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Long before the water crested the bank up onto the church lawns and seeped through any crevice it could find into the basement, long before wood turtles were swept downstream from their river homes, long before our downtown streets here in Montpelier, Vermont, were made impassable by anything but canoes or kayaks, I had started noticing the changes spurred by Earth’s climate systems wrenched out of balance. The changes have been even more apparent to those who have lived in Vermont for many years.
The winter months are milder. Warmer temperatures have meant more rain, less snow, and repeated mud seasons. The sap of maple trees has started running sooner, and tick season has grown longer and more worrisome.
In a place defined by the fluctuations in weather, all these changes have shifted the internal gauges for the rhythms of life and rendered traditions less reliable.
In a place defined by the fluctuations in weather, all these changes have shifted the internal gauges for the rhythms of life and rendered traditions less reliable. Will there be snow-covered fields when you go to cut down a Christmas tree, or will you be mucking through muddy fields? Will you be able to go swimming on that annual camping trip, or will the too-warm lake waters be covered in toxic algae blooms?
Even though these changes were already noticeable, the climate crisis felt like an urgent but distant reality for many people living in Vermont. It wasn’t until July 2023—when the emergency was brought to our own doorstep by extreme rainfall and yet another 100-year flood—that most of us came to feel the disastrous threat in our bones.
Is there anyone today who isn’t feeling the impact of the climate emergency in one way or another? Your version of climate disaster may be different, but I imagine that you, too, are experiencing uncertainty, loss, and heartache.
It wasn’t until a couple of weeks into disaster cleanup that the adrenaline pulsing through my nervous system slowed enough that I could feel the grief welling up in my body. I stood in my empty church office, taking in the sight of the torn-up walls and damaged wood floor. I recalled the hours listening to congregants share their own stories of grief and sorrow, as well as quiet moments gazing out at the North Branch River and the occasional blue heron dipping its beak searching for its next meal. In that moment, the immensity of the loss that our community had endured was quite palpable.
In the last stanza of her poem, “Funeral for a Future,” Brooke McNamara writes: “Our way could be / to fall toward the medicine / seeded right inside / the untamable, fertile grief / remaking things.”
Grief is a powerful, complex constellation of emotions. It is an alchemy of heartache brewing within. It can be a potion for creativity generating new ways built upon imagination. What if we allowed our grief to be the fertile ground for new possibilities?
There is much that has been lost, much that we will continue to lose, and also so much that we can save and remake. Our love for it all is the way through and forward.