The Nature I Love

  

      And the single hawk bursts into flight
      And in the east the whole horizon is in flames
      I feel thunder in the sky
      I see the sky about to rain
     And I hear the prairies calling out Your name

                              -- Rich Mullins, “Calling Out Your Name”

There’s nothing quite like dipping one’s paddle into a northern lake as one’s canoe glides across the water or standing in the crisp air of a winter night and watching Orion chase the Pleiades across the heavens.  There’s something about the smell of piñon pine in New Mexico and the taste of tea made from the needles of the Douglas fir.  The rolling glacial hills of Wisconsin and the towering peaks and sheer valleys of the snow-capped Himalayas.  The serene silence of gently falling snow and the moon so bright you can see as clear as day.  The music of loons and the crackling of a good campfire.

But the glaciers are melting, the trees are being cut down faster than they’re being replanted, and mining waste threatens the northern waters.  The stars shine in radiant glory, but too many of us can barely see them at night.  Species are going extinct at rates not seen in millions of years, and our pollution is warming the planet faster than it can adapt.  We are taking the good gift of God and destroying it for profit and convenience.

And my heart is broken.