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GU I D E to Y E L L OW S P R I NG S | 2O22 – 2O23 55 almanac for raising sheep, and I think I was the longest- running sheep columnist ever, from 1995 until just a few years ago.” The Dayton Daily News is one of the publications that, like the Yellow Springs News, features Felker’s essays — but “Yellow Springs always gets them before the other papers,” he clarified. Felker mused that, perhaps, the essays have set his work apart from other almanacs. “I always thought [the almanac market] ought to be something I could break into, but I never could, in the national sense,” he said. “Because what I do is not the same thing — not for every- body.” “And it doesn’t have to be,” he added. Felker keeps a compendium of his handwritten daybooks, large bound volumes from the early years of his alma- nac career. At some point, however, he began keeping track of each day digitally, on a computer. Doing so, he said, allowed him to more easily reference a single date across decades. “You get a picture of what July 14 really looks like,” he said. Over the long years, Felker has noticed some changes, he said. Black buzzards, distinct from the turkey vultures common to this area, and more common to Kentucky, began showing up in Yellow Springs around 2003. Sandhill cranes, sightings for which are now regularly reported to Felker by “Almanack” readers every fall, began passing over the village in the last decade or so. The most troubling change, he said, is the slow disappear - ance of butterflies in the area. The decline in their numbers, he said, has been “dramatic” over the last decade. “I’ve seen one swallowtail this year — just today,” he said. “Nothing comes by anymore.” He pointed at the circle garden in the center of the backyard, in which one small, white butterfly flitted around the blooms of the last few early summer flowers. “Usually, this would be full of butterflies, but there’s nothing but these little white cabbage butterflies,” he said. But the main thing Felker has noticed over the years has been an “immense consis- tency,” he said. By his reckon - ing, the earth still breathes the same way it did 38 years ago, with rain and snow, cold snaps and warm spells sliding into their predictable time slots each year. Hummingbird moths, he said, always come around July 7 or 8 — and they arrived on time this year. “It creates, at least in my mind, a pattern,” he said. “It feels like you’ve discovered some secret — that the world is really OK. … Mother Earth is going to survive, even if we don’t.” Felker, whose attention is normally bound to this planet and its immediate celestial cousins, took a moment to zoom out a bit. He considered an image captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which had been widely dis- seminated across the internet a few days before. The image, which captured only the small- est fragment of our infinite universe, showed thousands of galaxies, far from our own. “I don’t usually get sucked into space photos, but I just think about all the pos - sibilities,” he said. “One day this planet will be gone — but there are billions of other planets out there. It’s all going to be OK.” From a cosmic perspective, 38 years of the comings and goings of the birds and bugs and barometric pressure of an Ohio village can seem infini - tesimally small — a sliver of a blip in the deepness of time. What does it mean to keep track of the world when there will one day be no one around to read its record? “I think we all do that, right?” Felker said. “You do it because you’ve got to do it. It becomes part of who you think you are.” Felker’s gaze lingered on the circle garden as the lone cabbage butterfly flew away. “It’s a real blessing to have that column,” he said. “It has its own reward.” ♦ Joy . S H A R E S O M E T O D A Y . T O G E T H E R W E W I L L D O M O R E . If you need assistance or know someone who does, please reach out yscf@yscf.org | 937.767.2655 To donate to “The Love of Community Fund ,” visit www. YSCF .org 4 Private cabin secluded on 66 rolling acres, stocked fishing pond, hot tub and hiking. 4 Accommodations for two or up to six people. 4 Open year round, just 11 miles from Yellow Springs. 4 Seasonal RV campsite. 4 Working farm with American Bison. 8606 Selma Rd., South Charleston 937-360-4082 www.GreenPlainsCabin.com Green Plains Cabin Bed & Breakfast STRENGTHING COMMUNITY THROUGH PERMANENTLY-AFFORDABLE HOUSING  WWW.YSHOME.ORG  INFO@YSHOME.ORG | 937-767-2790 Contact us for membership, home buyer information, rentals, home repair, community-first programs or to join our home buyer coaching program.