Working with Nature

Working with Nature:

While I won’t claim that gen-x were the original environmentalists, I do think that we were coming of age during the first real look at what unchecked destruction of the environment meant.  I clearly remember being in middle school when the book “50 Things You Can Do To Save the Environment” was published, and one of our assignments was to take one of the things in the book and put it into practice.  Having such awareness of the growing hole in the o-zone and the need to give up CFCs in our hairspray (our bangs cried!) did have a lasting impact of me and my relationship to the planet.

One of the first things I did when I started down this path was to re-evaluate my lifestyle and look at places I could make small changes that would have larger impacts.  I thought if I started small, I’d have a better chance of making any changes last. 

Some of the things I have done to increase my relationship with my local landwights include:

·        Building a compost pile, which I have dedicated to Jord.

·        Remove the roll of paper towels from the kitchen and switch to cloth napkins (for everything except animal messes)

·        During the growing season, buy my food from local producers, utilizing the 100 mile diet to increase both the freshness of the food and decrease the transportation costs and use of fuel

·        Joined a CSA to support a local farm and increase my consumption of fresh food

While none of these are really HUGE changes, they have a cumulative effect.  If nothing else, every time I use a cloth napkin instead of a paper towel, it reminds me of WHY I’m doing what I’m doing.  The changes have made me more mindful of the choices I make every day and while I cannot say that I always make the most ecologically sound choice available to me, I am getting better at least in noticing when I don’t.

As for a more pious relationship with nature, that, too began by recognizing that there is no real separation on my path between every day actions and religious ones.  Sometimes I add ceremony to them, but the actions themselves must be made conscious of the consequences.  Others might have made a compost pile, but making a compost pile was a religious experience; dedicating it to Jord consecrated it.  When I added the first offerings to the pile, I used mead to wet it.  Now, every time we add to the pile, we offer to her and cover them with her dirt so that she can return the bodies to the earth. 

The other way I’ve added a reverence for nature to my day is that my office sits on a trail head for a one mile walking path through a 25 acre nature preserve.  It’s not huge, but it’s pristine.  Every day when the weather remotely cooperates, I walk the trail, and each day I try to notice one new thing.  Sometimes it’s the way the lichen grow on the sides of some of the trees, and the cycle of life that nature keeps and that humans try and fight at every turning.  Sometimes it’s an animal, either bird or rodent or deer.  Once it was a black bear.  Today it was bright orange mushrooms that seemed to almost glow.  The beauty of the trail is that it’s not used by many, and I’ve never once seen trash along it.  As I walk it, I feel myself relaxing and connecting to the greater world, and now, when I do visualization in journeys, that trail is what I picture myself walking.