Leutjen - Love Earth Now The Power of Doing One Thing Every Day

LOVE
EARTH
NOW

The Power of Doing One Thing Every Day

Cheryl Leutjen

Copyright 2018 Cheryl Leutjen.

Published by Mango Publishing Group, a division of Mango Media Inc.

Cover Design: Elina Diaz

Layout & Design: Roberto Nez

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Love Earth Now: The Power of Doing One Thing Every Day

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication number: 2017958984

ISBN: (paperback) 978-1-63353-625-8, (ebook) 978-1-63353-626-5

BISAC category code HOM022000

HOUSE & HOME / Sustainable Living

Printed in the United States of America

Dedicated to David Meyer,

my husband, my soul mate,
and the supervisor of my sanity,

and to Cameron and Chlo,
whose beautiful spirits inspired me to write this book.

Table of Contents

Lunches packed? Check.

Back door locked? Check.

Everybody dressed, fed, conscious? Check, check, check.

Still feel like Ive forgotten something. I survey the kitchen while two arms-crossed teenagers stand at the front door, frowning at their glowing devices. I scan the array of blinking appliances and the dirty dishes in the sink, screaming out for clean waterand then I remember.

I havent done a single blasted thing to atone for my fossil-fuel powered, water-in-a-drought-consuming, plastic trash-generating existence. I grab the car keys before I can give it another soul-sapping thought. But I recycle! I shout with a fist pump on my way out the door, giving the kids but one more reason to roll their eyes.

I cant quite figure out how I sunk to this level of eco-unconsciousness. I remember celebrating the very first Earth Day with crayon-colored posters. My middle school textbooks of the newly-minted environmental era documented birds killed by DDT, river ecologies destroyed by factory wastes, and forests felled by acid rain. My parents were not amused when I taped the light switches in our house to the off position or adjusted the thermostat on my own initiative to save energy. But even then, I sensed I had to do something.

Lacking any better tools, I wailed along with Marvin Gaye at the top of my lungs:

Oh, mercy, mercy me
Ah things aint what they used to be, no no
Radiation underground and in the sky
Animals and birds who live nearby are dying

Oh mercy, mercy me
Oh things aint what they used to be
What about this overcrowded land
How much more abuse from man can she stand?

I think I also believed that more sophisticated solutions would appear, like the mountaintop emerging through the fog, as I got older. I went on to study interdisciplinary ecology, environmental geology, and environmental law, ever searching for the class or the career that would help me do my part to stem the tide of ecocide. No matter how many degrees I amassed or how many environmental compliance clients I advised, that mountaintop remained shrouded.

I just kept on doing what I knew how to do. I bought a manual transmission, 50 mpg car long before the hybrids, shopped at farmers markets before it was cool, took empty bottles to the recycling center before curbside pickup, and carried reusable shopping bags before it was the norm.

It all felt as effective as putting Band-Aids on gushing head wounds. More and more rain forests clear cut, denuding land that once consumed carbon dioxide and produced precious oxygen. More and more oil spilled on land and sea, decimating sea life, mangroves, and coral reefs. More and more ice sheets and glaciers melted, sinking entire islands in the rising seas.

No hope in sight, I succumbed to a myriad of ready distractions, from sitcoms to shoe sales to sangria. Do anything to tune out the anguish of witnessing the escalating assault on our beautiful planet home.

Then came the day that I found myself driving my car to the store four blocks away because I was too lazy to carry a couple bags of groceries up the hill. Sending banana peels out in black plastic bags because I didnt want to deal with the mess of composting. Buying winter blueberries flown in from who-knows-where without a thought for the fossil fuel burned just to get them to me. Ordering fast-food kids meals, with a free prize, without a thought for the underpaid slaves working in faraway chemical-spewing plants, because it kept the toddlers quiet.

Sometimes Id catch a glimpse of that determined student staring back at me in the mirror. I know shed punch the sellout me in the faceif only she werent such a pacifist. I wanted to convince her that I had tried. That the hurdles became insurmountable, that the issues are so complicated, theres nothing any one person can do to make a difference. That if I opened my heart, if I started piling on those many bricks of sorrow, the weight of all the tragedies of the world would surely crush me. And then what good would I be to anyone?

Most of all, I wanted to tell her that its not my fault. Blame the advertisers hell-bent on selling us more and more junk. Condemn the economists for convincing us that ever-increasing production matters more than the well-being of the natural world. Fault the fast-food industry for foisting more and cheaper hamburgers on us, even if it means clear cutting rain forests for cheap cattle-grazing lands. Point the finger at the Big Ag companies that strong-arm farmers into using more and more chemicals that poison our land and water. Curse all the politicians who have greased the way for all of this to happen.

Id tell her all of thatif I believed that it would make either of us feel better. Truth is, I had to admit that I am the willing partner of every one of them. No one from the Department of Water & Power showed up at my house and forced me to turn on the air conditioning. No one from the Starbucks Coffee Company compelled me to buy that iced tea served in a plastic cup. No one from the ExxonMobil Corporation hijacked me into driving a mile to the store.

As I struggled to straitjacket my own heart, because its storehouse of sorrow would surely destroy me if unleashed, the wisdom of the world kept seeking me out, like tendrils of sunshine piercing a dense leaf canopy.

It lured me into a friends garden sanitarium one day. A wizened therapist, the gnarled branches of a pomegranate tree exploding in crimson, summoned me. I crawled into the womb of exhausted branches sighing down to earth. As I leaned back into the trunk, a sob escaped, as my grief and guilt poured out like water from a shattered pitcher.

Once emptied, I fell silent. Then I heard it, the entire tree humming like a high voltage power line. Looking up, I discovered the source of this resonance, a swarm of bees savoring the exploding sweetness. Whereas I once would have been terrified to be so near their multitude, their bustling nearness delighted me. Those busy creatures, whose industry makes possible a good chunk of the human food supply, are dying in droves; some say that when they are gone, were gone. A lone hummingbird dropped in and hovered over my head, the whirring of his wings an octave lower than that of the bees. Surrounded by creatures whose work is to extract and share the sweetness Nature offers, I felt blessed. I felt forgiven.