On the earth

Which is another way of saying, grounded.

When asked in 2007 what the single most pressing environmental issue was, activist Julia Butterfly Hill replied, "The most pressing environmental issue is actually our disconnected consciousness." This from a woman who spent 738 consecutive days living in a redwood tree to keep it from being cut down. Similarly, towards the end of the recent movie "No Impact Man", author Colin Beavan seems to come to a similar conclusion. The biggest impact of our lives--that is, the least negative impact on the planet--will not come from how vigorously we recycle (Beavan makes the point that all recycling is "down-cycling", and to start with the "reduce" in "reduce, re-use, recycle"). It will come from now active we become in our communities, how connected we are with both the earth and with our fellow human beings.

As I write this I am siting outside, on the earth. I write with a pen on paper. All around me is desert, sun, dry heat, but I sit in the improbable shade of a cottonwood tree. A cool breeze dries the sweat from my face. A trail has led me here, up through sagebrush and prickly pear, showy mountain aster and sock-clinging cheatgrass, jackrabbit and grasshopper, here to a hidden canyon enclave of giant boulders and pools of dry sand and willow and cottonwood. I rest against one of the giant boulders and reflect on the life of one of the most grounded and community-entwined people I have ever known, my granddad.

From where I sit I can look down on Albuquerque, New Mexico. My mom says that when she was a little girl, Granddad's house was the last one on the edge of the desert. Their backyard was arroyos and horned toads leading straight to the Sandia Mountains into whose lap I've climbed. Now the development has reached the foothills, and in every other direction spreads unchecked by geography. The limiting factor is water.

Granddad was aware of--

--hold on. Stop. Breathe. Stay grounded. I myself am aware, sitting here reflecting, of wanting to say too much. Of trying in one breath to connect my granddad's life and awareness of the unsustainable water-based existence of Albuquerque in the desert, with his incredible life as one of the youngest men to work at Sandia National Laboratory on the development of the atomic bomb and his awareness of the civilization-altering implications of that, with his involvement with his family, church, and community, from the long, delightfully unhurried conversations we shared in his living room when I was a "grown-up" to the birthday and Christmas cards we received without fail to the way he kept in touch with old friends near and far right up until the end. And then to somehow connect all that with the redwoods and recycling and living in harmony with other living beings on the earth.

But what I really want to say is that I'll miss him.

I will miss him, and so will my brother and sister, and so will my mom, and so will a lot of people. We will miss him because he was a wise and kind and good person, and he was our granddaddy, our dad, our friend.

It is easy to lose sight, in writing and in life, of why we are here. Of why we do what we do, why we try to learn as much about the earth and about people and about living together on the earth as we can. We do it because of love. Granddad was very loved, and he loved the earth and he loved us very much. Soon his ashes will be back where in some metaphorical sense they started out, on the earth.

I will miss him.