity, spindly branches reaching taller than my head, leaves beaded with rain.
In the sunflowers at the edge of the yard, the goldfinches and pine siskins continue feeding. As I listen to them, I think about all of the plants we can encourage—plants that may help them, and us, make it through climate change.
