| Every morning this week, I’ve woken up to a sea of yellow birch and balsam fir in this northern stretch of the Appalachians. The wind whipping off Mooselookmeguntic Lake stirs millions of leaves with a sound like the ocean. Once darkness falls, the loons arrive, their voices pealing across the water as they dive for chub, golden shiners and small brook trout. To my eye, this is as Edenic as you get in America today. Yet almost everything I assumed about this “pristine” landscape was wrong. Maine, while 90 percent forest, is also one of our most logged states. If you’re wondering where a lot of America’s 2-by-4s and toilet paper come from, it’s here. Of Maine’s original species, sea minks, cougars, caribou and gray wolves are either extinct or extirpated from the state. Without this knowledge, it was easy to think I stood on the edge of primeval wilderness. Changes here unfolded over centuries. Each generation came to see the woods and rivers around them as normal even as the ecosystem degraded. There’s a name for this: shifting baselines. Today, a new normal is being rewritten in our own lifetimes amid climate-related disasters, from smoke-filled skies to lethal heat waves. Yet accepting these conditions as normal threatens to unravel what made the world capable of withstanding these shocks in the first place. To restore the rich relationships of species, and our place among them, we need to remember our “baselines,” whether that’s in Maine or your own backyard. One of the best ways to do this, even scientists admit, is telling stories. Write to me at climatecoach@washpost.com. I read all your emails. | 
