After Trump was elected and especially after he was inaugurated, I spent several months working madly on a range of issues, focusing on refugees, immigrants, health care and pipelines (indigenous rights and climate). I felt super motivated and like I was part of a rising tidal wave of opposition to his anti-human (except for the 1%) and anti-all other living things agenda. Some of my friends and just folks I know in the progressive community were shell-shocked, depressed and didn’t know what to do. I told them I didn’t know how long I could keep it up (we were just three months into what’s supposed to be a four-year term), but for the time being I was good.
Then sometime in May I hit a wall. I felt very tired and needed to sleep more than usual. I wasn’t exactly depressed; it was more a feeling of being at loose ends and seeing the enormity of the task at hand and feeling lost in it all.
At the same time, I started noticing the life around me more – or rather, the life around me got in my face. On a hike, a scarlet tanager sat on a branch a few feet away and serenaded us (pictured above, not a photo I took because I preferred just looking with my eyes). Then on two bird hikes in a row, many beautiful and not that common (at least to me) birds flew all around me or perched for minutes at a time on branches where we got a perfect view of them: orioles, indigo buntings, bluebirds, green herons, black and white warblers, rose-breasted grosbeaks and many more. Then while on my bike yesterday I saw a great blue heron fly overhead, its neck extended and its legs? And two weeks in a row, I spotted a big, orangey-eared coyote, once crossing a road and the other time in a field five miles away. I’d never seen one in Connecticut before.
But I didn’t just observe these creatures – I felt like I was part of nature, just one species among many. I wasn’t out to kill them or deprive them of food or habitat. I was just sharing Earth with them. It was a very peaceful and even hopeful feeling.
I hope I can hold onto it to keep me going forward in the work ahead.
Click here for the interview I did with the lead plaintiff in the Juliana v Trump case of 21 children and youth suing the U.S. government over climate change.
And click here for the latest nonviolent direct action by Beyond Extreme Energy as five people disrupted the Senate hearing on the nominations of two Trumpistas to join the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which currently lacks a quorum. We want to keep it that way as long as possible, in order to minimize the destruction to communities and climate that FERC enables.
Then sometime in May I hit a wall. I felt very tired and needed to sleep more than usual. I wasn’t exactly depressed; it was more a feeling of being at loose ends and seeing the enormity of the task at hand and feeling lost in it all.
At the same time, I started noticing the life around me more – or rather, the life around me got in my face. On a hike, a scarlet tanager sat on a branch a few feet away and serenaded us (pictured above, not a photo I took because I preferred just looking with my eyes). Then on two bird hikes in a row, many beautiful and not that common (at least to me) birds flew all around me or perched for minutes at a time on branches where we got a perfect view of them: orioles, indigo buntings, bluebirds, green herons, black and white warblers, rose-breasted grosbeaks and many more. Then while on my bike yesterday I saw a great blue heron fly overhead, its neck extended and its legs? And two weeks in a row, I spotted a big, orangey-eared coyote, once crossing a road and the other time in a field five miles away. I’d never seen one in Connecticut before.
But I didn’t just observe these creatures – I felt like I was part of nature, just one species among many. I wasn’t out to kill them or deprive them of food or habitat. I was just sharing Earth with them. It was a very peaceful and even hopeful feeling.
I hope I can hold onto it to keep me going forward in the work ahead.
Click here for the interview I did with the lead plaintiff in the Juliana v Trump case of 21 children and youth suing the U.S. government over climate change.
And click here for the latest nonviolent direct action by Beyond Extreme Energy as five people disrupted the Senate hearing on the nominations of two Trumpistas to join the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which currently lacks a quorum. We want to keep it that way as long as possible, in order to minimize the destruction to communities and climate that FERC enables.
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