From The Innkeepers

April 2023 Blog
Celebrating Earth Day, Spring Things-Silent or Otherwise, and Teaching the Children

Because I spend a great deal of my time outside taking care of our land surrounding the Inn, in my alone time out there, I sometimes think about the plight of the planet and our failures as the human inhabitants of the earth, to adequately take care of our home. Earth Day comes up this month for the 53rd time since its inception and I suppose that prompted much of what my mind was pondering. It reminded me of the Climate Change bill of 2022 that was part of the Inflation Reduction Act. After much posturing on both sides of the political spectrum, the US Senate and House of Representatives finally passed a bill that allocated nearly 370 billion dollars to climate change. It was like putting a giant band aid on mother earth. It is, to be sure, better than remaining mired in inertia. According to Mary Oliver what we really need and needed to do is to have the commitment to teach our children. I take, as part of my inspiration for this month’s blog, Mary Oliver’s book of poems and essays entitled “Blue Iris”.

“Teach the children. We don’t matter so much, but the children do. Show them daisies and pale hepatica. Teach them the taste of sassafras and wintergreen.
The lives of the blue sailors, mallow, sunbursts, the moccasin flowers. And the frisky ones-inkberry, lamb’s quarters, blueberries. The aromatic ones-rosemary, oregano. Give them peppermint to put in their pockets as they go to school. Give them the fields and the woods, and the possibility of a world salvaged from the lords of profit. Stand them in the stream, head them upstream, rejoice as they learn to love this green space they live in, its sticks and leaves and then the silent beautiful blossoms.”

I realize this is a pipe dream of leaving behind classroom walls, which both wall children in and wall the natural world out. But what if more curricular activities centered on teaching children to love the green space they live in by actually setting them within those green spaces? Perhaps the decisions they would make as adults would tilt the planet towards viability for generations to come. There is so much clamoring for a child’s attention the minute they are of age to have “screen time”. Perhaps parents could have children “earn their screen time” by exchanging outdoor activities like discovering one new thing, for time spent on their devices.

Mary Oliver ends the above section of her essay with one simple stark powerful sentence:
“Attention is the beginning of devotion.”
Indeed, a noble goal for the coming month would be to pay more attention to the world around us and to the ecosystem in which we live, that in doing, so we become more devoted to the planet that is our home.

“Attention is the beginning of devotion”. What will you pay attention to in the month of April?
It is time to end this missive as I have some tending to do in one of my favorite places on earth- our own backyard, replete with all manner of creatures and green things for me to focus on. May it be so for you.

Blessings from our house to yours,
Marcia, Pat, and Sharon
Keepers of the Rustic Gate