O Mother, my Mother
This is my love letter to the Earth, in solidarity with the peaceful Earth Defenders across the globe who are fighting for a better #FossilFree future.
As I sit writing this, your breath is strong today. The clouds which peppered the sky this morning have now blown by and the sun is beating down. The lush spring meadow ripples as you sing to her, silvery tops of the wild oats dance and bend. Wildflower throughout, yellows, purples and the showy red of poppies find their space. All around the insects and birds hurry about, gorging on the new growth. Everything is alive and buzzing.
Entrancing, replenishing and bewitching, your songs fill my heart with joy and have saved my soul more than once. In my darkest times, it is in and within you where I find solace and peace.
I am in awe of you. I think about how intimately folded dimensions create mass and matter. That all of what I see once lived within stars, which exploded billions of years ago, releasing their energy and the components of life across the cosmos. Our shapes and forms forged by fire and luck, distilled into a small planet circling a small sun, just in the right place at the right time. My mind is blown.
From our galactic beginnings life has flourished. A chemical brew, perhaps in the depths of an ocean of water, non-living organic compounds became RNA became DNA — abiogenesis. In water, something we utterly take for granted, turning on the tap to brush our teeth, yet a miracle compound itself; two hydrogen and one oxygen, molecules linked together. A unique solvent, strong enough to carve valleys and dissolve rock, yet gentle enough to wash a babies face. Essential for life, making up most of our bodies, circulating at the small scale and the large.
Humble beginnings but since that start, the Earth, our Mother provided. She calmed and cooled, allowing the footholds and crevices to shape pathways for different forms to try their luck. Ebbs and flows, success and failures, transforming barren rocks to rich diversity over 3.5billion years, deep time for deep change. A now I sit and watch the wind blow the grass across a meadow, the songs of life quick and urgent in the spring.
Life is astonishingly rich and intricate. We have revelled in its abundance. Our ancestors painted its apex species in their cave dwellings, where the firelight would have made their work flicker with movement. Not that long ago, great herds of species roamed freely, ancient woodlands and jungles spanned continents and the oceans teemed.
We have gorged on this and grown strong, civilised the ‘natives’ and tamed the wild. As we stuffed ourselves, the wildlands were burnt and hacked back into ever tighter compartments. Our wonder turned to lust, richness to riches, community wealth to tightly held numbers in bank accounts for the few. Generations of humans quietly commodified, like frogs boiled slowly. Nature, without a voice or a bank account, fades and wanes.
But, I am not the only one in rapture. Before me and around me, millions have basked in her joys. Her songs manifested in poems and paintings, simple pleasures and bold defence. Every gardener or green space Friend, every budding naturalist bug-hunting, those who swim in the rivers and seas, those who write odes to the beauty around us all, we all feel deeply our Mother’s love and her thrilling embrace.
Our individual love turns collective and thus we hold her power in our hearts. For the longest time, the destruction happened, extractive and wasteful. Our species seemingly benefited, but only in some places, equity is a fight not yet won. And whilst I do not dislike progress, the greatest design happens within parameters. Our parameters now are living boundaries and we can grow them right again.
Tick tock, tick tock. Time is slipping away we are told, we must change rapidly, transform to a brave new world. These changes seem scary for some, fearful of their loss of an easy life, fearful of the loss of their money. Our attention is mobbed and arrested, hijacked into beings of buying. We are more than this, much, much more. Each and every one of us has something unique, our DNA. Coded with clever, we can change the world anew.
Short terms losses will be long term gains. Maybe the loss of package flights now seems disarming in a global world, filled with Instagram travel to exotic destinations. Already though, the next chapters of air flight are being written, powered by fuels and means not destructive to our skies and our lungs. Likewise, buildings and cities are transforming to, nature seeping back into and across the grey, sharing the space and benefiting everyone. Design within parameters forces better results.
The limits we must work towards are clear and well defined, thousands of scientists have been working on understanding them for my entire life. Together with us, those who are just entranced by the goddess Mother, our voices sing in harmony. We are the Earth defending itself.
Above me the crows circle, squawking and fighting mid-air. A myriad of other life forms go about their business, trying to survive and thrive. Nature and the songs of living abound. A jumping spider comes to play, its back legs wave in the air one at a time as it does the rounds. My finger obstacle sends in leaping away from the computer, not where it needs to be when I’m typing furiously. And I am furious, wild as the wind.
I don’t blame the masses for living their lives, taught as we are to be complicit and to follow. In the everyday tasks overwhelming our existence, we try our best to get through the days, keeping the children alive and happy, getting to work and doing what is needed. The covid crisis, a small bite from Nature’s teeth, did provide some space for folks to observe and rest in her bounty as the spring unfolded. For some, this has been revealing, for others it hardened the tasks of daily life and brought tragedy to so many.
Whilst some will shout from the sidelines, criticising the efforts of protesters and climate action, I can not. Attuned to her from my early life, I can feel and see the changes that have occurred. My childhood garden, backed off a main road, was filled with beings of wonder; smooth slowworms, slippery frogs, the odd adder and many hedgehogs. Fast forward forty odd years and my children had none of this in their locale, but we hadn’t moved far. It had just vanished. The bug spattered windscreens from countryside drives disappeared, an annoyance gone but a striking example of the great vanishing again. Wild weather, temperature anomalies, seasonal changes and lost migrations, our expansion and brilliance has come at a cost. To me, I can feel it in my heart and soul. I cannot ignore the signs and I therefore have to stand and be judged by my children in future. I must stand for the protection of our Mother, I am her and she is me. She is us all, whether we like it or not, whether we care or not.
Her losses makes me ever keener to revel in what’s left and I still find great joy. The bright, fresh greens of newly opened spring leaves. A single wildflower of a type that I have never seen before, purple starred, tiny and delicate, I bend to gently move its face towards me and steal a better look. Humble small joys, better than any pointless purchase of a new dress could ever achieve now. I have broken free from that thinking and I am much happier for it. The wealth surrounds me and us, it is free and ours. We can grow it right again, make it strong for future generations, ensuring they too can discover your delights.
Planting trees, growing vegetables and flowers, these are all my ambitions now. Having lugged about my travelling forest for more than a decade, I am ready to release them into the wild, a permanent home, watch them grow strong and last longer than me. As we learn more about the incredible intricacies that habitats provide, the way plants communicate and support each other, how insects have evolved amazing partnerships with their hosts, my wonder grows.
Thank you Mother for giving me this joy. I solemnly promise to improve you where I can, to work with you to sustain this joy and to fight for your protection. I know I am not alone, so together with others we will rise and give you a voice. Your songs are our heartbeats, our power and our lives. In death, I will give my body back to you, to reuse its elements and grow life anew. Until then, I am yours and will enjoy this life, revelling in your wonder, your variety and continue to learn from you always.
