our eden.

we have not inherited the Earth from our ancestors,

we have borrowed it from our children.

-Native American saying-

you know, this whole "go green" trend is kind of ridiculous. i mean, don't get me wrong--i have a strong desire to preserve Mother Nature & be as energy + materially efficient as possible during my short stay here on Earth. but i think the most frustrating thing is the mindset of too much good-and-plenty that American's have adopted. and it is mostly frustrating because it is just that...a trend..which means that someday it will wear off like the last pair of bell-bottoms or blue suede shoes.

it is an anomoly to me that i have become so self-centered that each week when i wheel my smelly, decomposing left overs out to the sidewalk it doesn't phase me that there is another human being that has to handle it. and yet another that has to look at it. and many many more that have to smell it. and it especially doesn't phase me that there are things in my measley bag of trash that will take decades to decompose. and in the meantime give off chemicals & protein compounds that will destory the natural flora of the soil around it. and mess up the eco system entirely.

i'll never forget an article from the Tri-City Herald i read in high school. it was about being more aware of what--and how--we dispose of our "unneeded" waste. they produced a time grid of one dump in a big city and tracked one specific dump spot back to the 1970s (remember this article was published around 2001). and after digging through layers of rotting bananas and last years 'treasured' Christmas presents from the subsequent decades, they came upon perfectly preserved trash bags. and inside those perfectly preserved trash bags were perfectly preserved fall leaves that someone had lovingly raked from their perfectly manicured yard. the point of the article, of course, was that those leaves could have...and should have ...been composted. but instead, here they sit almost 40 years later entirely untouched, full of their natural autumn color, because someone didn't have the fortitude to dig a hole in their own backyard and use natural fertilizer for their landscaping.

and that is just what gets me. plastic water bottles. individually wrapped 100 calorie packs that produce 23,458 times the amount of trash. and ziploc baggies that people throw in the trash as if they will magically disappear. because lets face it, the wonderful "lawn, sewer, and garbage" services that we all (hopefully) pay for does perform those disappearing miracles on our unneeded's each week.

i'm certainly not going to claim that i am perfect. in fact, i've got a long way to go. but there is a strong desire that continues to grow for us to live more efficiently. which, for us, means washing & reusing those ziploc baggies until they are filled with holes & no longer capable of containing foodstuffs. and opting for reusable nalgene's instead of plastic water bottles. and being as efficient as possible with the amount of trash we produce. living more efficiently also means growing more, composting more, and being more aware of the crap we are injecting into the Earth.

and this, our own microscopic Eden, is a humble (yet heartful) start.