Hope

So here I am writing again finally. Eowyn has turned four months old and I realized that the time has slipped away so easily. It is good that my daughter is so wonderful, as during my time away from the blog so many awful things have happened. An uncontrolled oil spill is ruining multiple fragile ecosystems in the Gulf of Mexico and the Yellowstone Bison are being harrassed in the name of big business cattle interests. Everywhere you look in the news ( which I try not to do too often) there are tales of woe politically, environmentally, and socially. It is enough to make one wonder why I bothered to have a child at all with the world the way it is today. It seems that we as a race are determined to self destruct and take everything we can with us.
Yet there is still hope. It can be found out in the woods and fields. To celebrate Eowyn's four month old birthday we hiked up Cobble Mountain for the first time. It was just the two of us and three very happy dogs. Everywhere I looked signs of renewal where sprouting. From the Painted Trilliums and Trout Lillies, to the leaves unfurling of off branches long bare, the whole world seemed to be waking up. Eowyn laughed and burbled and touched all the leaves and branches she could grab, totally enamored with the world around her. We stopped and smelled the flowers as the dogs frolicked and harassed the local squirrels and chipmunks. She thought that was just spectacular! Eowyn's obvious and complete love for the world around her gave me hope.
And that, my friends, is one of the most important things we have to do for ourselves and the future. We must encourage the next generation to keep that instinctive love of the world. And we have to help them figure out how to save it. But if our children continue to grow up and lose that wonder for the natural, if they fall into the trap we have fallen into with profit, materialism, and consumerism as the idols we worship then who knows what the future holds for our species and all the others that share this planet. So I am dedicating my next few blogs to ideas on how we can nurture that instinctive love and wonder of nature in our children as they integrate into mainstream society. I will brainstorm how we can better our own lives so that we give a good example to our children as they grow. Because it is there. All we need to save the world is there in the ecstatic smile of a baby as she touches her first flower.