It’s definitely been a little bit of time since my last big travel adventure (I know, boo-hoo, poor little me). In October, we had a week-long trip to the Amazon planned- only for the eco-resort we were staying at to call the day before to refund our money, as the Amazon is at critically low levels and we were unable to even travel up the river by boat. It really isn’t normal for a rainforest to go dry, but here we are. The New York Times posted this article three days after we were supposed to go on our once-in-a-lifetime adventure. Instead, I spent my birthday bearing witness to stories of 105-degree (40.6C) rivers, cooked river dolphins (I was supposed to be swimming with them, dammit), and wildfires ravaging an already wounded ecosystem called “The Earth’s Lungs”. These are the lungs of a chain-smoker now, and I know that I am as responsible as anyone who isn’t part of the 1%, or involved in the oil, gas, logging, and petrochemical industries… still pretty damn culpable, and I feel that weight.
So, to be honest, it was a rough month. The critical nature of the Amazon (20% of its total deforested, 40% either degraded or heading into desertification) coupled with my climate anxiety, joined with the elimination of months of planning and excitement- not to mention the decimation of Gaza… It was hard to find many things to write about, to be excited about, and I spent a couple of months just in survival mode, I guess.
Sometimes, the state of our world just weighs heavier than at other times, and I spent my 38th Birthday putting on a smile mostly for my family’s sake but feeling very little other than grief and/or rage, and guilt that I felt that way at least in part because my own selfish travel plans got scuttled as a side effect of my worst climate fears being realized… and it isn’t better than it was in October- this is a BBC article from the day after Christmas, for context’s sake. This ongoing knowledge of global catastrophes is hard to sit with, especially without acting (if you can, please donate to the UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund to help mothers, children- and especially pregnant women- in a place where medical care has been bombed back to near 0 status).
All of this is to say that I know exactly how hard it is to “get back on the horse” and keep attempting to be creative, to get joy from family, from friends, from hobbies, from all the beautiful little things in life that just went gray for a period of time. I can’t say I aced this last few months, there was little thriving and too much misplaced anger- but there was still laughter, family, friends, food, sunsets, and wooded walks… Two different times during our grieving October break my family and I walked into restaurants and, on both occasions, the power went out right as we were about to order… such bizarre and random happenstance is what makes life a uniquely interesting as well as frustrating endeavor, I think. There’s nothing like it (life, I mean). The recent political change in Brazil has caused the Amazon to become deforested at 1/2 the rate it was previously- a promising sign in all the doom and gloom above.
This was supposed to be the beginning of a new post about my most recent travels, but I think that will have to be a different post, as this morphed into something else entirely. I am no expert, but I know what it is to keep going even when everything feels broken and shitty and there isn’t an end in sight. Especially for the catastrophic man-made climate destruction ongoing, with no discernable end in sight (or even the dream of a better future), it is really hard to find inspiration, to find joy… all I can say is be open to it- it might be found in nature, in a glance from a stranger, a silly looking dog, the way the sun strikes a building as it sets… Joy (and inspiration) are out there, waiting to be discovered by eyes fervently, obsessively searching for it. Keep at it.
I’m going to keep looking for more actionable ways to help the Amazon/planet at large, I feel compelled to do something less passive. In the meantime, I am going to keep writing, reading, cooking, playing board games with my family, and taking pictures- I’ll have a new blog and new adventures coming up soon. As Paul Dano’s character said in the always-brilliant “Little Miss Sunshine” (a movie I first watched, tearfully, gleefully, and gratefully, as it came out at one of the then-lowest points of my life) “You do what you love, and fuck the rest.” Still words to live by.
I hope you had a great time in Athens. I wish I could have met you but I know how it goes with family and such. Cheers!