This year was almost the year for us to go to Disneyworld.
My wife Carla has a professional conference in Orlando later this year, and so we had a little debate about whether it would be worthwhile for our family to piggy-back with mama and go to the land of mouse.
Around this same time, I read “The Man Who Planted Trees” by Jim Robbins. It’s the book I’ve discussed in my last two blog posts. If you couldn’t tell, I was more than a little inspired by the story of David Milarch and in small part this led to our decision to forgo taking a trip to Disneyworld for at least another year.
What!
Thank You, Jim Robbins! Your book has just messed up my children’s lifelong dream of going to Disneyworld!
Reading the Robbins book, I really wanted to take a trip to visit some of our local forests and have the opportunity to enjoy nature with our kids. Moreover, given the expense of going to Disneyworld, we thought it would be a much better investment for us to take a summer trip to the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
Yeah, forests and trees have been on my mind lately.
This past Monday, I had a dentist appointment. After the appointment, I was waiting to be picked up by Carla and I couldn’t help but notice the trees around my dentist office. There was a huge tree next to a nearby school. I was standing on the sidewalk and a passing lady looked at me with a puzzled expression. She looked at me and then looked in the direction I was facing.
“What are you looking at?”
“Just looking at the tree,” I responded.
The young lady looked at me as if I was slightly unhinged.
“Yeah, I’m looking at that tree that’s probably been there for the last 50+ years, as if it just appeared out of thin air.”
This is all to say that it’s easy for us to busily go about our business, immersed in our agendas and plans without really taking a look at the world around us. We truly see the forest without seeing the trees. In this particular instance, I must have seen that tree countless times, but it took me reading a book, for me to really look at this tree and see that it was wonderful looking old fellow.
Sometimes it’s good to slow down and take the air out of my tires, if only because this forces me to take a look around. Many times, I’m pushing and trying to force things in my life, instead of seeing those things God is trying to do right here and now. There are wonders in my backyard. I don’t need to go several hundred miles away to visit some artificial fantasyland, when there is real beauty right here.
In keeping with this sentiment, I wanted to share from an article by Nancy Sleeth of Sojourners entitled “40 Ways to Live Simply for 40 Days of Lent”. Sleeth gives some great exercises for Lent.
For example:
3. Spend 5 minutes in nature where you can only see things that are God-made, not man-made.
6. Purchase seeds for a vegetable garden, patio garden, or indoor herb garden.
14. Turn table scraps into nutrient-rich soil by starting a compost pile. Live in the city? Investigate a worm composter or solar cone.
21. Plant a tree. Trees clean the air, provide shade, and beautify the landscape.
For the purpose of this post, I’ve just included those Lenten exercises focusing specifically around the environment. I would definitely recommend going over Sleeth’s other ideas as well.
The Sleeth post reminds me how I need simplicity to bring me back to the present. I need simplicity to cut away the crap and let me see what God is doing in the here and now. I need simplicity to understand how the small choices I make each day can make a difference.
One of the challenges for me is to translate this desire for simplicity and these moments of inspiration for my girls.
In keeping with this desire to pay more attention to slow down and pay attention to the world around me, I went to our local library and brought home a bagful of books. One of the books the girls enjoyed the most was Tell Me Tree: All About Trees for Kids by Gail Gibbons. This book is a great introductory primer for small children on the world of trees. I can honestly say it’s great, because when I tried reading this book to my girls, they were actually attentive and very engaged (a rare enough occurence which makes me take notice). It also led into a broader discussion on the trees around our neighborhood.
One of the great things about the Gibbons book is that it offers some suggestions for making your own tree identification book. It seems like a great and fun idea for the kids. A tree book would be especially appropriate for my girls. Johanna would probably enjoy drawing pictures of the different trees. Both girls would embrace the idea of pressing leaves and making both leaf and bark rubbings. Keeping in mind that my girls are litttle hoarders and with a little encouragement they would probably bring every rock and twig they found into the house.
Unfortunately, with New England deep in winter, our tree identification book might need to wait. Leaf rubbings can be difficult when you don’t have leaves. One the other hand, maybe we can just start off with the conifers.
The above song is ”C is for Conifers” by They Might Be Giants. Note all of the names of the different types of conifers in the song. Sadly there is no song entitled “D is for Deciduous”.
We have a conservation area down the street from our house — it’s like a mile loop all the way around. If you want to come by sometime you can see LOTS of trees.
Sounds cool! Have you written about it on squibix or taken pictures there?
RE: “a little debate about whether it would be worthwhile for our family to piggy-back with mama and go to the land of mouse…. more than a little inspired by the story of David Milarch and in small part this led to our decision to forgo taking a trip to Disneyworld for at least another year.”
While there may be many reasons why you should delay your trip to Disney World, lack of trees need not be one of them. Walt Disney was a huge fan of trees and Disney planners, builders and horticulturists have done a remarkable job preserving and restoring a large percentage of the total landscape. Make sure you go to the Animal Kingdom where a world-class ecosystem restoration includes thousands of trees produced and planted in record time surrounding the iconic central feature of the theme park – the Tree of Life.
Sustainable Land Development Initiative
http://www.triplepundit.com/2010/10/sustainable-land-development/
Dear Terry:
Thanks again for a wonderful comment. I didn’t know that about Disney.
It sounds like the Animal Kingdom portion is a definite must-see, with its restored ecosystem. I would love to hear your thoughts on the best examples of restoration. Those people and places who are trying to restore small parts of the local ecosystem deserve shout-outs and deserve to be recognized. Even with all of the damage we’ve done, they show us what is possible, when we take small steps.
Please understand as well, I’m not totally slamming Disney. Someday, I imagine our girls will eventually get their trip to the land of Mouse. Nevertheless, in the here and now, I don’t have any great sense of urgency. Disneyworld will be there for a long time, whereas I cannot say that the same for the forests. At a time in their life, when I still have some influence over their lives, and what they are exposed to, I want them to see things of natural beauty. Anyway, I know you understand all of these things far better than me, and so I apologize for getting preachy.
I haven’t always been a good father with regard to exposing my girls to nature. Certainly I’m not as good as even my own father, who took me on many thankless camping trips. They were thankless because during these trips I largely complained about the long drives and the lack of flush toilets.
It’s far too easy as a father to simply let my girls watch TV or go to the mall or Chuck E. Cheese. It really is the path of least resistance. I would like to do better and taking them out to see the natural world. I want and hope to do better. Part of this post is in that spirit.
Blessings,
Darren
Darren,
In the summer of 1995, as a co-founder and the first (and only) land developer past-president of the non-profit Florida Native Plant Society, I was asked to write an article for the Society’s quarterly publication – The Palmetto. Following are excerpts from that article, “the coming restorative economy”:
Outrunning our Headlights
While there continues to be debate over various scientific, economic, and political details of the plan, two over-riding pressures are now combining to forge a new global consensus for environmental restoration:
1) At the present rate of consumption, the Earth does not have the resource capacity to continue to sustain our human population. The end of the current world for humankind is now in sight.
2) The United States, winner of the Cold war and the leading role model for the rest of the world, has a capitalistic system that is now approaching insolvency…
The existing world economic order is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and will not be capable of sustaining itself much longer by exploiting dwindling world supplies of natural resources and by deficit government spending.
That is the bad news.
Paradigm Shift – The good news is that out of these huge problems will come the pressure to replace our old system with new political and business structures that will help provide for a sustainable global economy. The will to act is all that is missing, for the scientific knowledge to technologically operate our planet in a sustainable manner is now available to all via satellite-relayed, instant around-the-world information.
The key component of our new found knowledge of sustainability is the philosophy of “doing more with less”, and the best sustainable models for us to study are the earth’s natural systems. Only by emulating the efficiency of nature can we sustain our species at a desirable standard of living. At long last…the restoration economy will replace the competitiveness of a scarce resource mindset with the cooperativeness of a limitless, sustainable resource paradigm…
…Restoration implies a responsibility to change existing business practices to more closely mimic the complex and efficient models of sustainable natural systems:
- New accounting standards, which consider the long-term costs of environmental degradation, must be implemented;
- Creative financial tools, such as mitigation banking, must be allowed to evolve in order to vent development pressure and to raise revenue for large-scale restoration projects;
– Sustainable profit centers, such as eco-tourism, must be developed for local economies as an alternative to natural resource mining;
- Organically produced, local cash crops must be developed to replace chemically dependent monocultures in order to preserve biodiversity.
Take the High Ground
…Earth restoration will not only restore our natural systems – it will restore our faith in ourselves and our hope for the future. David Brower, the first executive director of the Sierra Club and pre-eminent wilderness preservationist, now asserts…that the world desperately needs CPR – Conservation, Preservation, and Restoration – in order to achieve the ultimate goal in life – Celebration.
Terry Mock
Sustainable Land Development Initiative
Biodiversity is the Living Foundation for Sustainable Development
http://www.triplepundit.com/2010/10/biodiversity-living-foundation-sustainable-development/
Great accurate story. I would like to talk/thank the person who wrote this. Best story to date in my opinion.
Dear Mr. Milarch:
First of all, I just want to thank you for all you’ve done.
I’m so glad to hear your positive feedback about the blog article.
I think there are a lot of people like me, who have had a passive concern for the forests and the environment more generally. It’s not that we don’t care, it’s just that we find often worry about other things closer to home. So, when we hear or read about what you are doing, it blows us away and it pushes us to think outside of our narrow world.
I realize you have not done these things just for the trees, you’ve done them for all of us.
Blessings to You, Your Family and Archangel!
Your Friend,
Darren