Earth

An offering for the black walnut tree in my back yard.

I can’t think of a moment in this life when I didn’t love the earth. I was born into a family of earth lovers. We lived in an old farmhouse in a rural town with a creek and a barn, three tall pine trees on one side of the house, and a towering horse chestnut in the front. When it was in bloom that tree hummed with so many bees it sounded like a symphony—no, more like a factory of joy, a constant rhythm I felt when I walked by it in bare feet, which I always had in the summer. We were children of the land with farmer’s tans and burrs in our hair. I worked on a strawberry farm from age nine to 15, and it is still one of the best jobs I ever had.

There was a poplar tree next to the garage and kitchen that took care of us. Its trunk was so wide my sisters and I couldn’t encircle it with our arms but we did with our hearts. When the tree began to die my father wouldn’t cut it down. Of course it was a danger to the house. We all knew that. But he wouldn't cut it because it still had a few leaves. It finally fell on its own, on the day wild fires began in Canada, hours before the smoke hit us. It simply lay down in the middle of the night, missing the house, the garage, and the lilac bushes.

"I told you," I said to anyone who would listen. "I told you it wasn’t going to hurt us." I knew it was a guardian. They all are.

I am sick of people cutting down trees, and people who love me are tired of hearing about it. They say, “Oh my GOD! We know how you feel!” Or, “They’re planting new ones!” which means nothing to me, because in my mind that’s like saying, I’m sorry we took out your grandmother, but look! Your neighbor had a new baby! I know this will sound crazy to some people. That’s okay. I come from a long line of untamed minds, and crazy is often less harmful than mainstream group thought.

Another forest is burning.

The grief is so thick for me around this, I can touch it. It has a grip on my heart. I can hear some ghosts of my ancestors saying, everything dies, and I think, I know. I know. Plastic won’t, though. That stuff lives forever! And how is it that we traded the immense, splendid multi-faceted beauty of nature, for that? Plastic. Plastic in the seas, plastic in the dirt, plastic in our cells.

In the backyard here, there lives a black walnut tree with thick branches that sprout up from the trunk like the many arms of a Hindu goddess. Once a friend of mine came over and when she saw it she said it looked like the ones in St. Francis’s garden. I have spent so much time next to that tree. There is a place by its roots where you can nestle in. When my mother was dying, it cradled my heart. When my father lost his driver’s license, when I fought with my family, any time I felt despair, I leaned into it and said, help me please. But mostly I have simply sat, its bark against my back, looking up at the pattern its black branches make against a deep blue starry sky.

I used to consider myself a tree and water and animal rights activist. I made people uncomfortable at parties, sent out urgent messages about fracking. When the kids were little, I never used a plastic sandwich bag because I couldn’t bear the thought of all of those plastic things choking sea creatures. This was twenty years ago. Do you know how hard it was to be the mom who didn’t like plastic? The one who used reusable glass bottles--clink, clink, clink, in the car everywhere? To be the mother who hated going to Target because it filled her with despair (still does!), or the one standing at the Lego store in New York City, surrounded by children and adults screaming with joy, scowling at the sign on the wall that says, “FUN FACT! There are enough Legos to go the whole way around the world 8 times!!!!” and thinking, There goes the living ocean. Thanks a lot, LEGOS! Thanks for killing all the whales!

Maybe you do. And if so, I love you.

Maybe you don’t, because you had other things you were dealing with or thinking about. That’s fine.

All I can say is that underneath the rage was a profound sorrow at the loss of the natural world, for all the beings that are harmed by shiny, convenient things most of which we don’t need.

Now all I really want to do is sit by a tree and pour love into its trunk and be unbelievably grateful that it is standing there, living on sunlight, reaching for the stars while staying rooted in the ground.

Or make a pollinator garden as beautiful as my aunt’s, that hums with bees and color and joy like the chestnut tree that used to stand in front of our house.

Recently, I heard an eighty-year old medicine woman say that one simple thing everyone can do about climate change is go out every day and tell the earth that you love her. Do all the other things you feel called to do—write letters, call congress, feed the pollinators, tend the soil, of course!—but whatever you do, do not skip this step: Put your hand on the ground and say I love you. Take off your shoes and say “thank you” with your feet. Thank you. Thank you for supporting me, Every. Single. Day. Of this life.

Sit quietly by the water with no motor or buzzing things and listen to her music. Listen deeper.

Sing her a soft song.

Let it be a prayer.

The trees, the water, the leaves and the honeybees know who you are.

They are praying, too.

Thank you for reading!

If you care about the earth like I do, there are so many amazing writers on Substack discussing climate solutions and tending the planet in all kinds of ways. Here are a few I recommend:

Rob Lewis ‘s The Climate According to Life, (check out his post on proposed legislation to open the National Forests to logging in the name of protecting them from forest fires, and why you might want to write to your senators about it tomorrow.)

Didi Pershouse’s The Wisdom Underground

Susan J Tweit’s Earthbound

Robin Motzer’s Wildlands,

Julie Gabrielli’s Homecoming

Jillian Barnet It Takes a Village

Jill Swenson Memory, Time, History

I know I am missing many others, so if you have recommendations, please put them in the comments!

A few other things:

I am beyond excited to be invited to be a featured writer and facilitator in Laura Lentz’s upcoming Father’s Day workshop, About Our Fathers, taking place on June 12th and 13th. Please join us if you’d like! Laura’s workshops are a wonderful place to generate content and coax the stories living inside of you out and onto the page. (go here for more info.)

In the workshop we’ll be exploring fathers not just as people who raised us but also the men they were outside the family, and our complex relationships with all of it. I’ll be talking about working with Dad on his book, Chasing Steam in Mexico, among other things.

Speaking of Dad’s book, the first review is out in Railroad History magazine! Thank you Mike Matejka!

If you are looking for a gift for Father’s Day, and your father likes steam engines, adventure travel, history, or black and white photos, you can check out Dad’s book here: Frankbarryphotography.com

or buy it directly here:

As always, thank you for being here. I love writing to you. I’ll be back in two weeks with another essay or a drawing of a cat.

Still deciding. Maybe both!