Pacing

Today I did something I've never done before.

I said that I had done enough, this week, for people and the planet.

Not enough in the sense we all hope for, not enough in the sense of the ONE CRITICAL THING that changes the world and makes everything OK again, but enough in the sense of having done all that my body and my family could tolerate, for now.

After accepting on Tuesday the chance to give part of a keynote address at a sustainable energy conference, writing the speech on Thursday, and giving it on Friday, and then co-leading two workshops at the same conference on Saturday, today I had meant to act on my new found determination to bring my concern about climate change before the media and decision makers.

I learned on Thursday - during a pause in the speech-writing – that Laura Bush will be arriving Monday in the town next door to ours, to make a speech of her own about the importance of protecting our national parks.

And so on Sunday I was going to plan HOW TO MAKE A STATEMENT about the urgency of climate change.

I got a lot of coaching from one of my neighbors, now a mostly mild mannered mother and consultant, but veteran of protests from Rocky Flats to New York City.

I learned her opinion that the odds of asking a Laura Bush a question were slim at best – "why would they want to open themselves up to potentially embarrassing questions when they don't have to?"

Which is too bad, because I had a good question in mind:

"Mrs. Bush, you have spoken here and in other places about your love for your daughters, your love of the national parks, and your concern for the well being of children. I share your same loves and concerns. They have lead me to pledge to do what I can to convince national leaders to enact climate policy consistent with what the latest science tells us is needed to avoid the worst consequences of climate change. Would your family join me in that pledge?"

In my neighbor's opinion standing anywhere near her motorcade with a sign of any sort I'd likely be asked to set my sign down.

Which was also too bad because I had such a good one in mind.

"Mrs. Bush, Loving our National Parks Means Loving the Climate. 350ppm!"

The strategy with the best chance of success made sense once my friend educated me a little bit more. I should gather a group together, and find a place to stand somewhere in the town, but not in the way of the official route. We should bring our signs, and make them big. We should let the press know that thirty minutes before Mrs. Bush's remarks, "local activists will urge Mrs. Bush to act out of her commitment to our national parks by encouraging the administration to take specific actions to avoid the worst consequences of climate change."

It all made sense and was possible in theory.

But when I found myself being short with our seven-year old (who we'd left with friends during all the speech-making and workshop leading) for the second and then for the third time as I sat at the computer and tried to draft a press release and figure out where to fax it, it suddenly became just too much.

Laura Bush won't face my questions or signs tomorrow, though I imagine some of my fellow Vermonters will make their voices heard.

Giving up, slowing down, taking Sunday as a day of rest, didn't come easily. But in this strain that I feel everyday, between living life at a pace that seems to be fast enough to, maybe, get in front of the march to disaster, and living life at a pace that is in itself an answer to that march to disaster, I feel pretty sure that today, for me, and my family, I made the right choice.

I weeded the beans and planted some basil. I helped clean the bunny's cage and played a board game. It took a few hours of turmoil and regret, and (I'll admit it) a little resentment about the obligations of parenthood, but by the end of the afternoon, when the sun came out and the soil was moist with an inch of badly needed rain, I could remember again that doing this work is important, but that it is a job for the long-haul, and that, no matter how urgent it all feels, we need to pace ourselves.

Falling in Love with a Piece of the World

We picked up our older daughter from a week at camp this afternoon.

In the backseat she pummeled her younger sister for news of home. How are Tango and Ishult (horses)? How are Nikky and Ave (parakeets)? How's Dusky (hen) and Chickadee (rooster)?

And then one that surprised me - How's the maple?

How's the maple? Before asking about friends or community news?

But it shouldn't have surprised me that a tree - that particular tree – figured so prominently in her questions of home. Ever since their Dad helped them hang a rope swing in the maple at the bottom of the hill, our girls and most of their friends have been busy falling in love with that maple.

They've invented games with complicated rules played in its branches (going down has the right of way over going up). They've given it a nickname (Mape). Our younger daughter notices every maple of the same species on our drives around town and points each one out with the breathless excitement of one who has discovered treasure. They both notice how the tree changes from week to week (a rotten spot at the bottom; some bright pink leaves that don't seem 'quite right') and both speculate about its past (did the last children who played in it, when it was a much smaller tree, the ones who built a platform high in its branches, discover the same route to the top?)

The neighborhood kids who go to school have taken to swinging in it while they wait for the bus. The kids who do their learning at home have taken (when they can negotiate it) to carrying their books down to work underneath its shade.

Younger sister's report was highly detailed and focused mostly on the fact that a branch had broken (not anybody's fault) but that the rope swing and the games were mostly unaffected by the change in architecture. It makes me sad, though, she said.

There was silence in the back seat for a while, and then: Yeah, me too, it makes me sad too.

E. O. Wilson has said that we will only save what we love.

Luckily for all of us, this love lives close to surface. Twelve feet of rope and sufficient unscheduled time to touch, clamber, and explore is more than enough to call it forth.

In this time of ecological crisis, giving ourselves – child and adult alike – that time might be the most important action we can take.

We might not even need the rope.

Remember

I write this note to myself as much as to you. Remember this (even when there is work to do):

Go outside. Notice the sky. Feel the rocks and the soil and the crackling leaves beneath your feet.

In going to Seeds For The Future I traveled 3000 miles and spent thirty-days, in part to help myself remember to pay attention to the world I am so desperate to protect for my children.

One morning I sat perfectly still for as long as a fish-stalking heron did, which was a long, long time (during which my nose itched and my mind wandered). I don't know about the heron's mind, but she was so still she could have been a stump or a rock in the early morning mist. She struck, she swallowed, she went still again.

Another day, I sat where the river meets the sea for as long as it took for the tide to go out and come back in again, and I didn't do anything else but sit. I made no plans, not one refinement to project strategy or fund-raising plan.

It felt sweet. And rare. I realized how little of my time in this beautiful world do I spend tasting its sweetness. I vowed, on the airplane coming home, to change that.

There have been a few moments. One walk in the maples. One afternoon sifting compost onto the cleared beds of the garden. One wide-awake, eye-widening look at the full-moon rising over the hay-field (a glimpse I would have missed forever, had my ten-year not dragged me by the hand, away from the computer to the porch and the cold night air and the glowing orange disc in the sky).

Most days, I feel the opposite of that heron - motion punctuated by little bits of stillness rather than the other way around.

I don't long to spend my life in retreat, in silence and quiet. I don't want to spend these coming years of influence on the climate of my children's future on a mountaintop or a monastery. I want to be in motion, in motion that matters. But I'm trying to be a little more heron-like, trying to find the stillness before the swift motion.

Today - when a paragraph just wouldn't come out right, when there didn't seem to be any clear, honest words, just extremes of sentimentality and dullness, I turned off the computer, put on my sweater, and walked up the hill.

The pasture-edge smelled of hickory nuts; I heard a distant raven; I saw one golden apple tree,
on fire in the late afternoon sun.