Attending an Earth Day clean-up project in Aurora on Saturday, April 20, 2024 brought back some memories from my childhood:
The elementary school I attended in Eugene had a number of after school programs for kids. I chose to take two, one for ecology and another for cooking.
There I learned camping and outdoor survival and basic cooking skills. I mention this because, if I learned nothing else from these two experiences, I learned that I could not only care for myself by learning how to prepare meals, I learned that something as immense and as awesome as a planet needs care too. I also learned that the two were intimately and inextricably connected. What I ate directly affected the rest of the world. What I did for my health could affect the health of the planet. A relatively new concept for kids to wrap their head around in 1970.
And on the days leading up to April 22nd, 1970, teachers in Oregon and on the West Coast both during regular class time and during our after-school activities, were directing our attention to the inaugural celebration of Earth Day.
We made posters. We wrote book reports about conservation efforts. We watched 8 mm movies by National Geographic narrated by Jacque Cousteau. We learned about the ocean, about the forests and about air pollution. Students shared their experiences about camping and fishing. When we saw footage of the Gulf Oil spill I told the class about how my mother had to cut the oil globs out of my hair when we were in Santa Barbara.
Suddenly I felt relevant– a child of the universe. Not from the standpoint of feeling important. But that to me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the trees I witnessed cut down on our farm in Illinois, the oil spill in Santa Barbara, the trash I saw on the roadway and the exhaust that came from my Dad’s 1966 Mustang, these things all had consequences and humans, like me, could determine the extent to which we allowed this. Decisions mattered.