Giving back for nature

As a recovering planner, I’m more than a little familiar with the expression “no amount  of planning will ever replace dumb luck.” At the moment, I believe I’m living in the midst of that expression. Yesterday Harry the beagle joined our household. He and SiSi the rescue lab cross to whom I belong need to get used to each other and Harry needs to get integrated into our pattern of doing things. As this is being typed, SiSi and Harry are napping next to each other on my ottoman. I’m now short of places to stretch out my legs and put my feet but I’m pleased to make that sacrifice if it results in a happy, well-adjusted household. Harry is often apprehensive about what he fears may come next. As he settles in, his nervousness is diminishing. That’s good news. We’ll keep our fingers crossed that such adjustments continue to ease everyone’s life. Spending more time outside and less time on social media or scrolling headlines seems to be helping lessen my sense of perpetual doom and gloom. Spending lots of time telling the dogs how good they are works well too.

Another effort that I’ve found helps a lot is making contributions to a handful or so of environmental organizations. The good folks at givemn.org have made it convenient to donate to many of the organizations I supported last year, minus a few edits. So, come this Thanksgiving, I’ll be grateful for folks who are doing a good to great job protecting the environment on which we all depend, despite the growing influence of regulatory capture of too many environmental protection agencies. Please give some thought, and some money, to one or more of the following in addition to any others on your giving list:

• Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy
• Water Legacy
• Conservation Minnesota
• Minnesota Environmental Partnership
• American Rivers
• Honor the Earth
• Trout Unlimited Minnesota Council, Twin Cities Chapter, etc.

Birch Lake, northern Minnesota

Photo by J. Harrington

Aldo Leopold, in the “Foreward” to his wonderful A Sand County Almanac, has written:

“There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot.” 

I am rediscovering just how much I’m a member of those who cannot live without wild things. Actually, aren’t we all among those who cannot live without: forests of trees and roiling oceans to provide the air we breathe every minute; raindrops and rivers to provide water we need daily; land which grows the plants we eat and the critters we eat that eat plants that grow from the land; all driven by sunlight for which we don’t have to pay a cent.

The Peace of Wild Things

Written and read by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

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