Wildness for the Weary

We’ve been watching “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea” documentary by Ken Burns. It was kind of a random selection and kind of a balm since our road trip to the Southwest to camp under the stars, last week, was cancelled, due to COVID.

Wildness is a word that came up a lot in the first episode. Wildness. Wildness. I loved it. It stirred something in me. It reminded me of my own journey, which started forever ago as a young student in a new program, Environmental Studies, at a big university in a city shrouded in pollution. A university that didn’t celebrate Earth Day for the first couple of years I was there. I reflected how this time in urbanity sparked a long period when I spent more time outdoors than indoors, when wildness was home.

Hearing this word repeatedly rekindled my own deep yearning for wildness. A sensation made acute from sheltering in place in a small urban apartment. How long have I spent staring out the window, waiting for a warm ray to land on my face from what has felt like a permanently overcast sky? As if its soft touch is the acknowledgement I’m waiting on, asking for. As if its presence says, ‘I see you. Everything will be okay.’

As we live outside our planetary capacity, as ecosystems get ruthlessly plundered for profit, as our power structures continue to screw over most and especially the most vulnerable, and as we wrestle with how the inept COVID response foreshadows our lack of preparation for climate change, nothing feels okay.

And yet, we must make it so. On the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, I feel strangely like I did at my very first one on that college campus so many years ago: Cooped up. Starved for beauty. Pensive. Pissed. Cranky. Grateful. Ready to get to work.

“Most people are on the world, not in it.” -John Muir

I dedicate this Earth Day to the climate justice activists. You are my heroes.