If it is silent at sunrise, consider: Silence means it is cold or snowing, and local or migrating birds make few appearances. ‘Wildfire season’ has begun here – previously known as spring. We are in severe drought due to minimal snowfall this winter, so more wildfires are expected than the year before, when our skies were full of orange-grey smoke. Last month, we learned our river valley is in extreme risk of fire, and since we live nearby, we may need to have a 72–hour evacuation kit ready.

Hope for snow and silence. We woke April 30th to dense snowfall, and May 3 to hot sun. With more snow, we could have fewer wildfires. If so, creatures in this environment would not suffer effects of wildfire: smoke inhalation, health risks, habitat loss. Migrating birds could follow their usual flight paths to nesting grounds, with energy left to breed and raise their young upon arrival.

This spring-silence is better than another spring-silence. Cold + snow to hot + dry are examples of extreme weather shifts. Our borders here are defined by colonial fossil-fuel extraction politics, with an elected political fossil-body whose actions deny climate change and the needs of many who live here, human and non-human. In time, the snow-silences of spring could be replaced by crackling wildfire sounds and eventually, another kind of silence.  

Listening notes: birds calling out territory, a land acknowledgement at dawn, then any of these: some quiet, some birds and animals, some footsteps, some traffic/aircraft, few words.