This Earth Day, we are celebrating with a series of eight short stories inspired by all the ways nature moves, challenges, inspires, and amazes us. Thanks to Green Initiatives for joining us in this call, and for all that they do to raise awareness and compel action to protect and strengthen our environment. And special thanks to our featured storytellers and to everyone who submitted a story honoring our big, beautiful planet.

Edge of the World

I stood at the edge of the lake and gazed at the summer snow atop Mont Blanc across the valley. This three-day trip to the Alps would be my last before my study abroad year came to an end. I was tired, and not just from the hike. During my 8 months studying Mandarin in Taiwan, I’d whipped around Asia as fast as much my budget had allowed. The pace of my life hadn’t slowed even after a purposeful move to a small village in the east of France to volunteer at a youth hostel. Without a doubt, the year had been a dream, a real wild ride, but I was ready to trade in the backpack, the language barriers, and the (emotionally-draining) holiday romances for my own bed and a proper cup of tea.

I’d taken the bus to Chamonix, encouraged only by promises of ‘free accommodation’ and ‘no one making you wake up for another sunrise,’ hoping that I could enjoy my last few days of freedom feeling wholesome, without having to chug any beer. I’d woken up before sunrise (duh) to join the first group heading up the mountains to catch a view of Europe’s tallest mountain. Five hours and 1860m later, there I was, paralysed by the beauty of what stood in front of me, and by the realisation that my adventure was all but over. I was tired. But standing there, at the edge of the world, I knew I wanted more.

— Joanne Cattermole

The Farm

My maternal grandmother, Bertha, grew up on a large working farm in Warsaw, Illinois. She was one of eight siblings, and the first to leave home for nursing school in St. Louis where she met and married my grandfather, settling in his hometown of Breese, Illinois. A few times each year, Grandma Bertha would take me back to the farm where she had grown up to visit her six siblings, who never left the farm or each other; they never married. They worked hard year round.

I was fascinated by the lives and wizened faces of these great aunts and uncles, who were so kind, gentle, and happy to see us. There was no electricity, no running water – just a well out back. Everything they ate had been raised by their own hands. I loved going with Aunt Louise to gather eggs from under the hens sitting on their nests in their sheds, though it took awhile to get over the fear of their fierce flapping! Aunts Jule and Clara (yes, the namesake of my beloved daughter, Clara!) spent their days in front of the stove, baking, cooking, canning food in glass jars to last them through the winter months. Uncle Albert would take me out in the pick up truck to check fences on the farther flung parts of their property. Uncle Harry taught me how to milk the cows, which was quite scary at first, but I learned those large cows were gentle and sweet, grateful to be relieved of the milk.

I still see and value this precious earth through the eyes of that child, introduced to the ways and bounty of the fruitful land we inhabit by such simple, strong and very unique aunts and uncles.

—Vicki Davis

Wonders at Wonderlake, Alaska

Fall comes early to Denali National Park, bringing the tundra’s wine red colors, clear days, ripe wild blueberries, and the first bits of night since April. My hiking boots took on a dark, blue dye, the juice of blueberries that burst as I walked. I feasted on the sweet, azure orbs. A fox also came out to enjoy the berries, and she danced around, leading me on through the tundra, her silken, red and gray fur flowing and catching autumn light. We encountered a pond where a large antlered moose waded through the cold water, thrusting his head into the drink to feed on water plants. In the distance stood the High One, Denali, Mount McKinley, dressed in more snow than I had seen in many months.

Soon I made camp. Sometime after midnight I awoke to go out and release some of that blueberry juice from earlier in the day. When I emerged from the tent, I could tell the sky colors had faded to near night shades, but looking around, the heavens were illuminated. Sitting on the horizon, just above the snow-covered peaks, sat the moon in a crescent shape with “Earth shine” outlining her dark remainder. Spreading out from the moon in both directions almost completely encircling me were northern lights: greens, blues, purples, reds, dancing and shimmering with a lively vibrance unlike I had ever seen before. I sat and watched a show that only Nature can provide.

—Tom Siewart

Nutshell

When I was 6, my mom brought home a baby tortoise from our vineyard, scared that badgers or ravens would kill him. So tiny, still wearing half of his egg, we named him ‘Nutshell’ (Findik Kabugu in Turkish). For years every spring I waited for him to wake up wherever he was hibernating in our massive garden. I’d collect dandelions for him, eat watermelons with him, make puddles for him. Tortoises do not have ears, but my Nutshell was a great listener, I was telling him everything that I was not telling any human. He was the first one who knew that I was going to leave, never to be back, he was the one I was telling ‘I will carry my home with me, like you’.

When I left home at the age of 13, my silent friend was one of the hardest to leave behind, so he kept visiting in my dreams. Twenty years later, I was finally in our deserted house, overwhelmed with memories, looking at our once beautifully orchestrated garden, now a gorgeous jungle, and I saw movement. I could see the weeds going sideways as this thing approached, and finally I saw it was my Nutshell, no longer a nut, in a tortoise kind of hurry, making its way to me. I ran, laid face down, looked at him in the eye with tears in mine, touched his massive shell and I cried, who knows for how long. Recently I realized when I feel misplaced in life, at night, I am dreaming of my tortoise and very consciously, the next morning I am reminding myself that like my childhood friend, I belong to earth, I carry my home with me, I will feel at home wherever I go.

—Derya Demir

A Brief Farming Life

I’m standing in a field of rapeseed flowers as far as the eye can see. In the adjacent plot of land, a sun-burned father diligently plowing the land. Another plot over, a grandmother plucks vegetables sure to be used for that night’s dinner. It wasn’t even two weeks prior that I was grumbling about staying extra days in my wife’s hometown, a small farming village 400km southwest of Shanghai. I had been visiting for Spring Festival, but I was already longing to indulge in some cocktails back in Jing’An. However, Covid-19 was beginning to wreak havoc across China and plans were hesitantly altered.

Unable to sleep that night, I finally convinced myself that if I was going to spend the foreseeable future in a farming village, then by golly, I was going to make the best of it. I took long walks through the hundreds of farm plots showcasing a variety of vegetables. I helped a neighbor dig up carrots, garlic plants, and cilantro. I assisted my mother-in-law in clearing a plot of dead grass, much to her amusement. We chopped down trees to be used for firewood. I watched, from a distance, as our excrement was turned into fertilizer. As I stood in that field of rapeseed flowers, salivating for the aromatic vegetable and herbs we picked moments earlier that would be waiting for me at the dinner table, I thought to myself that this kind of existence should never be taken for granted.

—Ajay Bhai

La Medicina

I stood in the hot jungle listening to the leaves rustle above, felt the cool of a slight breeze against my sticky skin, and said aloud “I am happy to do my part, I am happy to feed the mosquitos.” I had come a long way in a short time.

Four days earlier, I landed in Rurrenabaque, Bolivia – gateway to the Bolivian Amazon and home to a small, rural sanctuary where I would spend the next week with 10 strangers. After a choppy flight and loud boat ride, I was greeted by the silence, peace, and lushness of nature. This was a departure from the busy streets of La Paz, and I felt uncomfortable in the sudden stillness. But this is what I had signed up for when I had asked to join a 10-day ayahuasca retreat, mid-way. Over those next few days, between the midnight ayahuasca ceremonies and hours of quiet self-reflection and mandala-making, I spoke honestly to nature, and she spoke back. I literally read out loud to the trees, listened to the birds and insects, and observed the flow of water in the many streams around the camp.

Imprinted in me is the moment when the shamans and ‘la medicina’ worked in tandem to awaken my whole being into the most basic of realizations: that every, single, thing on Earth is interconnected. I am no more and no less than the rock I sit upon, or the mosquitos that bite me. Although I’m now years and continents removed from that experience, it is one that will remain within me always.

—Diana Lu

Don’t Damn that River

When I was a child, my father went to war with beavers. Our family had a vacation home in the mountains of western Massachusetts. The property had 40 acres of woodland and a small brook, which was a joy to swim in during the muggy summers. However, my father soon discovered a glaring problem in our otherwise idyllic location: beavers had built an enormous dam right on our brook. This was unacceptable, my father explained. Dad showed me pictures he found on the internet of lonesome deer standing in swampland. Their home underwater. Dad was going to save our home, no matter the cost.

One early morning, my dad went to the beaver dam with a chainsaw and began hacking away. By the end of the day, he made significant progress. In another day or two, the dam would be finished. The following day, not only did the beavers repair all the damage, but the dam was bigger than before. Undeterred, he contacted a local trapper. “Sure” said the trapper while polishing his rifle. “I can kill them for you.” Pause. “Couldn’t the beavers” asked my father. “just be moved elsewhere?” “What? And make them someone else’s problem? Besides, it’s illegal.”

Thereafter, he made a truce with the beavers, and the dam created a fantastic swimming hole, especially during those muggy summers. My father would later constantly tell me that beavers played an important role for the environment and we shouldn’t meddle with nature.

—Benjamin Sepsenwol

Born from the Earth

For anyone that has ever chased a chicken, you understand that this is the single hardest task on the face of the planet. I learned this lesson one spring as I worked on a small farm during my time living in Hawaii. Running through the green, rippling valley that laid before the mountains, I would chase after flecks of brown and white foul squawking through the tall grass. I would return home with my shoes covered in bird shit and dirt- exhausted, exasperated, yet happy.

Through my days working on this farm, I learned fulfillment in simplicity. My diet changed. Cooking became more prevalent, and meat consumption decreased. My skin was tanned from days spent outside, and my shoes were ripped beyond repair and coated in mud. My mood became softer, my sleep became sweeter, and the sunshine brighter. As I took walks home in the fading evening light as the palms would glow golden and the bugs would twinkle up from the jungle grass, I felt my steps synchronize with the heartbeat of the earth. For once I understood that as a human, I am nature. And with this realization, the dust settled and I began to learn.

This relationship, between humans and nature, must evolve symbiotically. We are born from the earth, and to it we will return. And so to be her caretaker is our duty, and one to which I have learned to forever prioritize.

—Emma Andrews

We hope you take the opportunity this Earth Day to think of a small (or big!) way you can show your gratitude and care for the planet we call home.

All photos belong to the storytellers unless otherwise stated.

Edited by Clara Elizabeth Davis

Unravel x Green Initiatives Present Earth Day Stories