THOUGHTS: Listening to the Whispers

 

The future looks to me like returning to the past — returning to the land. It looks like coming back into cycle with the earth.

Imagine what our land of the Great Lakes would look like if hills and valleys were undressed of its concrete roads and industrialization. It leaves me questioning: What is progress? What is the point of expansion?

We have only a few years to reverse the effects of the climate crisis, yet I find us in the same regular routine with no evidence of urgency.

Indigenous people — the Lakota, the Dakota, and the Anishinabe — have been doing what they can to keep listening to her whispers.

How can we ignore the call to recognize what needs to be done? How do we find motivation in a world that seems to promise itself to destruction?

My Zapotec roots are from Oaxaca, Mexico, which has one of the greatest biodiversity environments in the country. The indigenous people of Oaxaca take care of about 80 percent of the biodiversity there.

When I journey home, I hike in between the mountains and breathe in the fresh altitude amidst dry forest. I breathe in the whispers of something that calls me back to hope. To be with living things, we know that we humans are not alone on this earth. In nature, I always find a spirit of reverence and resistance.

What saddens me is that we are taught not to care — not to beat with the earth — even though our humanity has so much in common with her living trees, flowers, and animals.

We all have a role to play on this earth. We just need to return, to remember.

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