I arrived home from the beach to my garden, dehydrated and suffering, a result of neglect from both man and nature. This is how it typically goes, every time I am away from home from more than a few days. A heatwave comes barreling through and my parents think little of the garden’s need for hydration. While I cannot directly blame either nature or my family for this — I do, however, ask them to please water my garden while I am away. It is neither of their fault for how the world is changing, for the devastation we as a species have caused.
My cucumbers and my sugar snap peas, my tomatoes and my jalapeño peppers — though they may struggle, they are likely to recover with my aid. May the same be said of the earth, or is the damage we have done irreversible?
My family owns around 100 acres of land in northern Pennsylvania, just outside a small town, nestled within the woods. A manmade lake resides, in which fish were stocked many years ago and now thrive. Grandma and Grandpa, paired with my father and mother and uncle, helped to make the property what it is today. They bushwacked the driveway in an old four-wheel-drive; they planted a pine grove (wrongly, I might add, but the effort is commendable) and they cleared land for fields, in which my uncle grew a crop or two, for a short period.
I do not know how this plot of land looked those forty years ago, prior to the work family and friends put into making it “more comfortable.” There has been a great deal of change, I know that much. Most recently, that change has taken the form of clearing trees.
Toward the end of July, I joined my father and his friends to visit the property for the weekend. Part of the reason for the visit, past leisure, was to prepare a section of the back yard for a car port to be placed. A car port not for cars but for cover from the elements as my father and his friends fire guns at the outdoor range he has built up, in conjunction with my grandfather at first, over the years. An obsession of his, one which is a topic for another day.
Being the good son I am, I helped him as was necessary. We cleared a total of four small trees, none of which were over fifty years of age. With each tree that fell, I questioned why I was helping. As I helped place the branches on the tractor’s pallet forks and watched as what was once a living thing be used as backstop material, rather than at least helping provide nutrients to the forest floor, I wondered what I would do differently — what I will do differently, when the property is my own.
I didn’t spend a lot of time outside today, past tending to my garden. My hopes are that, with a bit of love and a lot of care, the cucumbers will recover and yield many more through the season. I can only hope that the younger generations, mine included, will do the same for the earth.
— C