Can you hear her? The Boreal Forest? The delicate feather that will tip the scale towards mass extinction? The migration nookie nook for half of ALL North American bird species? Where the chicks get to frolic, play, and thrive? No?
Shhh! Calm your mind.
Take three slow deep breaths in and out..and embark on a journey back in time to the year 1912.
You are paddling quietly in a canoe up the Athabasca River with nothing around you but peace, calm, and the bounty of a sublime unspoiled landscape.
Now lay down your oar. Breathe in the oxygen-rich cool fall air. Go ahead. Take in as much as you want. The wetlands will sequester your carbon and save it as an eternal memento of your visit.
Keep breathing deeply and slowly. Let your thoughts impregnate the skies with love and gratitude. Your mind is still and quiet…and now she speaks.
“Thank you for coming.
I was afraid that I was too much of an ‘overburden’ for you to value me as I truly am and not as greed sees me.
I desperately need your help.
Men have arrived who are boring holes through my skin like infectious parasites. In the next hundred years I will suffer multiple violent assaults. The pain will be palpable yet bearable.
I may be old, but I am hardy.
For the first 50 years life will continue in my care with tolerable incursions. But that will all change in 1967 when men lustful of my hidden treasures will strip me naked and plunder my flesh.
And it is only the beginning.
As time passes, the souls of all who make my life whole will flee…until they can run no more. They will not escape the big claw that will come ripping, ripping, ripping…
The memories I cherish will burn.
The wind will carry my screams through the trees, across my northern sisters, and onto the east coast where they will be swallowed by the sea…until the day that they rise again.
The day the oceans will roar.
On that day, this vast Earth will hear my cry at last…but it will be too late, for my spirit will have withered and died along with all life that once was. There will be no ears to answer my call…
Will you lend me yours?”
I make this request with the faith and belief in YOU as a loyal Steward to our home, Earth, and all her inhabitants, present and future:
Please share Garth Lenz’ heart-inspired TEDx talk with everyone you know.
Together we can stop the madness.
