The eyes of a dragonfly
Everything is important. Not just important but imperative. Not just imperative but urgent. Urgent! The whole wide world is drowning or drying, declining or dying. Like monarchs. Monarchs! Our imperial butterfly is endangered. It was, in fact, worthy of red-listing two years ago, but here in the U.S. it didn’t make the cut. Who knew there was a waiting list for the last stop before extinction? Evidently, it’s standing room only at the Imperiled Show, and some critters are waiting outside in the rain because others get priority seating.
You feel it, too, don’t you?
Part of me wants to link arms and take to the streets, wave messages on homemade signs, shout until my voice is gone. There are groups to join, activists to support, passionistas designing livable futures whose patterns I can follow. But, talk about unsustainable. One day of that approach is about all I’ve got in me.
Another part of me wants to keep my head down, to burrow so deeply as to mute the shrieking sounds of ecosystems in free-fall. If I tell myself it will be okay, and I believe it will be okay, it will be okay. If I leave the blinds folded down long enough, they will disburden themselves of dust, slough it off into a manageable little windrow that I can sweep up and discard. Spit spot!
Sadly, there’s no Mary Poppins option here, no practical magic, no spoonful of sugar. It’s all important, and prioritizing is mostly pointless.
What, then? What can I do to make a difference while simultaneously acknowledging that I’ll never be able to do enough? Paradoxically - and I’ll dispense with the perky nanny references after this, I promise – admitting that the lift is too heavy for one person is a very good place to start.
I can’t do everything. We can’t do everything. But we can do some things, and those things can be more meaningful than giving up plastic straws. You come here often, right? So, you’re familiar with the menu. Limit driving. Eat wisely. Invest judiciously. Buy less. Buy less! And, even if you think of yourself as apolitical, get busy with local, state, and federal politics or the organizations that do that work. Also, a recommendation from the chef: Don’t order everything at once. Select one or two items. Chew slowly, and give yourself time to digest. If you try to consume too much too soon, the results will be, shall we say, wretched.
Of all the choices you have at your disposal only one is non-negotiable and that, friends, is spending time in communion with what you’re trying to save. You can’t nurture what you don’t know. Slow down. We’re courting, not speed dating. Find the heart connections. Cheer for the robin, its sturdy legs expertly engineered for running, as it makes an all-out sprint across the road. Marvel at a colony of ants displaced by a sudden wash of water, each one saving the future by carrying an egg in its jaws. And, oh! Those clouds! Do you see how they remind you of mountains you loved as a child, of the pastel, pastoral landscape on your grandmother’s wall, of drifting sand, of God?
When the world is too much with you, think of the dragonfly who arrived on that impossibly hot day. Remember how she bounced and toyed, the archetypal autogyro, before landing on a faded daylily, and how, without thinking, you reached out to greet her as she paused on that blossomless, hollow stem. You expected her to launch when you came near. Instead, she stepped onto the tarmac of your finger and rode confidently as you raised your hand. Remember those precious seconds when your eyes met hers, and you saw each other? Saw each other! That was when you realized her eyes were emerald green.
~Elizabeth
Ah but there actually is a magic bullet! And it is something every single person and family (and institution and organization and municipality) can do. Unfortunately our “leaders” seem oblivious and only focus on energy. We can save our planet with FOOD. We can store all of our current carbon emissions in the ground but only if we are all willing to stop eating food that is drenched in synthetic pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers that kill the soil biota that make soil healthy enough to store 5-12 tons of carbon per acre per year (rather than the paltry 1/4 or 1/2 of a ton that is poised to be rewarded by industrial scaled feed systems rather than human scaled food systems.) What do I mean? I mean we have to give up eating crops produced conventionally (with neonics that kill pollinators, synthetic nitrogen that alone costs 1.75 tons of carbon/acre/yr, herbicides like glyphosate which affect every bodily process (read Toxic Legacy), and thousands of pesticides linked to reproductive and endocrine disorders, cancers, depression, and even damage to the pre-frontal cortex of our children’s brains- none of which are permitted in organic ag. And we have to give up eating CAFO meats (animals grown in horrific confinement and fed conventional corn and soy raised as described) and instead eat meats from animals raised outdoors on rotational pasture (preferably organic) and given organic feed. We can do this. But we all have to do it. Like Pogo said in a little comic strip 60 years ago: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Spectacular....I look for monarchs every day..I almost over-celebrate when I see one.. Thank you God for bee balm, phlox, and butterfly bushes that give me a faint glimmer of hope...Right on, Betsy!!