“such beauty exists in this world as my eyes would not have believed, and it restores me – heals the damage of neglect like a balm, smoothes the thin patches and fills up the careworn gaps of my soul.”

it’s earth day.

i know the tendency is to roll one’s eyes at yeat another “designated liberal cause day” – but the longer i live in major cities, the more i appreciate nature. i *need* that place to escape to. i need to know that there’s somewhere i can go and stand amongst trees, or at the edge of the sea and be still, and have stillness echo back. someplace where the air is so pure, it hurts to breathe a little. it touches a deep primordial chord in me.

as a kid, my parents bought some land out in western massachusetts. it was only 12 acres or so, but it was ours. to camp on. to build imaginary forts in. to share with woodland creatures. those memories – leaving berries on our giant rock for the birds, naming our giant tree, playing with newts and toads, peeling off chunks of moss and bark for decoration – gave us a sense, not of ownership, but of stewardship. a discarded beercan or evidence of an old campfire felt like a personal transgression. it was our patch of land and we loved it fiercely, as only kids with bare feet, pine needles and wild imagination could.

but besides just our land, we camped a lot as kids. all across the u.s. and back, twice. we were fortunate enough to see most of the major national parks in the u.s. and much of canada. we saw geysers and sequoias and canyons and bison and deserts. we went on innumerable park ranger hikes, exploring the minutia of nature’s miracles up close, and gazing out at stunning expanses of vista. seems like everywhere we went was tied into nature somehow – mom was always identifying plants and birds, dad was always building log cabins and wooden boats. we were always sailing, or biking or hiking somewhere.

and as an adult, i’ve been privileged to see some of the great natural wonders of the world. places so beautiful, they knocked the wind out of me. places of such intense beauty, it overwhelmed the senses. from dramatic exotica to quiet pastures.

i have been so terribly lucky in this lifetime – that i know what it’s like to play with pinecones, to toast marshmallows under the stars, to glide down a glassy bend of river in a canoe, to stand at the foot of a mountain looking up at the peak.

but my favourite place will always be that little patch of woods where i grew up. that little plot, with its pedestrian rocks and trees and toads, is just as important to me as the most majestic of mountains. that’s what i think of when i think about protecting the earth. it’s what taught me the importance of stewardship, and it scares me to think about a future where that kind of childhood is no longer possible.

donavon frankenreiter – wondering where the lions are (bruce cockburn cover)

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