Our world is still beautiful

Today, and always

Hello dear Rx Nature family,

I feel the need to touch base with you today. This won’t be long. I just want to feel our connection. I want to say hello, how are you, I hope you’re okay today. It is a hard day for so many of us. I think we need to reach out to one another.

And … the main message I want to share: Our world is still beautiful.

It’s aching, it’s imperiled. But it’s beautiful.

Pickin’ up trash

You know, I’m sure, that this is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in the U.S. That’s the significant event I’ve chosen to focus on today. MLK Day is when we’re all encouraged to go out and do some kind of service project. In the past, I took my daughter to help out at a local food bank. Things like that.

Today I wanted to help the Earth. I wanted her to know that I—and you, we, all of us—will continue to take care of her, and love her. No matter what’s happening in Washington D.C., or anywhere else.

We will continue to care, and love.

I’ve written in the past about the little forays my husband and I make to pick up roadside trash. We live near a country road that people drive to get to a popular waterfall. Evidently, they snack and drink on the way, and they don’t have trash receptacles in their vehicles. (Or, more likely, they just don’t give a damn.) So their detritus ends up in the ditch by the side of the road.

There’s something very satisfying about collecting it all. Cleaning up our little piece of the planet. Sending a live-action message to the cars and trucks that drive past:

We live here. We care about this place.

So today, to shake off the blues, Jim and I headed out into our beloved Eastatoee Valley with a couple of big black bags.

Photos by Jim Melvin

We found the usual stuff: cans, bottles, fast food wrappers, foam cups, cigarette butts. Plus an exciting find: the crumpled fender of a powder blue car. Yes, the whole fender.

It felt really good to be out there under a wide cloudless sky, cold air on our faces, purpose in our steps.

Lighting our pilot lights

I hope you also found something purposeful to do today. Something that sparked a little pilot light of hope in your heart. (If you want to share how you spent your day, please tell us in the comments. And thank you for everything you do!)

We need to keep all our pilot lights lit. We need to take care of one another, and take care of our still-beautiful world.