I grew up in New England, on a bluff overlooking the Connecticut River. We lived in a quiet town with a village green, a local dairy around the corner, and houses lining Main Street that were built in the mid-1700s.
Unlike the deep snows that blanket Vermont in the winter, we lived farther south, in an area known for legendary ice storms. It’s like the weather can’t make up its mind whether to rain or snow, so it rains—then decides to freeze.
When I was in high school, we had the mother of all ice storms. The frozen rain had left almost half an inch of ice on everything from roads and rooftops to the tiniest of twigs. The trees, unable to bear the weight of so much ice, lost branches or were ripped from the ground completely. The branches and felled trees blocked roads and pulled down power lines. We huddled in front of our fireplace, making meals on a camp stove for the better part of a week, without power or heat.
The ice clung stayed for several days. And then one evening, the mercury climbed from below-freezing to 50 degrees in a matter of hours. My dad and I went outdoors to watch the weather change, and because we lived on a hill, we could see what was happening across much of the Connecticut River Valley.
As the thermometer rapidly rose, the tons of ice began falling from the trees and rooftops with a deafening roar. The broken power lines thawed and then lit up the sky with dangerous blue explosions of electricity.
Dad and I watched in wonder as our frozen, ice-caked world thawed. He turned to me and said, “You’ll never forget this night for as long as you live.”
My dad has been gone now for almost two decades, but that evening, his comment, is how I like to remember him. The awe of Mother Nature was unforgettable. But it was also that my dad, a slide-rule-carrying engineer would fearlessly turn to his then-snotty teen-aged daughter and express his amazement and wonder of the world. That’s what I remember most.*
I choose to remember that evening, that moment in time when I think about my dad because it makes me smile. But it was also a profound moment because my father, who was a deeply religious man, was tacitly acknowledging that our connection with nature is also about our relationship with God or the universe or however you define the divine.
The point is that when you stop, observe, and admire the incredible operating system that is nature, how can you be anything but in awe? Nature has the ability to turn a tiny seed into a tree or an ear of corn, just by adding air, water, and sunlight. It keeps the oceans just the right amount of salinity to sustain the lives of fish and other aquatic animals. Our planet provides millions of species of plants, animals, and insects everything they need to survive.
And yet, we get caught up in our lives and often lose touch with nature for long periods of time. Long enough for critical habitat to be turned into parking lots and for rainforests to be cut down. Long enough for our air to become toxic, and for the Colorado River to run empty before it reaches the ocean.
I don’t pretend to have any answers, except for the baby step of reexamining your relationship with the natural world. Stop and listen to the birds, notice how moss looks like a tiny forest, wonder at the tenacity of those plants that grow through the cracks in the sidewalk, and be in awe at how trees know to leaf out in the spring. Be the person who picks up a plastic bag blowing in the wind or who walks to your destination when possible, or who introduces native plants in your yard.
Like that moment in a melting ice storm, it’s the small moments, realizations, and actions that can help in sustaining our planet. Renewing your connection with nature combined with inspired action, multiplied by the billions of people on the planet can make a difference.
