Touch the earth.
I was thirteen on the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, headed towards fourteen in a few months. That first earth day was something I was aware of and we did some kind of event though I can’t for the life of me remember what I did that day. Looking back at those early teenage years, the transition from childhood interests to more adult ones, I have often felt that that first “earth day” was a kind of affirmation for me personally, a permission or a blessing to continue and deepen my earthy interests.
In the 1970s Touch the Earth was the name of a best selling book, photographs of Native Americans printed in sepia, beautiful photos, strongly nostalgic. In the spirit of the times these images offered a vision of a different way of being, a different way of living on earth than that of the pollution and destruction we felt around us.
I later learned that “touch the earth” also has an important place in Buddhist mythology. As the Buddha sat in meditation, approaching his enlightenment, the demon Mara and his forces swarmed around him, attempting to move him from his place beneath the bodhi tree. Buddha reached out his right hand and touched the earth. The earth goddess came immediately and covered him, offering protection and chasing away the demons and tempters. The morning star appeared and Gautama reached supreme enlightenment, sheltered by the earth.
My favorite Wendell Berry poem is still the first one of his I ever read (in high school English class, thank you Mrs. Smith):
“February 2, 1968 – In the dark of the moon, in flying snow, in the dead of winter, war spreading, families dying, the world in danger, I walk the rocky hillside, sowing clover.”
We each do what we can.
Touch the earth, sow [native] clover…