I was really excited about Earth Day 1993. I was seventeen and ready to do something about the environment—clean up some litter, wear an Earth Day t-shirt, and take a stand.

Now, with the awesome wisdom that comes at the broad age of (you do the math), I’ve come to feel that the best way to mark Earth Day is to actually enjoy the earth.

Writing in Orion Magazine a few years ago, educator Richard Louv said:

While public-health experts have traditionally associated environmental health with the absence of toxic pollution, the definition fails to account for an equally valid consideration: how the environment can improve human health. Seen through that doorway, nature isn’t a problem, it’s the solution: environmentalism is essential to our own well-being.

Today’s environmental problems are so abstract, that we can find ourselves more alienated from nature as we think about them. Children, say the activists behind the No Child Left Inside movement, cannot possibly understand Global Warming, when they can barely understand the concept of a world beyond their own horizons.

When we tell children about replacing that light bulb so that polar bears don’t die, it doesn’t compute for them; it may in fact make them withdraw altogether.

What they—and we adults—need instead is a good walk in the woods. Smell last fall’s rotting leaves. Look at migratory birds. Try to re-discover delight in the spring of life.

Then go protest some other day.

[photo credit: me]