#shiftingbaseline — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

Rosher.Net @[email protected] · 2026-07-14 · 16:15 UTC

Shifting Baselines

It’s nothing unique to Druids, of course, but there is a practice of ‘being present’ that uses close observation within the landscape, witnessing the ever changing world as the seasons rotate around us. It’s part of being wakeful to the living ‘verse, and open to all the conversations we might have with it.

For a time, I’ve recognised the world is less full of non-humans than it was when I was a child… perhaps in direct proportion to the increase in humans! After all, back when the CO₂ was at 317 ppm there were only about six billion people on the planet. Now, with CO₂ at around 430 ppm we have eight billion plus.

Perhaps, in a grisly memory, you might recall wiping the bugs off the windscreen and number plate of your parent’s car. I certainly remember the dawn choruses, and this was brought sharply into focus in a Guardian piece about the dramatic loss of birdsong over the past fifty years (effectively my post-childhood years). It’s deeply emotional to listen to the audio track they’ve published.

Thing is, without really noticing, we establish a new normal… a slightly less marvellous baseline from which to witness each day. We’re doing the same, currently, with the summer heatwaves… this is, perhaps, the new normal… day after day of mid-30ºC (95ºF) and nights where the temperature doesn’t drop below 20ºC.

I’ve done everything I can, bar installing air conditioning, to keep the house cool. The front of the house faces east, and in the early hours we pull down the blinds and open the west facing windows at the back.

As the Sun moves across the sky and around the house, the blinds come down – even, now, on the glazed front door and the arch window on the half-landing! Into the afternoon the back of the house is covered by blinds and awnings, while the now shaded front windows can sometimes be opened to release the heat – or not, when the external ambient temperature is higher than that within!

Because Janet’s condition and kidney transplant interferes with her body temperature regulation, I fear this autumn we will have to consider air-conditioning in at least one bedroom. I don’t like the idea… in other countries it is clear how easily the rich cool their houses and pour the extracted heat over the poor, who have no option but to sweat it out. The ethics are conflicting. Our solar roof will easily power an air-con unit, but that heat has to go somewhere.

Heatwaves are drying our rivers, to the point where the casual discard of waste, sewage and fertiliser run-off cannot easily be diluted and disguised. Our gardens are suffering… the creation of a flower garden with which to decorate our daughter’s wedding venue was a significant challenge and we did eventually (when the rainwater capture tank ran dry) water with a hose in the very early hours before the Sun’s strength had blossomed.

On a more positive note, that flower garden has created an environment where the insect population has boomed. Where there are insects, there are birds… and where the bird life thrives, so do the mammals… on and on to a better more biodiverse world – perhaps like the one I knew as a child!

Druidry is an observant practice. We seek as Druids to connect with and recognise the connections within our world. We notice the tiny, the transient… the glimpse and flashes within the woodland, in the clouds, in the ripples. We construct stories, mythologies, cultural lore that reflects the almost seen and the felt touches from other realms. We normalise the unusual. The unusual is becoming a regular occurrence now.

I go for ages without posting anything, so here’s a glimpse of where I’ve found wonder in my garden recently.

#climate #Druid #environment #extremes #garden #heat #life #normality #practice #shiftingBaseline #weather

#climate #druid #environment #extremes #garden #heat