The Environmental Dream Journal: Selected Shorts and Poems

By Katherine Maria Pinner

Pick up this book if you are ready to be inspired to make a lasting and significant difference in our world.
The Environmental Dream Journal is a collection of short stories and poems which reveal the spirit and beauty of nature through the perspective of dreams. It seeks to answer the two basic questions facing conservationists, "What can I do?" and, "Why should I care?"
An interesting and captivating work of conservation fiction, these creative shorts are filled with vision, imagination, and emotional reverence for our planet and the creatures that inhabit it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 16, 2017
• ISBN: 9780990982135

Book preview

Brother Bear

The moon was but a sliver hanging low in the night sky. The stars rested like gems on thick velvet. Though shining brightly, the stars offered little light through the dense, dark canopy of trees in the wood. Here, the men made their pitiful camp. It was nothing but a fire made from a collection of branches that they had rummaged from the forest. Their campsite was nothing more than a small clearing where they pitched two tents. They had planned badly.

Dinner was now complete. The men, though tired from their journey, could not rest. Every sound, every fear was heightened in their minds. Here, in the woods, the men were keenly aware of their solitude.

They started to regret coming here, started to despair at their situation, but there was no going back; for what they had passed through was just as terrifying as what might lie ahead. Their only choice was to persist, to push on and hope for the best.

It was at this moment that the bear emerged from the woods. The black bear was quite young and curious. The bear had never seen fire before. The bear had never seen men before. He wondered at these curious beasts. They stood on their hind legs with their arms motioning about. Their loud voices were very offensive. Their cries echoed through the forest, absurd, abrupt, and irreverent. The bear wondered at the naked, shaved, bony creatures. They were weak but stood on their hind legs as though they were preparing for an attack. He pondered their intentions. They had wandered into his territory. He observed and approached them quietly. He wondered at their attempt to burn the forest. They seemed to lack cunning and wit. The bear thought it very strange for such a creature to draw such attention to its presence in the quiet of the night. It was most unnatural.

The bear had but one thought. He meant to chase them away. He must keep them from burning the forest. He must make the presence of the bear known to them so that they would leave.

The bear imitated their posture, standing erect to demonstrate his height and strength. Though still quite young, he was far taller and heavier than the men. He let his size speak for him. There was no need to growl. He could easily overtake them were they so dull as to attempt to wrestle or harm him.

The men’s senses and instincts were dull. The bear sensed their fear. They exuded it shamefully.

The men did not notice the bear approach until he was upon them. Upon seeing the bear, one of the men scampered up a tree. It was a pointless demonstration of fear. The tree only took him a few feet from the ground. Despite having climbed, he was still within reach of the bear. The bear did not regard him. The bear knew the man would flee once he left.

The other man froze. He shut his eyes and began to whimper. The bear was curious. He put his nose next to the man’s face. The bear sniffed the man’s mouth, ears, and hair. The bear sensed him quivering in fear. The man’s head was small and fragile. It could be crushed in an instant by the bear’s paw.

The man was in a panic. Though he tried to stand very still, his mind raced out of control. Slowly and imperceptibly, the man moved his hand into his pocket. Though the bear ceased sniffing his face, the man could still sense the presence of the bear around him. He kept his eyes closed. He was overcome by terror of what might happen or what he might see if he opened them. He feared the claws that would rip through him. He feared the mouth that could bite him. He dreaded the immense paws that could trample and crush him. His brain had one thought: Destroy. Get rid of it. Kill it.

When his hand found his pocket and firmly gripped the handle of his knife, he lunged the blade deep into the belly of the bear and began to saw open his innards. He cut a circle into the bear’s belly until he could feel the bear’s insides leaking out. He felt the warm blood on his hands and the life force empty from the body. Only then, when the man was certain the bear was destroyed, did he open his eyes.

Wanting to ensure the threat was gone, he slowly gained the courage to see what he had done, but there, in front of him, was not the bear he expected to see. There, before him, in pain and despair, stood his friend. The bear had long since wandered back into the woods, and his friend, having approached him out of concern, was the victim of the man’s fear and panic. In seeking to destroy the bear, the man had killed another man, his friend.

The man with the knife could say nothing. He could only stand by and watch the look of betrayal and confusion on his friend’s face. The man suffered regret. In seeking to destroy the curious bear, the man had killed his friend. It was not a swift death, but the slow painful death of betrayal.

I awoke from this dream with a start, hot tears rolling down my cheeks.

Then these words echoed in my ears: What we do to nature, we do to ourselves. Fear destroys us.

It was my first environmental dream. I was six years old.

A Matter of Perspective

In the summer of 2016 I found a large number of broomstick-size holes in my yard with two of my butterfly bushes completely decapitated. The tops of the bushes had been cut from their roots. Gnaw marks were evident on the base of the cut stalks. The earth and grass around the holes in my yard had been munched away, and the holes placed so close together as to give the appearance of a small sinkhole. It was then that I was introduced to the vole.

The vole is the pest of many a gardener, farmer, and homeowner. People, in general, despise the little varmint for destroying their hostas, orchards, crops, and ornamentals, and for good reason. Though small, the vole packs a mighty punch, both in its sheer numbers (one vole can produce many times more voles in a single year) and its persistence. They simply refuse to give up and will not be controlled.

The vole is only a few inches long. The ones I contended with that year were black, capable as any mouselike creature, of flattening their little bodies to navigate nearly every crevice or crawlspace. There are as many types of voles as there are habitats for them. These were meadow voles. This particular colony greatly enjoyed snacking on my mulch, crepe myrtles, spirea, and zoysia. Apparently, no one informed the little creatures that these plants belonged to me. They had no idea of my intentions or property deed, and so the voles were active day and night, constantly eating and reproducing as only voles can. One day I would wake up to two or five holes in the yard. A week later there would be twenty. They are immune to just about any method used against them as they are extremely clever and resourceful.

For any person who has dealt with a pack of wild voles, it would be hard to find anything good about them, despite the fact of them being herbivores and very bad climbers who rarely enter a person’s home and, even then, only by complete mistake and to their own peril. They are considered a pest to humans and their gardens, and many people see no purpose at all for the vole. This was my feeling too until that summer.

The summer of 2016 followed the winter of 2015, and the winter of 2015 was barely a winter at all. It was one of the mildest winters we had ever seen. The ground did not freeze. The insects did not die off. There was no scraping of windshields or warming of cars before the morning commute. The grass did not die back and freeze. Many plants continued growing throughout this season, and we experienced a very early spring, pushed up by nearly eight weeks due to the balmy temperatures.

Because of this, the voles, who I had only noticed when it was time to refresh my garden and lawn in preparation for summer, continued thriving throughout the winter season and began multiplying much earlier than ever before. This was hardly the fault of the vole, who, being a creature of nature, responds in turn to the changes in season. The vole was not there to spite me. The vole was there despite me. The vole was simply reacting to a warm trend as voles are apt to do.

I also realized that the origin of my voles was the field and forest across the street from my house. Not long ago, the acres of land that were previously home to so many creatures had been completely demolished. There was no way for any living creature to take refuge in the desolate wasteland and clear-cut mud, so the voles, in desperation, must have needed to escape. It is the instinct of any living creature to want to escape being crushed or leveled by a bulldozer, no matter how fond they may be of their home, so the voles must have sought refuge here, on the other side of the road, in my zoysia lawn instead of the open prairie with its thick grasses and protective cover where they previously lived, far from humans and their gardens. It was then that I realized it was not the fault of the vole; rather, it was the people who sought to live in the vole’s field who pestered the voles, causing them to seek refuge in my pitiful lawn. I’m certain the meadow vole would have preferred to live on the prairie given the choice.

One day, in the very early hours of morning I heard an owl in my front yard. The owl must have been attracted by the presence of the voles and found my yard. It was then I remembered the true purpose of these animals. They were not created to pester me but to be the vital food source for so many other species, such as owls, hawks, eagles, snakes, foxes, cats, coyotes, and wolves. It occurred to me that I had not noticed voles before because their numbers were offset by the number of other creatures that lived off of them. They hadn’t come to pester me and reproduce out of control. Instead, their presence and rapid reproduction was the result of the disruptive presence of people who had chased off every natural predator for miles, that is, all but the solitary owl who visited my front yard early that summer morning.

I heard the owl. Her voice was soft, enchanting, and muffled; so calm and peaceful. I am certain she once lived across the street from me before her forest was cleared. I was certain these were her voles, brought here after the destruction. There must have been other owls living with her in that forest as well, but all I could hear now was her solitary voice in the pattern of How do you do. Who. How do you do. Her call went on for about an hour. Did she catch a vole and eat it? I hoped so for both our sakes.

It was also that summer, as I tried to find some humane way to contend with my little garden munchers, that I developed a deep appreciation for the very thing people most loathe about them.

The vole is quite resourceful, always creating for itself multiple exit paths. It never relies only on one hole or path. In other words, the vole is always open to multiple options and does not rely on one plan. It always thinks in terms