Trees, Climate, and an Event Ticket Up for Grabs
It’s Arbor Day! Trees are critical in our effort to fight climate change because they remove carbon from the air. They’re also wonderful for all sorts of other reasons. Please consider how you can show your love for trees and the organizations that make it their mission to tend to them. One that’s dear to my heart is Tree Pittsburgh. If you’re local to Pittsburgh please consider making a donation to support their great work. Looking for more on trees and climate? Here are some resources from the Arbor Day Foundation.
Today is a day that I needed to be outside among the trees. It’s been a busy week with speaking and facilitation engagements with the United States Forest Service, the Sunflower Foundation in Kansas, and Pennsylvania Environmental Council (for the first-ever PA Gravel Summit!). This morning, I woke up ready to decompress before getting back to my desk.
In Pittsburgh’s Frick Park, I took a slow and deliberate walk, noticing the redbud in bloom, trees leafing out, and a group of volunteers painting fences and planting saplings. Also to see were robins, cardinals, a flicker, a hawk, a deer, chipmunks, grey squirrels, a black squirrel, and all the things I didn’t see. It was hard not to think about the book I just finished, Gretel Ehrlich’s Unsolaced. Published 37 years after her first book, The Solace of Open Spaces, this “bookend” to her first tackles climate change.
In her extensive travels to the Arctic, Greenland, Alaska, Zimbabwe, and other places, she has personally witnessed the effects of a warming planet. The book paints a bleak picture. Near the end, she writes, “Ecosystems kept collapsing in sight, out of sight, and I had to work hard to remember that loss and abundance co-exist, and both are true.” With each animal I encountered in Frick Park today, I took solace in the moment while knowing we have fewer species and fewer individuals within a lot of those species (song birds, honey bees). It’s a sobering reality, one that we’ve got to face even while we take solace in our own personal moments in nature.
Western Pennsylvania Environmental Awards - Free Ticket Opportunity
One of my favorite professional events is Pennsylvania Environmental Council’s annual Western Pennsylvania Dinner. This year’s dinner, being held on May 18, will celebrate the outdoor recreation economy. I can’t make it this year but still want to support the event. Are you someone trying to break into the environmental or outdoor recreation fields and could benefit from a free ticket? Email me at amy@cycleforward.org to let me know. I’d like to help out if I can. If multiple people are interested I’ll draw a name out of a hat.
Resources
Have you heard about Emily Ford’s winter backpacking trip on the Ice Age Trail? Here’s an Outside article about her hike.
Park and trail “prescription” programs are pretty great. Here’s one in British Columbia that pairs the prescription approach with research on how much time we need outside each week to reap the health and wellness benefits of nature. I don’t see the research explicitly noted on the website, but its mention of “2 hours a week” leads me to believe their program was informed by this 2019 University of Exeter study. All we need is two hours a week outside, although I’m pretty sure a lot of us prefer a lot more!
