My grandma is my north star and my mentor in nature. She is a beacon of hope for those committed to protecting and appreciating nature and all that the outdoors has to offer. She thrives in nature and she works, with relentless determination, to get those she loves outside to explore the wondrous beauty of the natural world.
When I was young, many weekends were spent packing up the car and driving hours away from the busy day-to-day of our lives, filling our weekends with outdoor adventures. Adventures varied from hut-to-hut hikes meeting inspiring thru-hikers who chatted with us about their times on the trail, cross-country skiing in the early mornings in search of grazing moose, ice skating across broad lakes, learning to kayak properly whilst fishing, playing games identifying small critters plants and flowers, to trekking through snowy woods to secluded huts warmed only by small fires. While these adventures were intended as fun weekends away from our routine, they were also lessons in how to engage with and respect the natural world as we enjoyed the playgrounds it offered.
While my grandma served as our leader in engaging with the environment, she let nature be our teacher. She knew that she too would always find new things to wonder about. So, through her eyes, we got to see it and appreciate its beauty. Today, at 83, she still regularly goes camping, hiking, and xc skiing, but with a more adamant demeanor, because she knows that she has only a limited time to have these adventures. Although this is true, and she has slowed down. She has watched my siblings and I grow older and as we continue to engage with nature, to respect it, and to learn from it. Although she has watched her natural playground be threatened and shrink because of climate change caused by human powers, she has also seen a growth in those willing to fight for it; those like you and me who cherish this natural playground and who want to protect it for our future generations. In her day she was the anomaly, today those convictions to cherish and protect our planet are felt by so many of us so that we can take on that beacon of hope for our planet.
What I grasped from these naive childhood explorations of nature is that our world is colorful and magnificent, that everything is connected.
That it is enduring, and I am lucky to have been able to see nature and all its connections in the ways that I have. As I have grown older, have lived across continents, and have seen and learned more about the complexities of humans, ecosystems, and our changing climate, those childhood lessons have transformed into a deeper recognition that we must respect and embrace the natural harmonies of our world, just as my grandma has always done.
My climate story is fortunate; I’ve never faced the climate disasters that are displacing communities or forcing evacuations from homes due to extreme weather occurrences.
Still, I have seen the lake that I used to skate on as a child stop freezing over during the winter, and I’ve stopped swimming in certain lakes and rivers due to dangerous levels of toxins from algal blooms and bacteria. And I no longer see moose wandering through forests and grasslands in more southern parts of New England. These changes are not themselves the story but are little, tiny pieces to a much larger story of climate change.
While those childhood experiences may, very well, only ever again be a childhood memory, I know that I must help protect those natural ecosystems and climate so that they continue to endure and work in harmony with each other and so that future generations get to see and experience the colorful magnificent nature in the same way that I got to.
I want my climate story to be one of hope. So, I hope to inspire our current generations to do as my grandma did – to guide others into nature so they, too, can learn to embrace and respect those natural systems that are integral to the climate and our world. Those childhood lessons, combined with the knowledge we have today in our current climate crisis, can and must be used to empower and motivate communities, societies, and humanity to protect the harmonious systems of nature so that they endure for us and for the wonderous ecosystems that depend on it.
Alyssa is a graduate Public Health Student at Lund University in Sweden. Originally from New England, USA, she grew up in the mountains and is passionate about making sustainable systems in public health.