My blog's carbon neutral now! :D

By following links on other peoples' (much better) blogs, I found out about this awesome initiative. This organization, the Arbor Day Foundation, is planting trees to carbon neutralize blogs. I'm trying to figure out how they're awesome enough to do this, and I intend to ask them in the e-mail I'll be sending them shortly. 

Also, I get a pretty icon!

I love this initiative because the environment is really important to me, and nature's always been a part of my life. 

My family used to drive up to The Cottage every weekend. (Canadians say The Cottage to refer to any cottages at all. This particular The Cottage belongs to my grandparents.) I can remember being woken up as a little kid by birds chirping and the lake washing back and forth, and everything smelling like life. 

My grandfather (or Zaidy) then made me hot chocolate, served with some coffee snuck snook sneaked in and a wink, while my grandmother (Bubby) fussed over me like a true Jewish grandmother. I usually had eggs or pancakes.

Then I went outside and looked at things, often with Zaidy. Zaidy would show me trembling aspens, and tent caterpillars, and we'd make maple syrup, and look at birds' nests.

The nest of one particular bird left a particularly large impression on me.

A ladder was perched on the side of the work shed. 

"This is a robin's nest, Gabrielle, and there are eggs in it, ready to hatch," he said, "You can look inside but be careful not to touch anything."

So I climbed the ladder, my grandfather's hands supporting me. Perched precariously, I peered inside the nest. There were beautiful, wonderful eggs, each holding a tiny little avian life inside. They were the colour of the sky, mottled with white and tiny flecks of brown here and there.

I slipped.

I reached out to grasp something.

The nest.

The eggs shattered into a bloody mess. 

I cried.

This is kind of funny, seeing as I still have next to no coordination. I should really laugh in retrospect. But those eggs. They were such a perfect shade of blue.

This post has been more serious and, in all likelihood, more boring than my usual posts, but I have an actual message here.

Go for a hike. Look out for fairies. 

Stop to smell the roses. If all that's left is concrete, plant flowers yourself.

Look at a tree for a while. There's a sort of poetry in those things.

There's way more you can do, of course. Do at least that. Feeling close to nature is important.

With every generation we get further from our roots, further from our ancestors who ran around in loincloths and ululated and stuff. Yeah, the loincloths weren't that pretty. But their forests, prairies, and jungles? The most beautiful things in the world.