Earth as Home

Picture a child home from school, sitting in front of a television, or a playstation, or a computer connected to the internet, closing the curtains
in the afternoon to lessen the glair on the screen.

Imagine this child doing this for a decade or longer - 15 years, through most of the years the time of their youth.

Now try to view this child watching a snake on a bank, then seeing a rabbit run, hidden before by its stillness, and stop, as the snake strikes. The rabbit escapes, running in front of the children over to the lakeside.

In your mind's eye see the child walking into the fragrance of a Golden Current in bloom, or hearing the chatter and song of birds soaring in and out of greenyellow cottonwood leaves just opening.

Imagine the child walk on a railed boardwalk, out over a lake - with 5 pound carp cruising on the sides in their spring spawn, capturing the child's attention. Imagine the child looking out across this lake to see a mature bald eagle on a log, just 100 yards beyond, with Longs Peak in the background, and the impace this all has on the child's mind.


Emerson said 'I am a lover of uncontrolled and immortal beauty.'


Uncontrolled beauty like the edge of timberline, witnessing the mystery of dusk settling over a wilderness valley, or a powerful electrical storm with thunder echoing again and again from the peak faces, the mystery of uncontrolled beauty like a grizzly track in the dust, or five clawmarks in the spruce trunk, nearly 8 feet high, with fresh sap dripping down the bark to the forest floor, immortal like the thousands of beautify things to witness and appreciate, for those who are watching, for those who expect to see beauty.

Is it enough to just witness beauty? Activism is sharing what we love, teaching children to be comfortable in wild nature, enabling them to see the earth as home.

Is there a greatest honor than to walk beside them, to also stand in awe at the fragrance of the Golden Currant, at the interaction between the snake and the rabbit, at the eagle on the log in front of Long's Peak, sharing love of uncontrolled and immortal wild nature.

None that I know of. From great loves comes great abundance.