Why I Decided to Create
“This Borrowed Earth: The Rising Forest”
“I feel despair.”
Despair is the response that hits me most deeply when I ask young people about their future. I've heard it from one of my own children, and when I really thought about that sincere statement — when I really listened — it made me realize I needed to do something to help them feel hope. After sitting with their feelings for a short while, I could only respond, “I understand. Things are dark right now.” I couldn't offer false hope. I owed them that much.
Our young people read reports about heat waves, flash flooding, 1,000-year storms, wildfires — some of these young people have even experienced one or more of these weather events personally. They read how, around the world, polar ice is melting at a faster pace than any other time in modern history; regionally, in the New York and New England states, moose populations are dwindling due to the flourishing of ticks; and in our own community here on Long Island, mosquito-borne illnesses are multiplying. The list of climate-affected dangers continues to be reported and felt in significant ways by more and more of our population.
They also hear powerful people deny that changes have taken place, even though the world can no longer return to exactly where it once was. Even though our world has irrevocably changed in some ways, that doesn't mean we are unable to make a difference for the world we find ourselves in today.
As the world searches for solutions, This Borrowed Earth: The Rising Forest invites us to breathe together, to listen together, and to join together—supporting one another while standing in wonder before the beautiful forests and tundra around the world—the plants, trees, insects, animals, rocks, rivers, and people.
Once we begin to listen, we are at the beginning of an answer. Once we sing about the reindeer or the balsam poplar, they become more than distant names—we begin to see their lives more clearly. Once we sing about Anishinaabe efforts to restore the forest, we begin to hear the human lives, knowledge, and devotion within that work. Once a new song enters the air we breathe together, we may begin to understand our relationship to one another and to the living world differently—and to rediscover our capacity to act together. From that shared experience, a new feeling may emerge: a feeling of hope—not a hope that blindly refuses to accept what has already changed, but a hope that recognizes our ability to participate in the future still taking shape on this beautiful, amazing, mysterious, awe-inspiring planet.
We may have forgotten how to listen, but the forest is still calling—calling us to remember that we have always belonged within its circles of life.