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Out Walking | Jun 2026: What brings you joy
7 minutes read time.
What brings me joy is gathered in signs and wonders.
The slower video lets me study the vines on a wooden fence transforming into a flower head. Flies alight like fireflies by the stream. The flowers of summer open around me, and even the red painted fire hydrant appears to belong in a garden.
June is peak blooming season. Gardens and gorges burst with color as spring fades into early summer. Common June flowers include large fragrant peonies, radiant roses, towering Siberian irises, native wildflowers like wild geraniums and yarrow, daylilies, daisies, and grasses.
A snake around the corner scurries into the bush. Later, the fragments of a broken tire form a circle, echoing the snake’s movement.
I am walking in my new boots, despite a muscle I pulled running to beat the traffic heading north on Meadow Street.
Heading west, an American flag darts on the Cass Park ballfield. You see me and my shadow disappearing into the lake reeds.
A shadow of a swing slices the frame from top to bottom in an elegant circle.
A bird begins to walk to the right, disappearing, like me, into the lake grass.
Someone has made a small monument of stones. Is it a figure reading Thoreau’s On Walking? No doubt.
A mushroom trembles in the wind.
I see a bumper sticker: “Blessed Be”. A sticker says, “the Sisters of Samhain, Salem, Massachusetts”.
Cornell is up on the hill as usual but then disappears into the lake and clouds with my magic spell.
Rumbling stones become clouds, and lake reeds crackle in the breeze, hushed by the sound of the waves lapping on the shore.
A sign says,
“Dead Letter Mailbox: Itaru Sasaki believed the words spoken into the disconnected phone in his garden were “carried by wind” to loved ones who had passed away.”
Arrows on the asphalt road… then a railroad crossing and sunlight on mysterious metal blending into the silken spider web on a bridge that looks abandoned after so much effort.
Stiller feeds Chloe from her hands, “Slow, Amphibian Crossing”!
Neil discovers Rosie’s black Mustang, I am in there if you look close. You see the recording device in action in her black reflective paint.
A salamander crossing sign.
Joy in the window, a child’s sidewalk chalk drawing asks, “What brings you joy?”
Chloe is on the porch, smiling. We are heading out for a walk.
Suddenly, when I have grown weary of all this shooting, a dragonfly confronts me outside the Cornell Cooperative Extension. It hovers there. I pull out the phone but it is hard to focus without getting closer. Is there a witness? The dragonfly and I observe each other for what was a long time. I take three five shots and delete 2. I hear a helicopter overhead.
Unlike most other months, i deleted 50 shots that did not feel right to me.
As usual in this series, I sign my name at the end with golden triangles.
…But, above all, I discovered around me–it was near the end of June–on the ends of the topmost branches only, a few minute and delicate red conelike blossoms, the fertile flower of the white pine looking heavenward.
Henry David Thoreau. Walking. As published in Atlantic Monthly, 1862.
Official Story / Public Reckoning
June 2026
EPA / Lee Zeldin
EPA frames June as delivery: environmental victories, modern science, reliable energy, state flexibility, faster permitting, clean-water projects, food-waste initiatives, and the removal of obstacles to building. The agency presents deregulation as practical correction, legal discipline, and economic momentum.
Emphasis
- Environmental “wins” under the Trump EPA
- Coal and natural gas as reliable, affordable energy
- State and local flexibility under cooperative federalism
- Permitting reform and faster environmental review
- PFAS, clean water, food waste, and alternative testing methods
Key rhetoric
- “Great American Comeback”
- “Common sense”
- “Energy dominance”
- “Reliable and affordable”
- “Get America building again”
Foregrounded
EPA foregrounds speed, delivery, statutory limits, economic growth, infrastructure, baseload power, state implementation, and the claim that environmental protection can be joined to expanded fossil-fuel and industrial development.
Minimized or absent
Climate damages, cumulative pollution burdens, public participation, the risks of fossil-fuel lock-in, and the possibility that faster permitting may reduce scrutiny rather than simply improve efficiency.
Guardian / Dharna Noor
Noor’s June reporting, with Oliver Milman where relevant, frames the month as a reckoning over fossil-fuel power, legal accountability, public process, infrastructure risk, and the lived consequences of pollution. The emphasis shifts from what government says it is accelerating to what communities may lose when oversight is narrowed.
Emphasis
- Public subsidies and emergency powers for coal
- Legal challenges to anti-wind and pro-fossil-fuel policy
- Attempts to shape how courts understand climate science
- Data centers as both climate drivers and climate-vulnerable infrastructure
- Reduced public input on fossil-fuel leasing
- Vehicle pollution as a continuing public-health burden
Key rhetoric
- Slash
- Sue
- Expose
- Warn
- Pollute
- Displace
Foregrounded
Guardian coverage foregrounds health, climate risk, judicial influence, taxpayer exposure, democratic participation, clean-energy obstruction, and the way infrastructure decisions distribute harm across communities, workers, landscapes, and future publics.
Minimized or absent
The official language of speed, savings, and energy reliability is not accepted as neutral. It is tested against public costs: pollution, climate instability, weakened oversight, and the narrowing of public voice in environmental decisions.
The deeper contrast
EPA presents June as proof of administrative momentum: more victories, faster reviews, fewer impediments, stronger energy supply, and practical environmental stewardship. The Guardian frames the same month as a test of public accountability: who pays for coal, who loses clean-energy projects, who shapes the courts, who gets heard before drilling expands, and who breathes the pollution left out of official success language.
Key verbs
EPA verbs: deliver, unleash, restore, approve, streamline, reform, build
Guardian verbs: sue, expose, warn, slash, subsidize, pollute, displace
Sources
- EPA. Trump EPA Takes New Action to Eliminate Animal Testing. 2 Jun 2026. EPA.
- EPA. EPA Proposes to Save Vital Coal Plant in Wyoming and Continue Production of Reliable Energy. 4 Jun 2026. EPA.
- EPA. EPA Marks 500 Days of Trump Administration with Another 100 Top Environmental Actions. 4 Jun 2026. EPA.
- EPA. Trump EPA Proposes to Free States from Unnecessary Biden-era State Implementation Plan Requirements. 9 Jun 2026. EPA.
- EPA. EPA Administrator Zeldin Concludes Four-Day New York Tour, Advancing Clean Water and Energy Priorities. 10 Jun 2026. EPA.
- EPA. Trump EPA Moves to Speed Permitting by Reforming Its NEPA Comment Letter Process. 24 Jun 2026. EPA.
- EPA. EPA Proposes Commonsense NEPA Reforms to Get America Building Again. 24 Jun 2026. EPA.
- Dharna Noor. Seven US states sue Trump administration over deal to kill windfarm project. 2 Jun 2026. The Guardian.
- Oliver Milman and Dharna Noor. Trump uses wartime powers to dole out $700m to ‘clean, beautiful’ coal. 4 Jun 2026. The Guardian.
- Dharna Noor. The rightwing campaign to control how US judges view the climate crisis. 10 Jun 2026. The Guardian.
- Dharna Noor. Majority of datacenters are vulnerable to climate threats like floods and fires, study finds. 23 Jun 2026. The Guardian.
- Dharna Noor. Trump officials to slash public input on fossil fuel drilling on federal lands. 29 Jun 2026. The Guardian.
- Dharna Noor. Five Americans die every hour from toxic vehicle emissions, study finds. 29 Jun 2026. The Guardian.
See also: Steve Curwood. ‘This is the Costco of energy, man!’: author Bill McKibben on the promise of renewables. 23 Dec 2025. The Guardian.
The activist and author of Here Comes the Sun discusses rapid advances in solar and wind power and how the US ceded leadership in the sector to its main rival.
See also: Good News. The Daily Climate. Ongoing, 2017-2026.
See: Civil Disobedience
See: Welcome to Mr. Rogers Neighborhood
See: Birth of EPA
See: The Deeper Listening Series
See: Deeper Listening | Apr 2026
See: Neil’s Mellow Pad
