Sense of Smell

Apple Blossoms

I’m a pretty healthy person and usually manage to avoid catching the latest virus going around. But this spring I wasn’t so lucky. The virus that hit me was unlike anything I’ve experienced in a long, long time! At first I thought it was a new, horrible allergy because the only symptom was a complete inability to breathe through my nose. It was like I had no nostrils at all. I felt like I was suffocating, my ears filled up, and panic ensued. A couple of days later, the cough started and that’s when I realized I had a cold! But the worst part for me was that even when I could take a breath through my nose, I couldn’t smell anything. And this lasted for a week. Long after the congestion subsided enough to be tolerable. And I am not ashamed to say I freaked. I felt that my life was over. Yes, that sounds dramatic. I can, in fact, be quite dramatic when the occasion merits it (in my opinion anyway - and I can hear my son saying, "Mom, you're being so dramatic!").

I spoke with many people about this over the course of the week of no sense of smell. I was assured that it would come back when the congestion cleared (but I even when I could breathe, I couldn’t smell). My pharmacist daughter-in-law explained to me how inflammation influences how our smell receptors respond to aroma chemicals, and my other daughter-in-law shared that she recently had the same thing happen to her. Several people in town said that either they or someone they knew experienced the same thing with this particular virus - and their sense of smell came back. But I had read online (a terrible thing to do!) of many cases where people permanently lost their sense of smell after a cold. What if this happened to me??? It won’t, I was told. Over and over and over. And I knew they were right, but that little niggling of doubt would creep in.

Mint

I need my ability to smell because I make perfume! I make herbal skin care and need to smell the essential oils I add. I garden and the fragrance of the soil and herbs nourish my soul. We need to smell in order to taste the nuances of flavors in food. I have a huge collection of amazing flavored olive oils and balsamic vinegars - what’s the point if I can’t taste them? Or being able to smell what I’m cooking as I add herbs and spices - or even to know when something I’m baking is close to being done? Or, what if there’s a gas leak or a fire or something is wrong with my car? We depend on being able to smell to warn us of danger. These are the “practical” things that we depend on our nose for. Things you might not even think about during the course of the day, but that are very important indeed!

But for me it became more than that. Each breath I took felt like dead air. There was nothing alive about it. I breathed and I lived but that was it. It’s hard to explain. The air was nothing - just a gas that I took into my body and breathed out again. There was no pleasantness about it, or unpleasantness. I couldn’t smell when the kitty litter needed to be scooped. I couldn’t even smell the gas when I filled my car one day! And I began to feel isolated, like I was in a bubble and was completely separated from everything. Not so much people, but everything else.

I knew, of course, how important my sense of smell is to making perfume and my herbal products and the fragrances bring me such pleasure! But it was more than that. Smell, I realized, is one of the major ways I feel connected to life itself. It was spring and one of the absolute best smells is of snow melting. Have you ever smelled snow melt? What about the way the earth smells in spring after a rain? Or the salt tang of being near the ocean? Or the fragrance of walking in a forest of fir and pine trees? Or fresh cut wood? An antique shop or your grandmother’s attic? Have you ever smelled a slug? (If not, pick one up this year and give it a whiff or give your skin a whiff where it was. They do indeed have a very definite smell!). If I was a chemist I might be able to tell you which chemicals make that slug smell or cause roses to smell like roses and not lilacs.

White Peony

What I can say is that smell connects me to everything alive in the world. It’s how I get important information, yes, and it also feeds my soul and makes me who I am. This was a revelation. I’ve imagined what it might be like if I were to suddenly go blind. And I know someone who is living that reality right now. (Though hopefully things will improve for her.) I admire her courage and that she has a sense of humor about it. For that week of not being able to smell I thought of her often and what she was going through. It really opened my awareness to how her world is changing and the task she has before her recreating so much of her life.

The morning my sense of smell came back, I was eating my breakfast of yogurt and granola with maple syrup on it. And I realized I could taste the maple, as opposed to just the sweet of the syrup. I leaped out of the chair and began smelling everything! Various jars of herbs, perfumes, the cats, coffee! What a miracle smell is! I felt reborn, alive and so very, very grateful to have this most important sense returned. For a few days after, I kept on checking to make sure I could still smell - I did still have the cold. Now I’m not as obsessive about it, but I do not take it for granted, and I know I never will. A few days of breathing a lifeless, inert gas was enough to remind me not only the practical things I rely on my sense of smell for, but how important it is in my perception of and connection to the living and miraculous world around me.

Lemon Verbena

Pictures of fragrant flowers and herbs taken by me.

Broken - Five Years Later

It has been five years since the BP oil disaster. Not much has changed since then. We know the Gulf has not recovered. Will likely never recover. Not only from the BP oil, but from all the other insults, large and small, to that ecosystem that happened before BP and since BP. And oil continues to spill - into the Gulf, into our rivers and streams, into wetlands and back yards. It explodes on trains, and obtaining more of it regardless of the cost to Earth and the future is a never-ending quest. What have humans learned?

All my life, looking back as far as I can remember, the woods, fields, rivers, and streams of my home place have been my playground, my solace, and my teacher. Among my fondest memories are my father showing me animal signs (scat, markings on trees, etc.) as we’d walk in the woods, camping with my family in a big old army tent in totally “unimproved” camping areas. I became an avid skier (though my father compared the slopes to clear cuts - and he was right of course), and enjoyed snow shoeing and cross country skiing too. The latter with a wineskin of rich red wine, a hunk of crusty bread, and sharp cheese for a winter picnic. For the past 25 years, my love has been gardening, and my teachers the trees, herbs, and other rooted beings who live and thrive in and around my garden and nearby fields and woods.

In my “past life” as an activist (before I moved to Maine), my aim was to share my personal stories about my relationship with the Earth, and how they informed who I was and what I did in the world. I wanted more than anything to awaken in people a love of the Earth that was real and tangible and strong enough to impact how they lived on a day to day basis. I wanted people to feel, deep in their bones and soul, that we are part of not separate from this living Earth without which we would cease to exist. That the beauty we see each day makes us who we are. That the colors and fragrances and tastes of our home places literally create us. And that when we harm these places, we harm ourselves and become less than - and thus condemn our children and grandchildren to being less than as well. Through no fault of their own.
    

All those years I managed to keep my heart and spirit strong in the love and spirit of the Earth, of Gaia. Yes, there were some very painful experiences of feeling the horror of degradation and permanent loss. Such as my seeing my first huge clear cut in the Pacific Northwest. I had heard of them but nothing compares to actually being there. I could not believe my eyes, but my body immediately reacted as if I’d been kicked, hard, in the stomach. Seeing huge mountains literally shaved of every single tree up one side and down the other was surreal. How could human beings do such a thing??? I remember on another trip out west, I was driving in a rental car on my way to a camping area in the Olympic National Park. It was just before a moratorium on clear cutting Old Growth was to take effect so paper companies were rushing to get as much out as possible. Log truck after log truck came out of the National Forest loaded with HUGE trunks. Several carrying just a couple, they were so big. And then a truck drove by with just one. It was like these loggers were killing our ancestors, and this one tree, this one Being, broke my heart. I had to pull over because I couldn’t see for the tears streaming down my cheeks. How could they DO THIS?? I still do not know the answer to that question.

But . . . the pain I felt fueled my love and my commitment to do what I could to stop the destruction of the Ancient Forests, and my organization joined with others to form a national coalition to save what little was left of the Ancient Forests, both temperate and tropical.

Another seminal moment was interviewing Julia Hill Butterfly when she was doing her treesit in the ancient redwood she named Luna, to prevent it from being cut. Even though I was in Maine talking to Julia on the phone, I could feel Luna’s strong presence come through as clearly as Julia’s voice. It was like she and Luna were one, and I was getting to interview both of them. 

 The reality, for me, is that these Ancient Beings are wise and essential. Not only for the well-being of the planet but for our well-being, and even survival, as a species. When the Old Growth is gone, and there is very little left now, we will have lost the oldest living beings on this planet. And with them their wisdom, their strength, their spiritual essence that is part of the planet as a whole. Indeed every time a species becomes extinct, we lose a little more of what it is to be human. Think about that. Every day we become less and less human, and more and more . . . what? What are we becoming?

Which brings me to the BP oil disaster and the reason for this piece. What have we become? That disaster broke something in me. I felt it break and it has not healed. In an article in my journal (now defunct) Gaian Voices (Vol. 8, No. 3 & 4) I wrote, “Every day after April 20th I woke up with a feeling of dread, wondered why, then remembered. The oil. I cried and railed and commiserated with anyone who’d tolerate it. Driving to work or the store reminded me of my complicity. And it also gave me time to think, so I’d often be driving while tears ran down my cheeks. I live in such a beautiful place! The beauty was a reminder of the devastation. The birds I so love who frequent my yard and garden reminded me of the birds dead and dying, coated with oil, unable to fly. Everything is connected, the pain, the beauty, the love, the fear, the anger.”

Five years have passed and we have not learned. We have “moved on”. We have come to accept that these kinds of disasters are the cost of doing business, a cost the oil companies, the chemical companies, politicians, even “ordinary” people, have decided they are willing to pay. Don’t ask me why. I have no idea. Perhaps we’ve become hardened to the daily barrage of bad news. Perhaps we’ve been brainwashed by media to believe that our real problems are political terrorists bent on blowing us up (rather than political/corporate terrorists bent on destroying every living thing for profit). Perhaps we’ve decided it just isn’t true. None of it. Climate change isn’t real. Radiation isn’t killing and maiming in the Pacific. There are no islands of plastic in the ocean. Fracking is clean and safe. Maybe denial is the only way the majority of us can wake up and go about our day. 

I believed, I still believe, that Love (with a capital L) is the most powerful force in the universe. That Love can heal, can work miracles. That miracles are real (though born of hard work). I believe that working with the Earth we can transform our current dire reality into a life-affirming, sustaining, reality. There IS more to life than meets the eye (and all of our other senses). We (humans and nonhumans) are more than the sum of our parts. It is possible. But since the BP disaster, and how things have NOT changed since then, I am not holding my breath.

For me as a gardener, every spring is a new beginning. After plants have started to grow, and the new seedlings have taken on some heft but before anything has been eaten by some critter or insect, or smashed by heavy rain, or blighted by some disease, everything is beautiful and anything is possible. I know, logically, that chances are something won’t do well, maybe lots of somethings. I also know that somethings will do extremely well despite conditions. There will be losses and there will be harvests. And next year I will try again taking what I’ve learned and moving on. But it’s just my tiny garden. What if we were to consider the whole Earth our garden? Remember the Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young lyrics: “We are stardust, we are golden, and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden”? Can we do that? Can enough of us make a choice to “get back to the garden”? Maybe I’m just an aging hippie, an anachronism, on her way out. Maybe. But I want my grand children to look back on their childhoods and have memories of the woods and playing in streams, and camping in unimproved camping areas. I want them to know and love trees, maybe even have a unique tree friend (as I did) that they take their sadness and fears to, that they climb and swing from without fear. We do not need more oil or dollar stores or malls full of cheap crap that only ends up in landfills. We need the garden! We need clean air, blue skies, green fields, healthy food grown without chemicals or tampered DNA. 

Terry Tempest Williams visited the Gulf during the disaster and wrote about it for Orion. She wrote: “The blowout from the Macondo well has created a terminal condition: denial. We don’t want to own, much less accept, the cost of our actions. We don’t want to see, much less feel, the results of our inactions. And so, as Americans, we continue to live as though these 5 million barrels of oil spilled in the Gulf have nothing to do with us. The only skill I know how to employ in the magnitude of this political, ecological, and spiritual crisis is to share the stories that were shared with me by the people who live here. I simply wish to bear witness to the places we traveled and the people we met, and give voice to the beauty and devastation of both. To bear witness is not a passive act.”

To bear witness is not a passive act! Remember that! And when you bear witness, do not keep it to yourself. Speak out! Share it. And share your pain, tell us how it hurts and why. Do not be silent. It’s the least we can do. Even those of us who are broken.

All photos are mine except for the last one, which was taken by Lynn Slocum.
   

Dropping Out

Flowering Almond buds

An article in the Jan/Feb issue of Orion ("Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist") by English environmental writer Paul Kingsnorth caused quite a stir. Mainly because he basically said he's had it. No more words, no more trying to convince others to do anything to save the environment. He's leaving it behind to walk and breathe, and "listen to the wind and see what it tells me". For me, it was confirmation that I'm not alone. One of the reasons I stopped publishing Gaian Voices last fall was because it had simply become too painful to keep abreast of the devastation our so-called civilization wrecks upon the Earth. And I could see nothing changing for the better. Not in the larger picture anyway. It seems that no matter how many battles are fought and won, the war is being lost. We are being ruled and controlled by corporations that have been given more power than I can imagine possible over every aspect of our lives. Nothing I can do will change it.

Loving and caring for nature, writing the kinds of articles I have over the years, going on about the necessity to engage with Earth, to develop a participatory, reciprocal relationship with nature, with the more-than-human species here with us, is perceived as impractical, romantic (and that's never a good thing, right?), and worthy of eye-rolls rather than serious consideration. To a certain extent it always was this way but there were a few years that I felt headway was being made, where it was  okay to bring an earthy spirituality into the discussion. Today? Not so much.

Kingsnorth notes, "Today's environmentalism is about people. It is a consolation prize for a gaggle of washed-up Trots and, at the same time, with an amusing irony, it is an adjunct to hypercapitalism: the catalytic converter on the silver SUV of the global economy. It is an engineering challenge: a problem-solving device for people to whom the sight of a wild Pennine hilltop on a clear winter day brings not feelings of transcendence but thoughts about the wasted potential for renewable energy. It is about saving civilization from the results of its own actions: a desperate attempt to prevent Gaia from hiccupping and wiping out our coffee shops and broadband connections. It is our last hope. . . . I generalize of course. . . . Many who call themselves green have little time for the mainstream line I am attacking here. But it is the mainstream line. It is how most people see environmenalism today, even if it is not how all environmentalists intend it to seem. These are the arguments and the positions that popular environmentalism–now a global force–offers up in its quest for redemption."

We've all seen it. Mountaintop removal mining for coal is bad. But destroying mountain ridges for industrial windpower is good. And if you don't see it that way (and I don't - they are both bad), then, well, you're just a NIMBY or you're not willing to make the necessary compromises. To suggest that we must instead change our way of living and our expectations of what living in the 21st century and beyond (should humans survive that long) is to open ourselves to outright ridicule. Because very few people, and virtually no one in the mainstream, believes that it is possible to change how we live. It is generally accepted that if we are to curtail our use of fossil fuels then we must replace them BTU for BTU with something else. And this means we must be willing to destroy the environment, but in a clean, green way. To some this even includes fracking for natural gas, despite massive evidence to the contrary. But as I see it, destruction is destruction. It's all the same to the bear, deer, trees, fish, fungi, birds, salamanders, frogs, spiders, voles, and so on. I suppose to some it's a matter of degree. But as my father said every time a developer clearcut, paved, dug, built–in other words–destroyed, yet another piece of the woods or fields, "When it's gone it's gone. You can never get it back."

Certainly I too have fears of what life would be like without abundant electricity, without instant communication and information at my fingertips. But what I fear most is having these things disrupted more-or-less permanently suddenly, as a result of some form of violence (human or natural). And I know that this is quite likely given our head-in-the-sand mentality, and the reality of unpredictable weather "events" as they are now being called. But if we were to accept a less technological, less "convenient" lifestyle as a given and begin today to create systems that function well without electricity, without the need for instant communication, even without the need for gas or oil, we will be planning for real security, real sustainability. And not surprisingly, creating real community and relationships, human and otherwise, in the process.

But again, back to the main premise: It can't all be just about human beings. Any more than it can all be about me or you. The Earth is an organism and we live within it. Like worms live within the soil, like bacteria live within our gut, like birds live in the air. Ultimately, completely connected, part-of, inseparable from, one with.

When I moved to Maine and left my life as an activist behind (sort of), I did so because I was burned out. Not just by the activism itself, but by the way activists as people treat each other, expecting so much yet all-too-often giving too little. I was tired of the politics of projects and of fundraising. Most of all I was tired of fighting, tired of having to couch my beliefs in the language of the destroyers in order to be taken seriously. When we begin talking their language, we become them. Subtly over time. And so it has continued to happen. While more people than ever consider themselves "green" or "eco-conscious" the Earth is more assaulted, more degraded, more endangered than ever. How can that be?

We can rail about capitalism and we'd be right. But what good does that do? Things will change when people finally wake up. And right now the powers that be are trying (and succeeding) to keep people blissfully in dreamland. Just buy a Prius, hang your clothes outside, cut down on meat, recycle, buy natural, buy organic, buy, buy, buy. Keep the machine chugging alone and we'll still green ourselves and the Earth to death.

So what if I simply garden? What if I take pictures of beautiful flowers and share them? What if I make wonderful creams and salves that work, that are absorbed into people's bodies - a bit of Gaia under their skin? What if I go outside and breathe the clean spring air, with awareness in every breath that I am blessed to live in a place where the air is still sweet and clean (most of the time). What if I feel gratitude each day for the little things? What if I share the stories of the worms and the bees and the spirits of the herbs I lovingly harvest? Will these things matter? I believe they do. I believe they matter a whole lot.

A Walk Down Back

Last week, before the 80 degree days completely melted the snow, I took my camera out back into the small stand of mostly white pine trees to see what I could see. I also wanted to look for chaga growing on the birches and perhaps more pine resin as it makes a wonderful healing salve (and sometimes I open the jar simply to enjoy its clean, piney fragrance). The snow was gone where the sun had reached the leaf covered ground and as I crunched along, amazed at how perfectly beautiful even the dead leaves were, seemingly positioned by an artist’s hand just-so. I found a beautiful quartz and granite boulder covered with various mosses, some deer prints spreading in the melting snow, skunk and bear scat (yup, time to bring in the bird feeders, at night at least), a red corn cob minus its kernels, the remnants of someone’s feast, green ferns, wintergreen and partridge berry, and an old rusted tractor along with wagon wheels, left decades ago on the property line to rot.
 

I found “Daddy sign” too, reminders that my father had walked these same woods many times before I moved here. There on the ground at the foot of an exceptionally large white pine sat our old mailbox with MEEKER painted on the side. I remember when I first moved here, and Daddy was still alive, that mailbox had been positioned in the tree, its door open and welcoming, offering shelter to various forest critters. Elsewhere, there were bird houses he had placed in various trees, probably in remembrance of my mother who loved birds.
    

There were lots of dead and dying birches (and yes, I did find chaga but it was too high up for me to reach), many more than I remember. Birches aren’t an especially long-lived tree and they can’t compete with the white pines for sun since they don’t grow as tall. But I hadn’t expected to find so many broken trunks, snapped several feet above ground, or even unbroken but obviously dead. Victims of too much rain and many high winds, perhaps tropical storm Irene last fall? Unfortunately, a few years ago the land next door was completely clearcut right up to our property line leaving our stand of trees to fend for themselves, no longer part of a larger forest community. But there is beauty even in a dead tree, especially the birches with their beautiful white bark and shelf fungi. All the fallen limbs did make for difficult walking however.

Making my way back, I found some pine resin and gratefully gathered a bit of it, relishing its scent and stickiness on my fingers. I never cease to be amazed at the girth of many of the trees on my land. Huge ancient gnarly maples on the property line and numerous mammoth white pines, not as old as the maples because they grow faster, but very old still. I loved them from the beginning, as did my father, who chose this house mainly for the numerous old trees and the beautiful views of his favorite mountains.

Snow still covered the beds of my garden and the gate couldn’t be opened yet because of it, so I walked around the perimeter sending good vibes to the still slumbering plants. Greeting the ancient crab apple tree, I noted that the trunk cavity has gotten much larger since last summer and I wonder how the tree manages to survive despite it. How many more years will we be graced with this tree’s fragrant blossoms and sweet/tart crab apples? When I first moved here it had many more branches than it does now. Each year it loses a branch or more to winds or snow or heavy rain storms. I see a baby crab apple growing from the ground seemingly coming out of the old trunk, the next generation taking root in nature’s cycle of life, death, and rebirth. I am here, now, in this beautiful place. Safe in this moment. I can ask for nothing more.

Conversations With Trees

Maple tree in my yard.

I’ve often pondered how our relationship with the Earth has changed since ancient times, when nature was considered a participant in daily life not just in utilitarian ways, but in ways of friendship and spirit. The wind moving through the leaves of trees carried messages. The trees themselves were considered wise and  plants were regarded as teachers as well as healers.
    Today the term “ecological self” is used by those seeking to understand and communicate the reality that humans are part of the intricate web of life and that every action we make reverberates throughout this web of relationships. Talking about this is easy. But feeling is where it’s at. Feeling the relationship and communicating with trees, rocks, animals, whatever you feel drawn to, awakens the ecological self which, once awakened, never truly goes back to sleep.
    For me, trees are a natural connection and over the years I’ve had many conversations with them. I’ve brought them my troubles and my joys knowing that whatever I bring will be accepted with no judgments. There’s no need for pretenses with trees. You are who you are. It’s a simple as that.
    Trees speak in different ways to different people -- and each tree is unique. Older trees are easier to “talk” with, at least for me, although sometimes a grove of trees, birch for example, will take on its own personality and communicate as if it was one tree. If you’re intrigued and want to open yourself to a unique and totally human experience, here are some suggestions:
    Believe it is possible - Without belief your heart and your inner ear will be blocked.
    Desire that it happen - The place in your body this is felt is your heart. Don’t put “stuff” on this feeling. Just let it be. Relax. What comes, comes.
    Let the love flow - Love is what connects us to each other and to the Earth. It’s the most powerful force in the Universe.
    Drop preconceived ideas - Don’t get it into your head that you will hear a voice with a deep message. You might. But it is more likely you will get a sense of something. You might feel peaceful or experience a sense of everything being in its place, a message of constancy over time, or of resilience. You might come away with a “knowing” you can’t explain -- it just is. Whatever your experience, accept it.
    Give thanks and honor your experience - Saying “thank you” gives back energy and completes the circle. Honor your experience by giving it a place in your life.
    Act - Find a way to integrate your experiences with your everyday living.
    Share your experience - Many people have had amazing experiences with nature (especially as children) that they don’t talk about because they don’t want others to think they’re weird or because they don’t have a language for their experience. Sharing our stories helps others remember theirs.
    Once you’ve had an experience that confirms for you that it is possible to participate in this way with nature, everything changes. Your perspective shifts and magic enters your life -- a strong, powerful healing magic we all very much need in these times.

Living With All Species

Trees in my backyard.

If we listen to the land we will know what to do. The metaphors are there. The actual facts are there.
    - Terry Tempest Williams

I often wonder what our world would look like if humans weren’t the only ones making decisions. What if bear, trees, mountains, lakes, insects also had a voice? They live in our communities. They share the air, water, and land, and they are impacted by every decision we make, most often negatively. You’re probably rolling  your eyes thinking that I’ve finally gone off the deep end. But think about it. Development is everywhere, both business and residential, often moving into former fields and forests. We’re building on virtually every available lake shore and condominiums are sprouting up the sides of mountains to provide ski-from-your-front-door access (assuming there’s any snow). Existing regulations don’t seem to be doing much to stem the overall loss of habitat for the nonhuman creatures sharing the Earth with us.
    Too many of us have become so oblivious to the needs of wildlife that its presence is often seen as a nuisance or danger rather than a treasured encounter. And to me there’s nothing quite as sad as seeing a wild animal obviously confused because what was woods a few weeks ago is now a barren, sandy waste intended for development. It seems we have forgotten that the Earth is finite – it isn’t going to get any bigger because we want more of something. As I see it, the undeveloped forests and fields we have left here in Maine and northern New England are as endangered as polar bears, and if we aren’t careful they will become extinct just like that precious icon of the Arctic.
    Many years ago, when I was writing my first book, Economics as if the Earth Really Mattered, I took my yellow-lined pad down into the woods to a human-made pond fed by a brook that ran behind the property of the Institute for Gaian Economics in Worthington, MA, which I directed. My task was to articulate the principles of a Gaian, or Earth-centered, economy. My publisher was waiting and so the pressure was on. I knew that if I sat quietly, the land would speak to me and I would have the “information” I needed to complete my book. I was not disappointed. Of course the land didn’t dictate to me. It was up to me to observe and intuit the deeper meaning of what I saw. And what I saw was the importance of scale -- a bigger disturbance would have been more difficult or perhaps impossible for the brook and surrounding woods to incorporate without damage to the system as a whole. I observed cooperation among species although I doubt they thought of it that way. I lost myself in the beauty and harmony of the place and the atmosphere of peace and well-being that pervaded the land there. Appropriate scale, cooperation, harmony, balance – these were the qualities I observed that could form the foundation of a Gaian Economy. So I did my best to put words around this framework, one of the first to do so although many, most with degrees, have moved the concept of ecological economics far beyond my 1985 book.
    So now I ask, how can we give nonhuman species a voice in our deliberations? Not literally obviously, but can we go above and beyond what regulations require of us? Can we bring our caring about the world our grand children will inherit into the discussion? Can we remember how it feels to be in the wild far from human influence, and value this enough to ensure that the wild always remains? Currently it seems we do the bare minimum necessary. Additional considerations given to the Earth or the creatures who share it with us are often seen as too costly. This is especially true of larger corporations who will make communities pay dearly using the legal system to push projects through even against the wishes of local residents.
    This area is growing by leaps and bounds. “Land for sale” and “building lot” signs are sprouting everywhere. Long time residents are often hard pressed to pay increasingly exorbitant property taxes, forcing some to sell to developers. It’s sad and it is forever changing the landscape we have come to love. We are fast losing a way of life, and a human culture, that served many generations well. In return we receive money and a depleted ecosystem. Is it worth it?

What Does Love Look Like?

Diana's Bath, North Conway, NH

My earliest memories, dating back to when I was a toddler, took place outdoors, mostly in the woods, often next to a stream or river so crystal clear every rock and pebble were visible. I even remember drinking from these waters with my father’s blessing. My whole family went camping quite frequently, at various camp grounds in the White Mountains and one of my chores was to scrub the dishes clean, using no soap just sand and water. I had my own little “pup” tent and loved listening to my parents, and sometimes their friends, talking and laughing around the campfire, drinking a beer or two, while I gradually fell asleep. During the day we’d visit waterfalls, look for rock caves, or simply walk in the woods. Always we took a picnic. I was never bored. Even at home my favorite thing to do was go “down back” to the brook where I’d go rock skipping or look for wildflowers, or venture into more unknown territory to explore. My parents never thought to worry that I’d get lost or hurt myself, probably because my father had taught me so well. I knew how to tell which rocks would be especially slippery, how to pay attention to where I was going and where I’d been so I’d know how to get back, and I wasn’t afraid of wild animals because, as Daddy said, “They’re more afraid of you than you are of them.”
    So these experiences kind of determined that when I grew up I’d not only continue to love the woods, but become an environmental activist. I didn’t chain myself to old growth or monkey-wrench bulldozers (though I wanted to once I learned about the clearcutting going in the Old Growth forests out west), but I did organize and speak at conferences, write books, newsletters, and articles, create and work on various projects opposing the expansion of Hydro-Quebec and other mega, corporate projects, work on fundraising for nonprofits, including my own, while raising three boys as a single mother. I did this for 20 plus years. And for most of that time I felt I was having a positive impact. Finally, towards the end of that period I realized that, as the saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Despite my best efforts, and despite how much any success I had may have fed my ego, an honest look around revealed that the Earth was worse off than when I started, that corporations had amassed way more money and power than anyone had dreamed possible, that fiddling with policies and regulations even with the best of intentions made no difference. Speaking truth to power didn’t seem to impact power one iota.
    Around this time, so-called environmentalists decided that the most important thing we could do was to change our consumption. Not just to simplify, but to buy “green” because it was good for the planet and would help ensure “sustainability”. Now sustainability is a loaded word and its meaning varies depending on who you talk to. For me, sustainability has more to do with ecological realities. In other words, it’s important for lots of reasons that the diverse ecosystems of the planet, from the smallest tidal pool to the atmosphere and beyond, be treated and cared for in such a way that they can heal from our abuses and become more diverse, more alive than they are now (because they are so depleted and degraded thanks to our thoughtless human activities). But for most people these days, including many environmentalists, it simply means fiddling with our buying habits without changing our lifestyle expectations. (We can save the planet and still have it all!) There used to be something about future generations in there but it must have gotten lost because climate change and the many forms of ecological devastation our industrial culture requires - green or not - are quickly depleting the planet. What future? you may ask.

    So what is an environmentalist to do? We’ve been sold out, played out, backed into a corporate-controlled corner, led to believe that the best we can do is reduce, reuse, recycle, and keep our fingers crossed. And/or pray depending on what you believe. I’ve always believed that love is the most powerful force in the universe. It’s what my grandmother taught me and it’s held the test of time in my life. What about you? What does love look like to you? To me, love is that clear stream I drank out of as a child, it’s the bear scratches in the stand of beech trees my father took me to, it’s my first visit to the Old Growth redwoods, and the truly ancient one that spoke to me, it’s my son getting married to the love of his life next to the ocean, it’s the smile on my little granddaughter’s face as she digs in the garden to find an earthworm, it’s the scream of delight as my grandson stands under a waterfall at Diana’s Bath. I want what I love to continue long after I’m gone, long after my grandchildren are gone. But that is not to be. That clear brook is no longer safe to drink, the beech grove is a housing development, the bears considered “nuisances”. “Sustainability” did not save them, nor did “buying green”. How can we save and protect what we love when it appears that we don’t have the power to do so? Key word: “appears”. Because we do have the power, it’s just a matter of our willingness to take extreme risks. And they will have to be extreme, otherwise it won’t work. I’m not sure how that will translate in practice, but it’s time to sit together and begin the conversation, to support one another as we stretch our imaginations and our wings, to step up for what we love before it is too late.

    “Sometimes you jump off the cliff first, and build your wings on the way down.” - Annie Dillard