Blog Action Day Post: Environment

A single post about the environment? Great. I signed up for this because it's something I care about, but the subject is too big for one post. Think about it, think about how many ways that word is batted about, and think about the many ways the "environment" affects you. Indoor, Outdoor, work, home, physical, emotional, the area all environments and they all interact and they all affect us in different ways.
The organizers of this worldwide event want us to talk about the "Environment" the outdoors, nature and it's relationship to us and ours to it, type of environment. OK, I am game. But still too many issues, and it's all falling apart, really. We're killing it and ourselves. Maybe because we're too far removed from it. Think about it. In my generation, in my living memory I could see sheep from the farm down the road from my front yard. I not only know what they looked like, but what they smelled like, sounded like, felt like. We petted and fed them and we knew when we had lamb for dinner it was likely from those same sheep. It was part of life and no one got too upset over it. We had bunnies and ducks and rabbits in the back yard, pets? sure, til we NEEDED to eat them. and Aunt Izzy hunts, so did most of the cousins, it was and remains a fact of life in my generation.
BUT in my nephew's generation where there were once sheep farms, there are now homes and I can't recall the last time I saw livestock in this town that was once so rural that *I* remember wooden sidewalks downtown ( and I am only 46 this month) and cows and sheep were common place, so were horses. With the loss of the local farms the character of the village has changed. There's more people for one, and folks don't care what they do to each other, it seems. We used to leave the doors open, always, even when we were on vacation - away. No one did anything. Because it was a "town" of less than 1,000 and we all not only knew each other - but watched out for each other. We picked produce on those local farms, Strawberries, apples, cherries, if they needed help with the harvest we all pitched in. Our "pay" was an all you can eat smorgsboard of fresh goodness while we worked, sore muscles and a good feeling. But our neighbors helped us just as we helped them that the environment we had. It stemmed and grew from the outside in...the land fostered us, nourished us both physically and in other ways. And we knew it. I knew where I could get the *best* and most plentiful wild berries and where the fox with the babies lived...we knew where 'possum was holed up and where the bears and deer ranged.
Now we tranquilize the bears and move them and a town near here has a "bait and shoot" program for deer. We've lost the connection to our environment and it's changed the character of the town. We don't care as much anymore...and we don't expect the neighbours to watch out for us or us for them anymore. I got yelled at last winter because I "trespassed" on a neighbours property. I had tried to tell him that his lights were on in his car. Apparently that's now a major sin. I'd hate to think what would happen in a "real" emergency.
Environment, Outside and in. They are connected in our minds and hearts.
And another thing...when we knew the farmer raising our food,,,,when we had gardens and helped harvest and care for both, the land and the animals were treated better, and tasted better and did less damage to people and place. And as kids we were less sick, less picky and less fat...we were safe in those communities that we helped build. We watched out for our neighbours and we watched out for by them. Environment. Community.
Community another word we hear little about these days...it's online community this and community of that, but our real communities, the ones we live in daily have ceased to be communities, they are ever more often groups of people who don't even know each other's names or who's kid belongs to whom. And that started with the loss of environment and connection to that environment.
We're destroying our environments with our way of "life" and we're destroying ourselves too. When we loose our Environment, our neighbourhood, our community, we loose ourselves.
Too bad we don't really see it.