As I mentioned in a recent blog entry, Earth Day is one of my personal favorite holidays. To be sure, I know that it is an unconventional holiday, and that it does not conjure up immediate impressions in the minds of most on a level with more established holidays, such as Easter or Christmas or New Year’s Day. Someday, hopefully, that might change, but for now, it is still a relatively quiet holiday, with seemingly most people hardly noticing it at all.
Yet for me, it is a holiday that does have a rich tradition to it. First of all, I am fascinated by the history of it, which again, is something that I have written some past blog entries about, and so will not get into here. For me, the first Earth Day that I can remember specifically came in 1990. It was an unusually hot and sunny day, and I got a sunburn. My parents brought my brother and I to a soccer game for a fledgling new league that my brother had heard about and wanted to check out, so we went. It was in Jersey City, right by a peer across the river from Manhattan. If memory serves me correctly, it was also right by the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. With so many people out and about and enjoying a beautiful day, it felt like it was part of Earth Day, even though for most people, it probably went without being noticed. It was a relatively quiet Earth Day on this front.
Since then, Earth Day has grown in prominence for me. It would be a bigger deal when I joined the Environmental Club at my local high school, but it would start to become a major deal when I joined and eventually took a leading role in the Environmental Club at Bergen Community College. Eventually, once I became president, it was the central event of the academic year for the club, and it took a lot of organizing. In fact, it proved very stressful, booking bands and speakers and trying to get outside organizations to man tables and provide literature, to say nothing of refreshments (which we did not do a great job on, admittedly). The biggest deal was the bands, because the prior Earth Day events had been dominated by the musical performances of local bands. We wound up getting eight bands for my Earth Day, which was probably too many. Yet, we managed to get seven of them on the stage, which I would say was pretty decent under the circumstances, actually.
Still, it was a success, I think, by and large. But I will not pretend that I was not simply relived once it was over. It had been the big day for me as the president of the club for the entire year, ever since I had been elected president about a year before. The rest of the academic year was mostly quiet, because after that, our major events were done with. I was glad to have pulled it off, but also glad to lay down the reins and let someone else take over. Yes, it was truly that stressful.
As the years passed, Earth Day came to mean some other things. No longer do I need to worry about booking bands or speakers or getting funding from Student Government or anything like that. Now, it is just about trying to appreciate the spirit behind the event, and what it was originally supposed to represent.
Since becoming a father, the meaning has altered a bit. Now, having brought a new life into the world, I wanted to do everything possible to try and pass on a decent world to my son. When he was old enough, I made a point of taking hikes with him regularly, but especially stressing hikes and enjoying the outdoors on Earth Day in particular. We usually hike locally, and he seems to enjoy these hikes as well.
Yesterday, we took another of our traditional Earth Day hikes. We went to Pyramid Mountain, but we did an easy trail. A few years ago, he injured his knee, and he has re-aggravated it a few times since, including once last week. It seems that he is doing much better, but we did not want to risk anything. We took a short hike, and then sat at one of our favorite spots on a rock overlooking a lake, and just sat and relaxed and took it all in. We talked a bit, and laughed. It was quite a bit cooler than it has been in recent weeks, almost like a short burst of the recently departed winter.
After the hike, we went to a local diner off Route 23. I ate a vegetarian meal in the spirit of Earth Day, while my son enjoyed a gyro. Then, we briefly went to Target to pick up a couple of things, before returning home. It might have been Earth Day, but we also had some things that we needed to do. He had homework, while I had to take a nap before work at night, because I had not gotten much sleep during the day.
However, Earth Day remains special, even if it passed predictably quickly, and yielded to the normal life of work and school for us. I always enjoy my son’s company on this special day, and also try to read something with some kind of link or feel of appreciating the Earth, of being grateful, if you will, to Mother Nature. On this day, I continued reading Touch the Earth, a book on Native Americans in their own words. Also, I continued reading My Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, a book that examines our modern culture and tries to answer what we are doing wrong, and what we can do to remedy that.
Again, it is one of my favorite holidays. I love the springtime, the season of new life. Also, it conjures up memories of a very pleasant time in my life, when I was a young man starting a new college with a promise of a new chance to redefine myself. It was a chance that I took, and am glad to have done so. And the Environmental Club was one of the main vehicles for me to change things from what they had been in high school. Plus, it reminds me of some of the people from the club who entered my life at that time, as well as that good overall feeling of being young and having everything still ahead of me, which kind of goes along with the youthful feeling of early springtime and Earth Day.
The day might be over for another year, but again, I celebrate Earth Day week. Anyone who has been following this blog for a few years knows this, and so I will continue. After all, it is also my belief that every single day should in fact be Earth Day. We should appreciate what we have with this world, quite literally, on an everyday basis. In fact, generally speaking, I believe that we should take more time out to think about what we should have gratitude for.
For me, I am glad to have passed another pleasant Earth Day with my son.
No comments:
Post a Comment