As people read aloud their letter’s or poem’s, a common theme I had recognized was that people who are ecoliterate are inspiring to others. A vast majority of the poems and letters I listened to included similar phrases such as ‘thank you for caring for the environment’ and ‘you’re an inspiration to many.’ An example of this is when Jacquie Walbaum writes, “I want to thank you for changing my outlook on the world that we live in.” Jacquie demonstrated in her letter how thankful she is to have such an inspirational friend, which is also similar to the poem I wrote. I explain in my poem how inspirational and lovely my neighbour is because of how caring and respectful she is towards the environment. It is easy to point out and connect the similarities because they are right there in front of us. Jacquie and I both wrote to a person that we know and cherish and thanked them for showing us how to care for the environment. I believe when Jacquie and myself were thinking of who we were going to write we unconsciously wrote about people that fit the description written in David Orr’s What is Education For article. He wrote, “the plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places.” I noticed the people we wrote to, demonstrate one or more of these characteristics Orr suggests. Jacquie and myself did not directly write to our loved one that they are a peacemaker or healer but we both mention how influential of a person they are to others and their impact on others and the environment does not go unnoticed.
While I was critically analyzing my classmate’s literature trying to find differences, I came across the line in Joel Wrights poem, “they say she’s mean to us, because we’re mean to her. If we stop giving her heat, she might chill out.” As humans, we find it easy to simply explain what we can fix, but fixing the broken needs to be more of just talk. We need action. The line in Joel’s poem “if we stop giving her heat” made me realize I don’t really know what that means. What is the heat we are giving to mother nature? How do we stop hurting our environment? These questions made me uncomfortable. I felt tension rising inside of me, and I just wanted to stop thinking. Until I dug a little deeper, thought outside the box and realized the answer is right in front of me; Jacquie’s letter. She talks about her friend Rowan who exemplifies how to live a healthy life for the environment. She says he composts, doesn’t buy bottled water, and instead of using plastic bags he uses canvas. If we could all be a little more like Rowan, maybe Mother Nature wouldn’t be so angry and would stop flooding our lands and damaging our cars with vigorous hail storms.
We braid within each other, and although our literature sounds and looks different from one another, I believe our message remains the same: we get what we give and when we give garbage, that is what we get. I want to bring up O’Riley and Cole because in their article, Coyote & Raven talk about Landscapes they believe that people are the garbage in the environment. I can’t say I don’t disagree, and I feel Joel’s, Jacquie’s and mine’s love letters intertwine this concept. We all do not specifically mention that people are garbage, but instead we view our loved ones as influential and change makers. More so in Joel’s poem does he mention that humans are garbage for the environment. I want to end this braid on a quote from the slides,
“ecological literacy involves much more than just the ability to read about the environment: it also involves the ability to interpret the stories about the landscape.”
Cuthroys & Cuthburtson, 2002, p. 226
Although the 3 poems can be interpreted in multiple different ways, I believe that this one quote explains the meaning behind all of our love letters.
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