Hope Beneath Our Feet_ Restoring Our Place in the Natural World - Martin Keogh [108]
Back from that Paradise—CenterHina, Molokai. All was as perfect as Life gets for us humans. Heat, coolness, mangoes, friendship. The last weekend we hiked to Halawa Falls and I went into the pool at the base of the Falls and swam toward Her, towering, rushing, spraying, over me. To be a part of all this! Sometimes my gratitude is almost more than I can bear. I bear it, often, weeping. As now.
Alice Walker is an American novelist, short-story writer, poet, essayist, and activist. Her most famous novel, The Color Purple, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1983. Alice Walker’s creative vision is rooted in the economic hardship, racial terrorism, and folk wisdom of African American life and culture, particularly in the rural South. Her writing explores multidimensional kinships among women, among men and women, and among humans and animals, and embraces the redemptive power of social, spiritual, and political revolution.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Hope in Challenging Times
To Endure Climate Chaos, Live Dangerously and Cultivate Hope
BRIAN TOKAR
There is enough uncertainty in our lives today to engender a sense of profound unease in even the steadiest of minds. Vast upheavals in climate, economy, and society are upon us. The once moderately predictable patterns of weather, the seasons, heat and cold, moisture and dryness are falling out of balance. If we’re paying close attention, we read almost constantly of heightened natural disasters and people uprooted from their homes and livelihoods. We ponder the latest predictions of climate scientists and often find ourselves aghast at the magnitude of the earthly changes that are likely to come.
While much of the world is already experiencing some of the severely destabilizing consequences of global climate disruption,* our experience in the northern tier of the United States and southern Canada is considerably different. Here, we find ourselves in one of the few places on earth where the near- to medium-term consequences of global warming may actually appear positive. The weather is often more extreme, and storms are less frequent but more intense; still overall warming temperatures appear to bring us some immediate benefits. Where I live, in the northern hills of Vermont, our growing season has lengthened from just over three months to well over five in recent years. Perhaps this accident of circumstance will help us renew our connection to the land, and also encourage others to find ways to do the same. Perhaps this improbable opportunity compels us to help illuminate a journey away from impending catastrophe and, just possibly, toward a more harmonious relationship with the rest of life on this fragile earth.
Here in Vermont, the ethic of simple living has a rich and illustrious history. Living close to the land has long been associated with a high quality of life. Many of my friends and neighbors have an intuitive understanding that living more sustainably doesn’t mean buying lots of fashionable “green” products or having all the latest high-tech “green” gadgets. Rather it means meeting more of our needs at home, sharing with our neighbors, and raising children who know the land even better than we do. It means homegrown tomatoes in the summer, myriad varieties of squash and potatoes, and all manner of home-frozen goods in the winter and, if we’re meat eaters, knowing who raised the cows or lambs or chickens that we depend on for a rich but modest share of our diet.
Are small changes in personal lifeways sufficient to change the world and prevent catastrophe? Of course not, but small changes can add up to wider community- and even society-wide changes if they’re carried out with clarity, intention, and a commitment to realizing a larger whole that’s considerably more than the sum of the parts. Moving forward, from changes at the personal