4/1/24: In Celebration of Nature and Poetry, Photo Contest Winners, April Observances, and More
Elizabeth Moore
Author | Consultant | Conservation, Parks, and Recreation Expert | [email protected]
Every week I share feature articles, news, tools, and actions to help everyone protect and enjoy our wonderful planet, from the sea to the sky and everything in between. In this week's issue:
#bluegreenbetween #theoceanisforeveryone #conservation #parksandrec
Something Important: In Celebration of Nature and Poetry
In the mid to late 1800s in the US, a philosophy called Transcendentalism taught that nature was the path to the Divine, that we could find our way to the sacred that lived inside and outside of us through nature and without the mediation of religion, churches, or preachers. The movement inspired some of the greatest writers and poets in American literary history, including Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
I first learned to love poetry, and to find words for my until-then faltering articulation of my love of nature, through these writers. In celebration of this month being National Poetry Month and Earth Day on April 22, I'm sharing two of my favorite works and why they mean so much to me.
In his "On the Beach at Night Alone," Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass, 1891-1892 edition), writes of how we are all joined, all living things, all features of nature, all cultures, even the entire universe of planets and spectrums of time. He tells us that as the universe encompasses us, we too encompass the universe. He tells us that we are, all at once, a humility of mortal flesh, a glory of immortal spirit, and an infinitude of cosmic substance.
On the beach at night alone,
As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,
As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future.
A vast similitude interlocks all,
All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets,
All distances of place however wide,
All distances of time, all inanimate forms,
All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in different worlds,
All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes,
All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages,
All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe,
All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future,
This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann’d,
And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.
One of Emily Dickinson's poems in c. 1860 celebrates the ecstasy of being one that is part of a whole, of an ocean and an eternity that happily and sacredly encompass all of us and yet are the lesser for losing someone.
??? Exultation is the going
??????????? Of an inland soul to sea –
??????????? Past the Houses –
领英推荐
??????????? Past the Headlands –
??????????? Into deep Eternity –
??????????? Bred as we, among the mountains,
??????????? Can the sailor understand
??????????? The divine intoxication
??????????? Of the first league out from Land?
We forget, in the daily rush of our lives, in our efforts to save and protect and conserve, our why. That we are Earth, and the Earth, us. That we belong to sky and sea, to forest and fen, to high desert and low tide, to snowy mountain and salty marsh, to open fields and hidden depths, and they belong to us. That the sun gilds our souls and the moon silvers our minds and the stars fire our hearts. That breeze and birdsong are forever concertos and the smells of pine and petrichor, the finest perfumes. That the furred and feathered and scaled and shelled and bared and barked and boughed and leafed are all precious, are all sacred, are all necessary. That each of us is precious, is sacred, is necessary.
Find your words again. Find your why again. We matter and what we do matters. Keep up the good fight!
Something New: Winners of the 2024 World Nature Photography Contest
The winners are in for the World Nature Photography Contest for this year and as always feature striking images of our natural world and wild kin. Ferociously diving gannets, the clasped hands--so like ours--of primates, the arched wings of a swan, the gold of aspen trees and the blue of sky and ocean: all so beautiful!
See all the winners here.
Something New: Coastal Habitats Even Better at Storing Carbon Than Expected
Plant and tree-based habitats can store carbon by taking in carbon dioxide as part of photosynthesis and releasing oxygen, making natural carbon sequestration a powerful tool for helping deal with the impacts of our climate emergency. Recent research has shown that two coastal habitats--salt marshes and mangroves--are capable of storing even more carbon than we thought.
Read more here.
Something to Celebrate: Special Observances in April
It's a blockbuster month!
That's it for this week - see you next week!