Early Spring

Early Spring (Amy Seidl, 2009) is a lyrical requiem for a world being degraded by global warming, focusing on the author's Vermont home and the experiences she shares with her children that may or may not be around in 30 years or so when those children have children--ice fishing and outdoor skating, maple sugaring, etc.

I don't have Seidl's eye for intimate environmental detail. I couldn't recognize more than one or two species of butterfly, and lately I've been caught out when my daughter asks me to identify a tree or plant, because most of the time I just don't know. I'd do a little better in Alabama, where I grew up, but here I've never really learned. I tend to look at the big picture. Like, mountains and ocean big picture. But I've definitely noticed that the weather has changed in my lifetime, and I do worry what it means for my daughter and her potential children. So this book made me sad. Because even if we start doing all the right things tomorrow--and God knows we won't--there's so much it's too late to salvage.