Um, well that was unexpected...

I woke up this morning, in march, after a very minimal winter to see a foot of new snow on the ground. This was very surprising, and also a little concerning. For years I have watched as the weather has changed. I should say the climate has changed. This winter has had around a foot total- for the whole winter. 

When I was a child, a light winter in the state I live in, was four feet. I have watched this over the past three decades, it has changed. Specifically the last ten years. It seem rare that we get snow down in the low lands. Up where I live on the mountain the average cumulative snowfall is around seven feet, or at least it used to be. We only had a week of snow this year. And most of that was in March. 

It got me thinking about climate change. I know, I know, a lot of you people here in the states think it's a hoax- well spoiler alert, most Americans are idiots. Even If I didn't know what it was, I would suspect that something was happening in our environment. The gradual shrinking of snow melt is undeniable. And each year fire season gets worse and worse. Last year the sky was blotted out for at least three weeks with smoke. That never happened when I was a kid. Not to say we didn't have fires, we had them often, but never so many at the same time. 

Sometimes I wish humans could see the forest through the trees and sometimes I wish we'd all come together on it. I think if humans could come together on things like this, we could find solutions for them. Instead, we are innately selfish with our approach until it is too late. 

I know this, the snow is supposed to happen all winter, not just the last week before spring officially starts.  It has been hard for me to know what this actually means: It means another mating cycle of the insects that are killing the trees, it means the ground will dry out much sooner, it means the streams and rivers will be super low by August, and in means that single cigarette butt tossed out a window ten miles away could profoundly affect my life in ways I don't wish to think about.