It's hot. No matter what you call it--Heat Dome, Omega block, Extreme Heat, or Climate Change--right now, it's severe. I just returned home after a short shopping run and I verify it's brutal out there. The air conditioning in my place is doing a great job, but a neighbor up the street has lost power and is headed for a hotel. L.A. County power is mostly holding its own, and open cooling centers dot the area. Still, the rhythm of life is disrupted. That disruption extends across the U.S. for approximately 70 million people. It's not just hot here, but Europe is having it's own struggles with the extreme heat and climate shifts.
While we wrestle with unknowns (the actual future impact of shifting climates) and serious political divides, these escalating weather changes provoke human beings to adapt. This is clearly not a unified plan of change and adaptation, yet still, person to person, community to community, we are learning through direct experience--sometimes tragic, sometimes supported, sometimes intuitive. In recent days, driving around with various family members in this heat, I began to realize when we had pushed too much, when more hydration would have been helpful, when cooling off breaks were needed, when some plans just should have been postponed.
It occurs to me that learning is adaptation and adaptation does require learning. These times of extreme weather now seem to me to include Nature's 'updates' on a shifting, living planet. While our satellites and sophisticated monitors of weather patterns remain essential equipment for scientific data and research, equally essential is our individual, human capacity to pay attention. We inevitably participate in Nature's change. The job is to participate with intelligence awareness. Our Natural world is changing in response to human activity--cultural activity, personal activity, your activity, my activity. Our Natural world is also likely changing in response to other, as yet unknown, undiscovered factors.
Consider that within this heat wave, or any other weather pattern, is a corresponding, adaptive response, latent in our minds, hearts, bodies. We are not separate from Nature. Consider, too, such care, our care, our connection, naturally extends to other humans, and a reciprocal care of the natural world. Don't just fight the heat, lean into it...listen...and keep cool. (Susan Nettleton)
for poetry: https://poetrysociety.org.uk/poems/like-a-heatwave-burning/ https://poets.org/poem/speaking-tree https://johannashapiro.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/THE-PEACE-OF-WILD-THINGS.pdf