Earth Day, part two
Earth Day, established in 1970, draws nearly a billion people from across the world to celebratory events annually. I remember when this annual observance first registered with me as a fourth grader. Earth Day delighted the ten-year-old me. It appealed to my sense of goodness, my love of nature, my hunger for celebration.
Today though, one day set aside out of 365 (366 this year) to acknowledge both what I receive and what I owe the Earth feels far from adequate. Similarly, calling myself a steward and my sense of duty to place stewardship feels…off.
I am fed, watered, and oxygenated by the earth. I am sheltered and clothed by the earth. I am healed by the earth. We all are. This isn’t an expression of my faith or my sense of spirituality or even hyperbolic language stretching reality—this is fact. When I consider this, and then consider that the earth’s primacy in our collective lives has been whittled down to one token day a year where we show up and plant a tree or a packet of wildflower seeds, paint our faces like some soon-to-be-extinct, charismatic megafauna, buy a stainless steel straw, and think of ourselves as good…I am disappointed in myself, in us.
When I consider that to steward means to oversee the affairs of the household of another, I am discouraged by the self-othering language we use and how it fails to convey the relationships at the very foundation of our existence. I am discouraged that our collective sense of calling as named in our land ethics continues to position us above and not amongst life.
What language points toward something that feels both truer and more hopeful? What actions might that language inspire?
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When I search the lexicon for a linguistic reorientation, the concept of ecosystem engineer immediately offers itself. A 1994 Oikos journal article, “Organisms as Ecosystem Engineers” defines the concept:
Ecosystem engineers are organisms that directly or indirectly modulate the availability of resources to other species, by causing physical state changes in biotic or abiotic materials. In so doing they modify, maintain and create habitats. Autogenic engineers (e.g. corals, or trees) change the environment via their own physical structures (i.e. their living and dead tissues). Allogenic engineers (e.g. woodpeckers, beavers) change the environment by transforming living or non-living materials from one physical state to another, via mechanical or other means…Organisms act as engineers when they modulate the supply of a resource or resources other than themselves.
It goes on to note that effects are greatest where “species with large per capita impacts, living at high densities, over large areas for a long time, [give] rise to structures that persist for millennia and that modulate many resource flows.” Humans, of course, do this. Given our density, coverage, and persistence, we now have an epoch named for the alterations we’ve made to the earth—the Anthropocene.
The ecosystem engineer’s task is to meet their needs in a way that benefits the individual and is beneficial in its effects on the whole in both the short and long term. Any action that is extractive or otherwise misaligned will eventually play out as environmental decline, ultimately threatening the existence of the engineer by way of degrading the engineered landscape. The health of the individual is synonymous with the health of the environment, and the long game is important. It’s an orientation that leaves no room for a “this earth is not my home” mentality.
Humans have a poor track record as ecosystem engineers. But it is possible—and demonstrated across the animal kingdom, including among humans—to modulate the supply of resources to the extent of shaping the very land, as engineers do, without living beyond the land’s capacity.
When I consider myself a part of the ecosystem in which I live, I can see clearly that my wellness is limited by the wellness of my place. And further that the healthier my place is, the more capacity for wellness I have. When I begin to consider that my health extends beyond the confines of my body, a whole new sense of urgency arises, a whole new kind of obligation. The work of restoration becomes both activism and the work of self care.
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“The single most effective method of managing noxious weeds is to prevent establishment. The success of this method will depend on public education on ecology of weeds, their spread, and their impacts to biodiversity and wildlife habitat,” reads BI Parks vegetative management plan.
What these management plans hint at but don’t quite spell out is that the bridge from education to action then must be crossed by that public. The public must be empowered to be a part of the solution—success of this method will depend on public education and engagement. Being able to walk around accurately identifying invasive weeds is not a solution. Pulling them is, and feeling not only permission to engage in public lands in beneficial ways, but obligation. And not just on Earth Day. And not just in sanctioned work parties. But every day, on public and private lands, by all of us. And not just pulling invasive weeds, but planting native and naturalized plants in their place, and picking up trash, and thinning overcrowded forests increasingly threatened by wildfire.
I don’t know what to make of my brain. I can’t deny that humans have a capacity that is unparalleled in the rest of life’s expressions. I don’t know how to reconcile this with my longing to remember my nature. That said, I think it’s fair to surmise that our brains have evolved faster than our instinct to use them judiciously, but one lesson from my Christian childhood I’ve decided to keep is that to whom much is given, from him will much be required. The capacity of our brains comes with enormous ramifications for the earth, and now we must meet that enormity with an equally outsized response as ecosystem engineers.
I feel compelled to get to work. I feel compelled to replace language like stewardship in an effort to remember that my fate is not held in different hands than that of the rest of life. My job on earth is not to manage it for God. I imagine a steward and an ecosystem engineer would behave differently in the same environment—one aspires to please an absentee landlord and eventually matriculate to heaven, one calls earth home. I feel compelled to find regular and meaningful ways to improve my home place, and that same compulsion extends beyond the little square of property I legally own to really any place in which I find myself, in which I want to be well.
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It’s a long game we’re developing here and the amount of work to be done is daunting. But it’s also necessary, and rewarding, and possible. The property and the woods beyond them in which we will soon be sanctioned “park stewards” need us in these roles. It’s been a delight to come to understand that the earth is not better off without us—especially not with the havoc we’ve wreaked—it needs us.
With the complete understanding the work will never be done, it’s been powerful to watch the land around our home recover good health. It will take more than the small handful of people currently caring for Gazzam Lake to see similar improvements there, but it’s been a solace to drop to my knees in the dirt—whether on the slope of our home hillside, or trailside in Gazzam Lake, or roadside between here and there—and commit some small but deliberate act of restorative care. It’s become a go to in the face of despair, in the grips of anxiety about the state of the world.
Alex has spent the last few weeks clearing the ravine of deadfall and limbing up its trees as part of a neighborhood-wide effort at improving our fire safety. While he’s labored at that, I’ve pruned leggy huckleberries in the understory too shaded to have a shot at fruiting. I’ve begun pulling this year’s round of invasive blackberry from the perimeter of our meadow—an annual, seasonal-long endeavor. I’ve sown spotted beebalm on the sunny hillock cupping the firepit. I’ve sown a packet of wildflower seeds Alex picked up at an Earth Day event into a sparse patch in the meadow, laughing.
