Land Management
Life by a thousand cuts.Hope by a thousand acts.And in this way we will change the world.Dear Ones,
When I was in school I was in the band. In fourth grade I played the trumpet but I quickly switched to the French Horn as soon as that was an option. I was truly terrible at first. I was, honestly, never that good, but I did slowly get better over time. I went to rehearsals and I practiced at home (although I was not terribly diligent about practicing). I got better. I went from painful to be in the same house with me when I practiced scales to (easy) Beethoven.
My historian son once explained the concept of death by a thousand cuts to me. It is the idea that often it is not one giant thrust to the heart that kills a person (or idea or whatever) but rather a multitude of tiny things. Practicing French Horn is that idea in reverse. I was not instantly good at it. It took thousands of times of me picking up the French Horn and playing around with it for me to get better.
Our planet is in peril. Our planet is experiencing the death by a thousand cuts. Some of those cuts are really big ones, like the train derailment in Ohio or the Exxon Valdez oil spill or the extinction of the passenger pigeon. But many of them are smaller cuts like every plastic grocery bag that I used in the 90s, or the many, many miles I’ve driven, or the styrofoam container from my take-out.
But, just like my practicing French Horn, we can get better. It is going to take a thousand cuts to improve things. It is going to take more than that, more like a million or a billion cuts. This is why we are getting together every Sunday, this is why we are hiking around the land, this is why we are engaging in land management. I do not want the kids to know that the planet is in peril. What I want the kids to know is that we are working to fix it, we are all doing our part, everyone has a role in the fixing. That huge concept, the planet is in peril, is the kind of thing that stops you in your tracks and makes you want to curl up in a ball and not do anything. It is as if someone presented Beethoven to me in my first week of horn playing. Not helpful. Instead, let’s tear off some bite sized chunks, some little cuts, some small acts. Fix the bird blind (this makes the pond a better habitat for the ducks because they aren’t scared off by people coming up the trail). Gather sticks from the prairie (this makes piles of brush for animals to nest in or to escape from predators). Pick up trash (this keeps the trash from washing downstream to the whooping crane nesting sites). These are all things we can do, all of us, together. They are little cuts, small acts. But we are doing them.
Life by a thousand cuts.Hope by a thousand acts.And in this way we will change the world.Until next time!
Peace,
Ms. Linda