Science fiction has called to me since I was nine years old. It’s my absolute favorite reading. You know how there are certain books that you always return to for comfort? That’s science fiction for me.

It’s the thought of what might be out there that draws me. Not so much the science, though I love the feeling of stretching my mind to try to understand the science, but mostly it’s the abstract mind-bending trying to comprehend what might be out there.

There’s an amazing guest essay in the New York Times online right now – it was printed on September 2, 2023 – by the astrophysicist Adam Frank and the theoretical physicist Marcello Gleiser, titled “The Story of Our Universe May Be Starting to Unravel.” It was prompted by the discoveries that have been made since the launching of the James Webb Space Telescope, specifically the discovery of “the existence of fully formed galaxies far earlier than should have been possible according to the so-called standard model of cosmology.” The model we have held for some time posits that after The Big Bang, galaxies formed slowly over time. Instead, as the new telescope allows us to look even farther back in time, we are finding galaxies we were sure couldn’t have been there yet, “akin to parents and children appearing in a story when the grandparents are still children themselves.”

Frank and Gleiser speculate that we may have to jettison the cosmology model we have been so sure of, which means there may be a huge change coming in “how we think of the elemental components of the universe, possibly even the nature of space and time.” The essay ends with this:

“The philosopher Robert Crease has written that philosophy is what’s required when doing more science may not answer a scientific question. It’s not clear yet if that’s what’s needed to overcome the crisis in cosmology. But if more tweaks and adjustments don’t do the trick, we may need not just a new story of the universe but also a new way to tell stories about it.”

Besides the mind-bending, what I love the most about this essay is how they see cosmology, and the tools of mathematics and physics, as how we tell stories about what we are trying to understand. We humans – including the philosophers and astrophysicists – are storytellers. That’s how we puzzle out the mysteries that surround us every day.

Yesterday I watched some very naughty raven behavior. I had to laugh, but I also commiserated with the victim.

A huge cow moose was grazing the willows along Anchorage’s coastal trail, along with her young one. The moose who were born last May here are now about half-size, and staying close to their moms in their first winter. And this has been a hard winter for moose here because of all the snow: instead of struggling through the deep snow, the moose use our roads and trails, so there are opportunities for many encounters. I came within three feet of a big mama moose just a few days ago as I was walking the coastal trail, keeping to the far outside in case fat tire bikes came by. It was early in the morning and pretty dark along that section of trail – suddenly I realized that the huge black mound just off my right shoulder was a moose bedded down in the snow! Fortunately she was comfortable and didn’t want to get up.

Yesterday I was watching what may have been the same mama moose from my window, as she browsed the willows with her young one and then folded up her legs and settled down into the deep, soft snow at the inlet edge of the trail. They make it look comfy when they do that.

Just then a pair of ravens landed on the trail a few feet away from the moose. I grabbed my binoculars thinking that it might get interesting. Sure enough, one of the ravens hopped toward the mama moose. You could almost hear him saying to the other raven, “hey, want to see something funny…” He hop/fluttered over the deep snow closer and closer to mama moose, and you could see her try to swivel her head to get a look at him, but the raven kept behind her, went right around her back where she couldn’t see him, and then he jumped forward and pecked her hard. Those big furry ears went way back and she shook her head. He did it again. Mama moose got to her feet – surprisingly quickly – like a mom who’s just gone over the breaking point. She turned on a dime and put her head down and went for the raven. He took wing, but didn’t go very far, to land maybe fifteen feet away on a trail sign. The other raven just sat there on the trail, probably laughing.

Those ravens seemed as naughty as a pair of bored six year olds. It brought out the grandma in me, who wanted to yell out the window at them to quit bugging and go do something constructive.

It’s January of a new year – 2023. I’m sure I’m just one of many people hoping the 2020s continue to improve. May there be less disease, less violence, less hunger and injustice. May there be more listening, more compassion, justice and kindness.

I am reading a remarkable book: To Speak for the Trees, by Diana Beresford-Kroger. She is both a brilliant scientist and a wise woman in the real sense of someone who is the repository of sacred knowledge that has been gathered over centuries. She is originally from a part of Ireland that I visited last year (County Kerry, and over the border into County Cork, all of it the southwest corner of Ireland) but now she lives in Canada. She is both sharing ancient Celtic wisdom and speaking for the trees.

I’m just a little way into her book, but already she has me thinking of a grove of aspen trees along the coastal trail in Anchorage, in the heart of Earthquake Park. After the bench, which marks for me the last edge of our old property, where it slid to meet the inlet, you walk around another corner as you head west on the trail (away from the city) and then you find yourself surrounded by giant (for this part of Alaska!) trees, a whole grove of them rising up on both sides of the trail, their skin so smooth and their branches touching far up above since they are standing close enough to touch each other. And I can vividly picture how their root systems are intertwined under the trail, under the earth that I am standing on. And this is how they communicate with each other. Trees actually talking to other trees. Was it Diana Beresford-Kroger who wrote about how stands of aspen are actually one organism because of how completely linked they are under the soil?

Anyway, the feeling I always get there is of being in a cathedral. A sacred space, but it’s an alive and breathing place.

Wishing any reader who hits on this many blessings in the new year.

It seems like it has been nothing but hard times across the entire world since the calendar turned to 2020… Like so many millions of people, I read the news every morning (trusted news, not social media!), thinking that I should stay well informed, but I find myself getting more and more depressed instead.

In the face of the pandemic and in the face of more and more dictators popping up around the world, and in the face of horrifying war on innocent people… and the fear of nuclear weapons being used… we feel so helpless.

I’m working on learning what I can do. In my household we give regularly to Doctors Without Borders, an organization of people who have so much to give, and they give it so bravely where it’s needed. And we pray for peace in the world, relief of suffering, guidance for those in charge. When I’m anxious, my thoughts are too scattered and I don’t have much focus––prayer doesn’t come very easily. Prayer while walking sometimes works.

Small things like helping with a local food bank that gets fresh produce and milk and cheese to those in need in our area, and just taking care of my local flock of birds and making sure they have good seed and fresh water while it’s still a frozen wasteland out there… these things help too. I know I should be doing more, and I will try to do more.

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference.” (the AA Serenity Prayer)

The world news today is so disturbing. I feel so anxious. I’m sure this is what most in people in the world are feeling right now. I haven’t wanted to use this site to write about politics, and I will try to hold to that. So I’m going to give a quote from a wonderful interview that I read this morning, linked off of an article in today’s online NYT, already lost in the war news — “Using Science and Celtic Wisdom to Save Trees (and Souls)” about the scientist Diana Beresford-Kroeger and her mission to plant native trees to help protect against climate change (and to save our souls). She was an inspiration for a character in Richard Powers’s book The Overstory — and it was an interview with Richard Powers, talking about that marvelous book, that I went on to read.

I realize this is a bit convoluted, attributable to my current state of anxiety.

I loved and was moved by The Overstory. People doing their best in the face of insurmountable forces, people who would give their lives to protect the environment. I particularly loved the character who was based on Diana Beresford-Kroeger. I keep thinking that if everyone read this book, there might be some hope.

Here’s what Richard Powers said:

“To live on this primarily nonhuman planet, we must change how we think of nonhumans. They are not here merely to serve as our resources. They are intelligent agents, deserving of legal standing, creatures that want something from each other and from us. They, much more than we, have created this place. We are not their masters; our dependence on them should make us more like their resourceful servants. They are gifts, and all of us know how sparingly and reverently a gift is best used. As a friend puts it: How little we would need if we knew how much we have.”

As the Hawaiian saying goes, He ‘ali’ika ‘aina, he kauwa ke kanaka! — “Land is chief; we are its servants.”

Blessings.