We Are All Connected

            I have felt connected to nature my whole life. My earliest memories are being in the backyard of my childhood home in Connecticut, carefully searching through the dirt for bugs. I remember being so full of joy over the discovery of a rolly polly. I know now that they are called Pill bugs, but I will always call them rolly pollies. I’d spend days making little “homes” for them in the ground. I’ve always been so in awe of other forms of life on this planet. Watching the leaves blow in the wind as the sun shines through them or trying to get an ant to crawl on my finger so I could get a closer look; these small moments of my childhood are what stuck with me the most. 

I am grateful to have been able to spend my entire summers in Martha’s Vineyard, an island off of Massachusetts, where I fell in love with the ocean. I’d spend hours in the water, diving for rocks to add to my collection. Every summer, nothing would change, yet I admired the beauty of it all more and more. From the small grains of sand that would shine on the beach, to the giant clay dunes I’d sit below, are what made me so happy. These summers were filled with feeding farm animals, collecting seashells, and running barefoot on dirt roads. I felt, and still do, so connected to the island. Our neighbors used to have peacocks, and they were my alarm clock every single morning. Following the peacocks, the birds would sing as I got ready for another adventurous day. These moments in my life are what made me so appreciative of nature. I was so passionate about making sure every life was valued just as much as ours. I vividly remember kicking and screaming at my older brother because he wanted to kill a huge bug that was found in the house. I’d say, “it has a life just like we do,” but that wouldn't always stop him. 

These early connections with nature are what made me such an outdoorsy person. Hiking, water sports, and running outside are my favorite ways to spend my time. I even prefer to walk, rather than drive, for the simple reason that I want to watch and admire the natural world. Obviously I can't always walk everywhere, but on an average week I walk a lot more than drive. Getting to smell flowers, seeing animals interact, and simply having the sun hit my face is so therapeutic to me. I find myself always happy, no matter where I am in my life, and that is solely due to the gift of appreciating the natural world.

I can physically feel it in my heart. It devastates me to watch the world, and other lives we coexist with, suffer from our faults. We as human beings are fully aware of the direct effect from the use of fossil fuels, deforestation, overfishing, etc., yet we won’t stop. We are killing to the point of extinction. It’s terrifying. Humans simply cannot survive on Earth without healthy oceans or trees. We’ve taken advantage of nature. Whether you care or not, protecting nature is the only solution for our future generations to exist.