Did you do anything special to celebrate Earth Day this year? Did you take a walk in a park, or another outdoor space? Or go for a bike ride, do some skateboarding, or take part in some other outdoor activity that you enjoy?
Perhaps you took part in a virtual event, or watched a nature show on television? There was plenty to read, as well. One interesting article included the “Fifty things we’ve learned about the Earth since the first Earth Day”.(1)
There was also a semi-interactive piece on “50 Years of Earth Day: What’s Better Today, and What’s Worse”.(2) Whatever your preferences, the possibilities for marking Earth Day are as endless as our human imagination.
Or did you forget all about Earth Day this year, because of our current global pandemic situation? It’s easy, in these uncertain times, to focus our attention more inwards; to concern ourselves primarily with protecting ourselves and our loves ones from this coronavirus.
We’ve seen this play out in the news, for some obscure reason, with some folks hoarding toilet paper. For many living in lock-down or quarantine situations, it simply wasn’t possible to get outside on Earth Day this year.
That’s not the case in my area, not yet at any rate. Not only were my husband and I able to get outside today, neither of us was “working” for the day.
In my case, that’s because I’ve been away from a career that I adored – in bioethics – since the end of 2018; when I was diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) as a result of my rare disease. I’m still busy, though, acting as a Patient Partner on a few projects – to the limits imposed on me by the MCI.
As for my husband, several months ago he reserved today as a vacation day; for Earth Day. Our plan was to pick up garbage for a few hours, from along a particular stretch of road through a forest near our home. It’s a popular cycling route, with paved cycling lanes along each side of the road.
We ride there every time we take our bikes out, as do so many others in our area. Unfortunately, it seems to have become a frequent dumping ground for small items of construction debris; used cans of paint, wood scraps, a variety of strange-looking metal scraps, and more.
It’s difficult for me to imagine this, but there must be some DIY home renovators in the area who pack up the trunks of their cars with garbage and then drive to this forest specifically to dump it there.
Rather than complaining about it every time we go for a bike ride, we decided to do something about it. In preparation, my sweetheart bought a large trailer for his bike.
Our plan for today had been to bike over to this forest road today, pick up some of the garbage, and then bike it home to properly dispose of it. We’d do at least one garbage hauling trip, maybe even two. There’s plenty of garbage there, that’s for sure!
Is that what we did? Nope. Our plan was scuttled by the weather. We had snow, high winds, and a temperature well below freezing here Montreal today. It was too cold and miserable for biking, and the high winds would likely have tipped my husband’s bike trailer over… which would have knocked him off his bike.
We’ll still go ahead with our plan, but on a nicer day; maybe on the twenty-second day of another month. We still had a day off, so I thought that – instead of going out on our bikes to clean up a forest – we could do the same kind of thing on foot. The forest that’s intersected by that cycling route extends almost to our home.
There are walking trails through the forest at our end, and some litter has been dropped along them. I decided to bring a small backpack with some water to drink, and to toss in a couple of garbage bags because the litter would be wet from the snow.
I pulled the backpack out of my closet, and put a water bottle on the kitchen counter. I put my little rare disease awareness-raising buddy, Max (a tiny plush bunny), into the pocket of my jacket – along with my phone.
Max likes to pose for photos for Instagram; some folks with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) and other chronic pain conditions or rare diseases follow his adventures with me 😉
Then I got distracted. My rare disease has resulted in a mild cognitive impairment (MCI), which can make it challenging to follow through on a train of thought. More often than not, my train of thought gets derailed.
That’s what happened today. My husband mentioned that he was going to bring the binoculars that he uses for bird-watching on our walk, so I went to get mine. And then I completely forgot about my plan to bring a bottle of water and some garbage bags to pick up litter.
One interesting facet of my MCI is that once a thought is gone, it doesn’t come back. It’s not as though I temporarily forget about something, it’s as though the thought never occurred – unless I told someone about it. To say that this is extremely disconcerting would be an understatement.
Why, you’re probably wondering at this point, did I post about something that I didn’t do? We weren’t able to complete our plan to bike garbage out from a forest road, and then I completely forgot about Plan B, to pick up litter while walking in the forest. I didn’t even bring my backpack!
I’m writing this to share with you a surprise gift from Mother Nature to us, on Earth Day this year. While we were out walking in the forest today, for almost two hours, we saw some members of a local herd of wild white-tailed deer.
They live in this forest, in which hunting is prohibited because it borders on residential areas. We sometimes see one or two deer during our bike rides, but hadn’t yet seen any of them during any of our walks near home. With an entire forest at their disposition, we didn’t think the deer would venture close to human habitation. We were wrong.
We spotted one pair of deer while walking on a small side trail; they ran across a meadow right in front of us. We’d stopped to see whether there was any way to make our way around a large pond that had formed over the path, so our splashing must have disturbed them. We were thrilled – what a fantastic surprise!
Then as we neared the end of the walking path, within sight of several houses, we saw another pair of deer. This time, they looked up at us and then continued grazing. We were able to get our binoculars up, and to watch them for almost fifteen minutes before they wandered further into the woods.
These are moments that we’ll treasure; watching a pair of deer, just a ten-minute walk from our home. This ended up being the best Earth Day, ever. And that was the point of this post; sometimes it doesn’t matter if your plans fall through.
That’s been one of the over-arching lessons of my patient journey so far; to enjoy ‘moments’, and not to get upset if my rare disease prevents me from completing plans I’d made.
On that note, thanks so much for stopping by. I wish you good health and good luck, more now than ever. Stay safe, and take care of yourself. And take the time to savour little moments of nature which bring you joy.
Happy Earth Day.
References
(1) Smithsonian Magazine. Fifty things we’ve learned about the Earth since the first Earth Day. 22 Apr 2020. Online:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/fifty-things-weve-learned-about-earth-first-earth-day-180974716/
(2) Brad Plumer and John Schwartz [Graphics by Nadja Popovich; Illustrations by Mathilde Aubier]. “50 Years of Earth Day: What’s Better Today, and What’s Worse”. New York Times. 21 Apr 2020. Online:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/earth-day-history.html