It is magnificent outside this morning. I would be out, had expected myself to be out, but am feeling compelled, first, to write this piece. Later, when, of course it is way hot, again, I will go out. To a backyard picnic, in a huge backyard, ringed with maples, birches, oaks, and pines. Centered by one venerable sugar maple (?–I can’t remember, although that would be lovely. I will check when I get there)
I’ve spent more than a few days largely lolling within the shade of my halfway-down shades and blinds. Three ceiling fans chugging, and as the heat rises further, a tower fan facing me, and me alone! This method has worked so far. It helps that my house is surrounded by trees, well settled within my postage stamp size property, such that all shade serves the house, and predominates on the north, west, and south sides. The east, east side I make full use of my blinds and shades, and, as it is morning sun, it is now and it is nice.
So why am I subjecting you to how I manage my space in the weather? Perhaps to urge you, urge you to grow, and use the shade of trees, trees, trees. To notice when you are out where trees and where trees are not. If you can have a voice in the addition of trees where they are not, speak up! They breathe with and for us, they cool us, they delight, calm, and sensitize us. And they are being lost due to our actions, our inaction. Consider them. Consider the lives that (lives we mostly don’t notice or barely notice or swat away) they enable. These lives, too, enable life — as we can, should, sometimes do, sometimes don’t–sustain the chain that sustains.
This post is thematically redundant, but redundant to embed its importance.
I haven’t else to say.
Swathes of woodland, forests, riverbanks, hillsides, wetlands, plains, mountainfeet, oceancoasts, urban streetsides are imperiled by more than inconsideration, more than inattention, by “sustainers” who expect to be sustained at cost to that to which a blind-eye or a malevolent-eye is turned.
No one benefits.
whereIwonder&why 