Not long ago I read a lovely and important column by climate advice columnist Michael J. Coren entitled Why You Should Tell Your Children About Vanishing Fireflies. Mr. Coren pointed out that youngsters only know the world as it is today. They often do not realize how different it may have been even twenty years ago. Their baseline for judging the health of the planet is in the here and now. Accordingly they all too often have no idea what they may be missing. They are unaware of the losses of creatures and seasonal weather patterns that have changed over time. He suggests that we must open the eyes of the younger generations to what has been but no longer is. The idea is to begin to plan for an even better ecosystem than now exists by making critical changes in our human habits. 

The summer was particularly unbearable where I live. We had incredibly long stretches of one hundred degree and higher days beginning in late June. There was so little rain that lawns began to die and plants wilted within an hour of being watered. The ground was parched and the air was oppressive in ways that it had never been when I was young. Records were set day after day and even our electric power was threatened by the massive use of air conditioning to keep us all cool. Our summers are hotter and longer than I ever remember them being. 

Even people with swimming pools said that the water was sometimes too hot to enter. The chemical balance went out of whack leaving unsafe conditions. The decking burned feet that were not protected by shoes. Nature was speaking to us and some of us still were unwilling to listen.

It’s always been hot in the summer where I live, but not this hot. We were able to survive in homes and cars that were not air conditioned through many summers. We played outside and hydrated ourselves with garden hoses. Back then there were butterflies everywhere and in the evenings when the sun went down the night was lit up by hundreds of fireflies. There were bees humming all over my mother’s flowers and birds serenading us with their songs. 

Now I can honestly say that most people would die from today’s heat if they did not have some method for cooling themselves. I haven’t seen fireflies in a very long time and while we have an occasional butterfly or bee they are more of a surprise than something that we once took for granted. There is concrete overtaking so many of the forests of trees that used to be everywhere. We appear to be taking down nature without thought, making way for our human creations that are spelling the doom of flora and fauna that once filled our world with delight. 

I suspect that I would enjoy being like my Grandma Minnie Bell who served as my teacher about nature. She knew the names of every bird in the sky and even spoke to them with calls that mimicked their chirps. She respected them and made efforts to remember their needs whenever she designed a garden or cleared land for some purpose. She lived her life in Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma when they were wild and green. She had witnessed the damage done by over eager farmers who plowed up the land without thoughts of what the destruction of native grasses might do to the soil and the creatures who lived on it. She understood the importance of conserving resources and paying attention to messages that nature was sending to humans. She told us all about our duties to cherish our earth because we all depend on it for our very lives. 

The more I witness, the more I understand my impact on the environment. I want to be a steward like Grandma was. She worked hard and purposefully to make her footprint on the land as small and forgiving as possible. She lived to be eighty years old without an air conditioner even though she always resided in places with hot summer temperatures. She used every scrap of paper, cloth, food that she had, so as not to waste. She recycled clothing into quilts, table scraps into compost, flour sacks into dresses. She used glass jars and containers that she could clean and reuse instead of plastic. She created natural  potions to scare away pesky bugs rather than spreading toxic chemicals. She was frugal because she understood how her relationship with the earth should be. 

I wish my children and grandchildren might have met Grandma Minnie Bell. I think that Mr. Coren also would have enjoyed all of her stories about they ways of her childhood and how she learned to live in harmony with nature rather than tearing it apart. Her love of the land was almost spiritual and left a lifelong impression on me. I find myself measuring the damage we humans have done with her baseline of a world that was still untouched by our sometimes destructive ways.

I remember proudly wearing the dresses that Grandma sewed by hand from the sacks of flour that she used to make her biscuits and pies. I smile at the thought of the warmth I felt on cold nights when I lay under the quilts that might have once been parts of shirts or dresses or trousers. I wish for her spirit to inspire all of us to do better for she often cautioned me about what might happen if we forgot to cherish the blessings of nature. Sometimes I fear that we have done far to much damage and don’t seem inclined to stop any time soon. We need to keep thinking about her stories or then passing them along. The children will learn from her wisdom and then maybe the earth will begin to heal.