Dust Bowl

by Donna Schoenkopf

I awaken with a headache. My mouth is dry which means I’ve been sleeping with my mouth open again. Snoring, no doubt. My nose is incapable of inhaling or exhaling. Clogged. That’s what’s giving me my headache, which pushes against my forehead like an over-inflated tire.

I feel bites on my body. Crap. The ticks have been happily enjoying the heat and manage to hitchhike into the house on the backs (and shoulders and bellies and necks and armpits) of the dogs in spite of the Frontline I religiously put on them every six weeks. Most of the time I find the ticks’ shriveled dead bodies buried in the dogs’ flesh but that doesn’t mean they are all dead. Some manage to get into the house because they haven’t yet drunk any dog blood and are still alive and kicking when they get inside. I probably have Lyme disease. Crap.

No beautiful sunrise this morning. Just blah sky outside, kind of pale gray blue. I lie in bed, not wanting to get up, but Highway Joe Biden wants out and “talks” about it incessantly until I get up and let him out.

I stand on the deck looking at my shriveled cottonwood tree. It’s crispy brown, but there is a single branch that still has green leaves on it, although those are slowly losing their life, too.

Ugh.

I rehash my thoughts of what to do with the cottonwood tree. Last week I awakened to a hot, dry, windy, nasty morning and was stunned to see almost all of my lovely cottonwood’s leaves completely dried and brown. Overnight.

I hadn’t a clue as to what happened. So I asked the Internet. I deduced from the pictures I saw and the descriptions I read that my tree had gotten a bad case of “scorch,” which is a disease transmitted by infected leafhoppers that clogs the xylem with bacteria, and that causes the tree to die of thirst.

I am going through the five (seven?) stages of grief. I am in the disbelief stage. I look at the few remaining green leaves to see if they are dying in the way scorch death is described. Is that a brown edge with a yellow boundary between the brown and green? Oh, I just don’t know.

I water it deeply every day.

Comments from last week’s story gave me wonderful advice and nurturing and solace and made me feel better. All of the comments were from women. Treehuggers. How I love them. As some of them advise, I will not do anything for a while. Just watch and water. There is hope that it’s just a case of very hot, dry, windiness that’s hurt my tree. We are up on a hill that is essentially red sandstone, which just lets the water trickle down, down, down to an aquifer far below and there isn’t enough for a river-loving tree to survive on. If my cottonwood is truly dead, I will follow a suggestion and cut it down, lop off the branches, and use it as a long, long bench until its soft wood disintegrates into the earth.

It’s been a rough spring and now, entering summer, I don’t expect any relief. Spring has had little rain and has been especially hot with winds that would curl your hair. The wildflowers that normally burst out in April and May in profusions of purple, yellow, white, red, have been sparse and late in coming. There have been mostly yellow flowers which, I am told, are what show up when it’s hotter than normal. And the Johnson grass that usually shoots up to my waist, sometimes higher if I don’t mow it, languishes in small clusters a few inches high.

And the dogs ... they are driving me nuts. I am kind of babysitting the dog next door and she and puppy Joe Biden are busy digging holes in the “lawn” and uprooting all the potted plants on the deck and pooping everywhere. Why aren’t they going into the woods to do their business the way Diego did and Angela Davis does?

It’s too damn hot to do anything outside. I am in awe of all the guys who stride around in the heat, building, digging, hauling, painting. What the hell is wrong with them? Are they human?

dust storm, Spearman, Texas, 1935

I think about the Dust Bowl of the 1930s here in Oklahoma. If this weather continues for too many more years we may have the same situation as then. I think about climate change and Al Gore’s movie and how it’s the most important political item on my agenda and why I came out here in the first place. I also think about folks who dismiss the melting ice caps and the changes in rainfall and temperature and the crazy tornadoes and hurricanes and droughts and torrential rains as normal events. But the thing that really gets my goat are the folks who are convinced that it’s God’s will and that the Bible tells us that these are the End Times and that true believers will soon be scooped up into heaven and will sit at the right hand of the Father, alongside Jesus Himself. And they can’t wait.

It’s an excuse for them to do nothing. They drive their great big vehicles and spray their pesticides and complain about losing their incandescent light bulbs and buy products in excessive packaging because it’s pretty and use styrofoam cups continually and throw away everything so they can buy more because that’s what they’re carefully taught. Being a good steward of the earth doesn’t enter into their consciousness.

Boy. I’m really in a bad mood today.

I had a dream some years back before I left my family and moved out here to Oklahoma. I dreamed that I would build a house in the country, work the land, be a good steward of the earth, get strong and healthy from all the exercise I was going to get, have peace of mind and a clear conscience because I would live a life of honor and thoughtfulness.

Today I just wonder how in the hell I’m going to make myself get outside in that hellish heat to save what’s left of my grass and replant all the poor dug up geraniums and nasturtiums and rosemary and aloe vera and dracena and not-so-lucky bamboo and morning glories and lilacs.

No matter what I do, it’s not enough. I can’t seem to stem the tide of disrepair and ugliness that’s coming at me.

Heroically, while the sun beat down on me this spring, I made three trips to collect a bunch of broken asphalt alongside the road in Shawnee and laid it in my driveway. I had to do it because my driveway was developing deep ruts where I parked because the weight of the car caused it to sink through the gravel into the clay mud when it rained. I collected some broken concrete to put around the ferns and dracena and pennyroyal I planted on the north side of the house to suck up the constant damp and make a pretty spot to look at, which the dogs dug up so they could lie in the shade and the wet earth. I laid the concrete, replanted everything and so far, so good. I have dragged pavers home from dear Nancy’s house and now have a nice walkway from the parking area to my front door and from my back door to the shed.

But it is a drop in the bucket of all the things I need to do. The rest of the place is a mess. An ugly, brown, dirty mess. And I just do not feel like doing anything about it today. At all.

Some days are like that.

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