Thoughts on Earth Day

Written by SusanR

An Earth Day poem that, according to legend, many Portuguese people attached to trees in their forests:

Ye who passes by and would raise your hand against me, harken ‘ere you harm me.

I am the heat of your hearth on the cold winter nights, the friendly shade screening you from summer sun, and my fruits are refreshing, quenching your thirst as you journey on.

I am the beam that holds your house, the board of your table, the bed on which you lie, the timber that builds your boat.

I am the handle of your hoe, the door of your homestead, the wood of your cradle, and the shell of your coffin.

I am the bread of kindness and the flower of beauty. 

Ye who pass by, listen to my prayer, harm me not.

~ Farmers Almanac

Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed, if we permit the last virgin forests be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction; if we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence, so that never again will Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste. And so that never again can we have the chance to see ourselves single, separate, vertical and individual in the world, part of the environment of trees and rocks and soil, brother to the other animals, part of the natural world and competent to belong in it.

~ Wallace Stegner

We seek a renewed stirring of life for the earth
We plead that what we are capable of doing is
not always what we ought to do.
We urge that all people now determine
that a wide untrammeled freedom shall remain
to testify that this generation has love for the next.
If we want to succeed in that, we might show, meanwhile,
a little more love for this one, and for each other.

~ Nancy Newhall

… that this generation has love for the next …

15 thoughts on “Thoughts on Earth Day”

    1. I’ve always considered clear-cutting a crime against the environment. Worse in this case is that the EU is buying those pellets … because they destroyed most of their own forests years ago. Earth needs its forests, its lungs. And we humans are destroying them at an alarming rate.

      Reply

      1. Not only that, but think of all the energy needed to fell the trees, transport them to the pellet factory and then powder the trees to dust so they can be formed as somehow cohesive pellets – then the energy required to move them halfway around the world and then liberate CO that needs to be removed when they are burned!

        And… the guy representing the factory is a G*%$# liar.

        Reply

        1. He’s probably a wealthy G*%$# liar. There’d be a lot less profit if he had to pick and choose which trees to cull from the forest. That’s why lumber companies clear-cut. And we do need lumber. But if it’s so damned renewable, as this guy claims, then he’d be harvesting only from tree farms, taking trees grown for that purpose. But we all know trees don’t grow that fast. He probably very generously throws some seed across the clear-cut acreage, “restoring” the forest. Not likely he’ll be around in 44 years to harvest the next crop.

          Reply

... and that's my two cents