April 22 is this year’s Earth Day.
Here’s a message from Jane Goodall, an amazing person who loves animals and who has dedicated her life to learning about them, especially chimpanzees, sharing with others what she’s learned, and advocating for them.
This past weekend, a friend shared a special place — a quaking bog, hidden in the forest. My partner and I had decided to walk for several miles to visit her — and what better than to keep walking with her to the place she’d mentioned? We walked along logging roads, and then over the increasingly damp and spongy ground, and finally through some dense shrubs where we almost had to crawl on our hands and knees, out onto a dense tangle of cranberry plants and mosses.
Take a jump, and the whole surface — what had appeared to be solid ground, damp to be sure — slowly rolled, a wave passing underneath our feet. We were walking on top of water, on a dense mat of floating vegetation. We nibbled last year’s cranberries, and looked at the enormous bone (femur?) of a moose that had died there. Already, mosses were growing on the bone’s porous surface. The tiny spaces that had allowed for nerves and blood vessels to pass through, now allowed the tiny roots of plants to gain better purchase. Nearby, pitcher plants grew, capturing water and the occasional insect, blending in with the reddish stems and green leaves of the mosses. We peered inside one pitcher, and tiny larvae twitched inside. Were they immune from being digested by the plant? Or would they be digested alive?
Our friend told us about how pitcher plants growing in areas of excess nitrogen fail to develop into pitchers, because they don’t need the nitrogen. Amazing the ways in which species adapt to changing environments.
This planet is inhabited by such amazing life, and if you’re lucky (which you probably are, if you just realize it, or are willing to make your luck), you don’t have to travel far to find it. Sometimes all it takes is traveling by foot, visiting a friend, and keeping your eyes peeled.
Happy Earth Day! A worthwhile reminder to turn the lights off when you leave the room, to support public transportation, to ride a bike, to walk, and to notice the plants, fungi, and animals that share the neighborhood.