Earth Day
in times of emergency….. If not for the pandemic and the quarantine currently
in force we might be out in the country somewhere celebrating the arrival of
spring. Well…. perhaps if not for the rains.
Instead of an Easter season trip
this year what comes is a series of memories of walking a patch of land that
alternates areas of flowering clover with balding places giving over to
dandelions, chickweeds and some other wilds I can’t even guess the name of.
Then notes I made from a trip we took to Viladrau jog my memory back to flowers
seen—dandelions (again) in seed and flowering; nipplewort, violets, something
like coltsfoot. Some tiny white flowers.
And then that beautiful scrubland with
Spanish broom and what I think is gorse. Of the trees in Viladrau—holm oak,
cork oak, innumerable firs, pines, birch, hazel. Animals? Not so many, aside
from different birds like magpies, sparrows, blackbirds there were the
insects—3 bee types, ants, spider…
As people
have been saying (including Greta Thunberg and earth systems scientist Johann
Rockström in today’s The Guardian),
after this emergency we are/will be in a changed world owing to such things as global warming, the
related loss of Earth’s polar ice caps, the destruction of the Amazon and other
rainforests.
This crisis is surmountable but it will take work and patience and
far better decision making to learn from our past errors. Below, two links I
believe to be of interest.
