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Feel this with me.
I've observed whip poor wills, Chuck wills widow, bobwhite quail and Cerulean warbler go
extinct in my community over the past 18 years.
It hurts so bad, also Ozark Chinquapin, Missouri bladderpod, Ozark clubtails, and other loved ones I never new by name, several species of crawfish, darters and shiners, aligator snapping turtles, timber rattlers, glass lizards, collard lizards, Hellbenders, woodfrogs, some unidentified tiger beetle, not to mention entire communities like limestone glades, canebrakes, praries, oak Savannah, disappearing streams, fens, and sinkholes, forest grassland and riparian ecotones as well as ecotones along cliffs. Ecosystem process like fire, seed dispersal, recurtment and phenological cycles of germenation and emergence, it's getting hotter every year and extreme weather events are very common, a once reliable snowy winter hasn't happened in 10 years and even then record highs nearly every day of every year, it's all falling apart.
All I've ever wanted to do was study life, I'm consumed by grief and my dreams are too much to carry around, I want to travel the world but I can't abandon my home. Right now many remenants of my community are being subdived to join the rest under tombstones marked by multimillon dollar vacation homes and broken landscapes.
Hardly anyone understands what is going on, all the people with a real connection to the land appart from scientists and a few privileged kids like me are dying off and the children are selling off their land. Our unique culture and traditional knowledge are dying just as fast.
I need motivation and support, who else knows these blues?
