now I see the secret to making the best person

It takes two families to cover childcare so Dan and I can come to the woods today. We’re here to visit the big pines, the old growth ponderosa that have been around for centuries. They’ve quietly risen while aspen forests sprouted like highrise tenements and then fell; while the Civil War was fought and the Wright brothers launched failed iterations of the future airplane; while generations of animals came and went, feeding the trees with their bones, blood, hair, excrement.

We follow a trail that seems to lead straight up to the sky. My ears fill with the sounds of my own quick breaths, the metronome of my heart tapping a brisk, ascending tune. The wind whooshes through the tops of the big pines in a world above us. Secrets lurk everywhere.

The soil is exposed: moist and fragrant. At 8000 feet the snow has retreated from all but the north faces in these unseasonably warm February days. We quickly shed jackets. Summer smells abound: human sweat, warm soil, dry bark. Thick hatches of winged insects launch from the brown oak leaves. Grass spears up towards the sun like a snake to a flute. I’m aware that winter is alive and well in parts of the U.S. but it is said that in our changing climate, extended drought will be the Southwest’s particular cross to bear.

I once went to an outdoor talk devoted to the ponderosa pine tree. I learned that a mature tree exhales 100 gallons of water a day; that ponderosa roots can stretch 100 feet laterally; that a tree only 30 inches in diameter can be old enough to have shared breath with a human who walked through the forest 200 years ago. Ponderosa forests are sculpted by fire, the young upstarts cleared out periodically, making room for the elders to become habitats unto themselves.

I can’t separate my love of this land from my grief about this changing world. I keep trying to find the angle from which to gracefully accept what climate change will, well, change. I struggle to find the bright side, the message, the shiny pearl in the rough oyster. In the Southwest, water wakes up this dry, dusty land, sloshing life into every living thing.

A Buddhist teacher said that the gift of this particular time is that we can wake up (as in: become present) to our environmental losses instead of say, blundering along unawares. I think I’d rather blunder along a fat mountain creek, in the monsoon-fed wildflowers, in my own August rain-drenched garden, knowing these gifts will be available to the next generation.

We head back down the muddy trail, through the bare oaks, their skeleton limbs snagging our clothes. Ravens circle overhead.

I think of my children, with whom we’ll reunite soon, and I realize that to love this land means to not give up on it. The more we feel the earth’s blessings, the more protective we become. It is a privilege to be a human walking on this earth. How do you receive the earth’s blessings? Maybe you grow food in your yard, or befriend trees, feed backyard birds, or use your feet as transportation. Maybe you spend time with a stretch of river, turn a compost pile, receive the quiet calm of a thicket of woods. Maybe you remember from time to time, that you too, are of this precious earth.

Now I see the secret of making the best person: it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth. – Walt Whitman

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