EARTH DAY Every Day
EARTH DAY Every Day
EARTH DAY’S COMING. Why not celebrate this month? Let’s show gratitude that our parks and campgrounds have dumpsters and trash cans all around. Heck, let’s even keep trash bags in the car.
LET’S BECOME JANITORS OF THE WILDS WHEREVER WE GO, READY WITH BAGS IN HAND.
i used to get nauseous driving on Rt 20 and Rt 128 in Northern California, not so much from the long winding curves, but from the piles of trash strewn all along the roads, everywhere there was a pull-off, in the ditches, and down steep ravines. It can be the same on coastal trails much of the time. So i bring along some friends, a small family of orphaned juvenile sharks. In fact, they’re my front-seat agents on patrol for trash. i have to watch the road…
TrashSharks are starvin’ for garbage. They would never hurt a living soul! Truth be told, there’s everything to love, and nothing to fear, with these sharks. Their teeth are made for trash.
And after foraging the trails, they snack all the way back to the car, then pile our sacks at the dumpster, for a deep dive and long meal. At times, we’ve even gotten jumbo bags from forest service volunteers who clean the bins on the cliffs. My little shark pod, young as they are, have no illusions that it’s “somebody else’s job to pick all that up”, and no expectation that “somebody else will pick it up”. It’s ugly, it doesn’t belong there, and the shark kids are hungry, so that’s enough incentive for us all.
Bagging up trash is a small yet significant action on behalf of our environment, Earth who shelters and nourishes us. As the old song goes, “All i’m asking for is a little respect, just a little bit… R-E-S-P-E-C-T.”
FOR NATURE IS THE ULTIMATE SOURCE OF ALL LIFE. Earth Day’s here now. Every day.
__________________________________________________________________________
When i was 8 years old, i won a writing contest for an article urging others not to drop trash, and to care enough to discard their tissues and gum wrappers properly, not casually on the ground in the halls and the yard. i had long forgotten about that article, until realizing slowly over these last few years, that this cleanup habit is seriously important to me! I’ve come to call it “Ugly Garbage Sadhana”. i’ve learned a few Indian words from practicing yoga my whole life. “Sadhana” is the Sanskrit word for spiritual practice, which comes to us in myriad forms. Anything we do with devotion for the greater good can be sadhana. We do it because our hearts say yes…and it challenges, confronts, and deeply rewards us. “Seva” is another Sanskrit word, denoting a loving service we bring forth in the world. The Ugly Garbage Sadhana began as seva when i could no longer bear the sight and weight of our abuse on Mother Earth everywhere i went. i could feel her trembling, wanting me to know trash hurts. i am an empath, as many people are. We are hyper-sensitive to anything in Nature being hurt or injured by careless, selfish ways. We feel the pain of others in our own bodies, and we can no longer separate ourselves from the pain of the Earth reacting to our abuse. In this simple fact holds power and a timely call to action. It can be Earth Day every day. We don’t have to make a mess. Instead we can serve the healing of the whole by cleaning up.