Do your part to make ‘shift happen’

Nature – we’re all a part of it.

Spring is a fitting time of year to celebrate Earth Day. Seemingly overnight, green folds burst from moist earth and bare branches. Sunlight streams through rain clouds. Winds whip cold and fierce, then change to a gentle caress. Birds sing love ballads and dive after mates.

The amazingly intricate interconnections of nature are on full display – and we feel a part of it.

Our basic survival, as well as the survival of every other species on earth, depends on the cycles of nature – converting carbon dioxide to oxygen, purifying water, and converting soil and sunlight into the food we eat. It’s like a beautiful tapestry, with each process, each plant, each species, a thread, all woven together into an intricate, living, breathing pattern. But while the fabric of life is tough, if we cut enough strands, the whole thing begins to unravel.

Modern life has hidden away the connections of nature. When I flip on the kitchen light in the morning and start the electric kettle, I don’t see the salmon denied access to the Columbia by giant dams and land deprived of a shot of mineral-rich fertilizer direct from the sea.

I don’t see diverse, oxygen-producing rain forest cleared for plantations as I scoop coffee into my French press. I don’t see the falling level of our aquifer or sewage discharges into the Spokane River as I wash out a cup. All I see is my steaming mug of joe.

But the modern life is showing cracks. Rising prices at the gas pump, drought, a storm that displaces a city, rising sea levels, a friend’s cancer diagnosis. It takes discomfort to wake us up to the consequences of our own actions. Like a toddler with a growing awareness that a fouled diaper is uncomfortable and stinky, we’re beginning to wake up to the fact that we’ve soiled our home and it’s time for a change.

But how do we change a system that seems beyond our control? Any sustained change in behavior is built on a shift in attitude. As the sign on a local church proclaimed last week, “SHIFT HAPPENS.”

The attitude that will shift our culture into a sustainable future is the shaking realization that we are part of nature. It’s both reassuring and humbling to realize that we are simply a thread in the larger tapestry of life, both dependent on and supporting all the other threads.

And the better we understand the interdependencies of nature, the better choices we make for our own health, happiness and survival, which is inexorably linked with the health, happiness and survival of everything else on earth.

So in celebration of Earth Day, here’s my “to do” list for the coming year – my attempt to shift my own attitudes and relearn the interconnections of nature. And unlike many of my other “to do” lists, I’m pretty excited about this one.

•Work less. Less work equals more time.

•Buy less stuff. Pass on the stuff I don’t use. The less I have, the less I have to take care of. The less I have to take care of, the more time I have.

•Get outside. On the streets, with family, with friends, on the trail with my dog, on the golf course, in the garden, on the lake. Doesn’t matter where, just get outside.

•Relocalize. Eat local foods, buy local products, make local friends, support local organizations, design and build local houses, explore local places.

•Above all, pay attention. Your list may be different. Whatever makes your heart glad – the rising sun, the changing seasons, taking a walk, caring for your home, knowing your neighbors – life is happening in you and all around you all the time. Nature isn’t somewhere far away; it’s everything, and you’re a part of it. Every day, you can appreciate the turning of the Earth, the wind in the trees, the song of a bird. And it helps to know that there are many others who not only care but also are doing something to heal their separation from nature. Even if you never meet them, your deep commitment to life adds to theirs in an ever-growing and unstoppable groundswell. Shift happens.

Excuse me, but I’m going outside to take a walk.