116 Days - "Everything Has a Heartbeat!"

With apologies to those who aren't really "into" kids, I'm pretty focused on them this week because of our Nature Daycamp.

Working with these wonderful youngsters is like a tonic after months and months of focus on the climate change emergency.

Today we visited the forest. We sat and talked with the birds, played Camouflage, did an activity called Hug a Tree (with uproarious laughter).

But my favourite activity was giving each pair a stethoscope to listen to the "heartbeat" of a tree. The best moment of the day was when Isabela came running back to tell me, after doing some experimenting on the moss and the rocks, that "everything has a heartbeat!"

Can you imagine a world where every human being, of every age, recognizes that the rest of Nature is living and breathing? We would treat everything as kin, just as the aboriginal peoples did.

And, I'm betting, we would remain childlike in our sense of awe and discovery in the world of our natural neighbours.

Tomorrow we're going to the marsh!

117 Days - Kids and Rain (Why Was I Worried?)

I awoke very early this morning to the sound of heavy rain on the roof. I felt sick to my stomach. Sure, we need the rain. It's been a hot, dry summer. But on the first day of Nature Daycamp? Why here? Why today?

Well, I needn't have worried one iota. Children love rain and they love getting wet (when their parents aren't telling them to stay dry). And they love the ocean, which is where we spent several hours today - in the rain.

I must remember to trust in children, to trust in the joy, excitement and fascination they still experience when face to face with the elements.

Tomorrow's Nature Daycamp will take us into the forest, face to face with trees and soil. I'm looking forward to it, rain or shine!

118 Days - Falling Prey and Losing Confidence

Tomorrow I will start a five-day Nature Daycamp for children aged 5 to 12. It's something I should be excited about. Yet I'm anxious. Why is that?

My whole professional career — until now — I have revelled in opportunities to introduce youngsters to the joys of the natural world. At university during my education studies in outdoor and experiential education, I focused on sensory awareness when all my classmates were either athletic (and focusing on physical pursuits in the outdoors) or science majors (focusing on biology and ecology).

I do not have a scientific mind. I have had to work very hard to understand the science of climate change, and I feel confident in my knowledge of the fundamentals. But somewhere along the way, I have lost confidence in my ability to pass on my love for the rest of Nature.

Is it because I feel I need to "know" all the science we'll meet up with in the woods and at the beach? Or is it because I'm nervous about wired kids getting easily bored by the speed of the natural world? Whatever it is, I feel I am casting my fate to the wind.

Perhaps, then, it is the angst from my life as a climate activist pervading my work with children — and I don't like it one bit.

So tonight, my compassionate climate action is to take care of myself, treat myself gingerly, and trust in the wisdom of my friends and neighbours of other species. And then to relax and have fun tomorrow!

119 Days - What IS the Public Feeling?

Another day of email conundrummy (I just made that word up).

First a message that the American Psychological Association (APA) is offering climate-change-related workshops, hosted by Psychologists for Social Responsibility and Earth Circles, at its annual conference:

Climate Activism for Psychologists: From Psychological Paralysis to Community-Based Action

and

Confronting Eco-Anxieties & Promoting A Healthy Eco-Identity in Clinical & Academic Work

My response to the listserve was this:

It would be interesting to hear from psychologists on this listserve about the prevalence / pervasiveness of "psychological paralysis" and "eco-anxiety" stemming from climate change.

I live in a small community where people just keep working - or travelling, golfing, fishing, sailing, watching TV and living their lives as always - so haven't seen evidence of these maladies.

Out there in the big, wide world, are there lots of people feeling overwhelmed by climate change?

Cuz I gotta tell ya, I'm not seeing anyone amongst my family, friends or community members (both geographical and interest-based communities) suffer psychologically because of climate change.

Except my loved one and me. We rage, we despair, we swear, we sob. My eyes well up with tears at the thought of what we're doing to the children in Africa. My husband weeps when he hears yet another tale about the fate of our beloved orca whales.

But we are very, very alone in this. We have one friend who feels it deeply. We know a handful of other activists who are doing good work but don't seem to feel it deeply (or at least, don't share that with us). Where is the paralysis and eco-anxiety?

Sure enough, the very next message announced an article by Andy Coghlan entitled "Consumerism is 'eating the future'" in the New Scientist of 7 August 2009.

In it, Coglan quotes Marc Pratarelli of Colorado State University at Pueblo in the USA:

"We have our heads in the sand, and are in a state of denial," he says. "People think: 'It won't happen to me, or be in my lifetime, or be that bad, so what's the point of change'."

Pratarelli is ... pessimistic. The only hope, he says, is a disaster of immense scale that jolts us out of our denial. "My sense is that only when the brown stuff really hits the fan will we finally start to do something."

So which is it? Psychological paralysis? Or sleepwalking through the climate emergency?