questioning my lifestyle...

A few minutes ago, this morning, I walked past a young man holding a stick with a basket and an a hook attached to one of its ends. Wearing a straw hat, the young man was picking apples from a tree that stands at the corner of the parking lot of a 'Noodles and Company', not too far from my Borders bookstore, and very, very close to the side entrance of a Copps supermarket. He'd raise the stick, setting the basket under an apple, and with a downward tug, make the apple fall right into the basket. Needless to say, I was quite impressed, and rather surprised.

The reason for my surprire was not that I had stumbled onto a quasi-urban fruit-picker in my neighborhood, but that I had failed to notice this apple tree before. Surely, I'd taken this path before, a plethora of times, by car, bike and on foot; after all, I've been this very location's Borders patron since I moved to Madison.

So, and with a thought leading to another, I began to wonder, "What else was I missing?" "How could I have been so blind?" I decided to go back to the tree, just to make sure it was really there, and I hadn't just imagined it. Well, it was, and not only that, but the ground surrounding it was covered with rotten fruit, which, if anything, was an indication that I wasn't the only one who had failed to see this tree for what it really was.

Now, sitting at a table, outside my bookstore/cafe/office, I ask, "How many readily available resources are going to waste like this? How many of us choose on a daily basis to pass trees just like this one, and enter a supermarket to buy the same fruit they could have collected if they'd wanted to?" Yes, these apples are tiny looking things, but I suspect them to be tastier than what is on display in our stores' produce section.

For quite some time now, I've been hearing about urbanites, all over the western globe, who are changing the way they're living their lives, choosing to be more careful about how they use their local resources, more careful about their impact on this planet of ours. They use their balconies to grow vegetables and greens. They take over abandoned lots to turn them to community gardens. They recycle smartly, turning trash into compost. They ride bicycles, or take advantage of what public transportation they have access to, instead of driving cars. They're members of food co-ops. They support their local farmers. Yes, they might strike you as hippie-wannabes, as they might own a Subaru, and might indulge in the burning and inhaling of certain mind-altering substances... anyway what was I trying to say? Oh, yes...

We all say and think that we want better, healthier, lives. We all say that we want to be responsible more involved in how we build our world. But how many of us are willing to do the right thing, make the necessary changes, let go of luxuries and wastful habits that have become so ingrained in our daily modes of thinking and being, moving our whole planet towards a disastrous tipping point. So, to these rebels, these example setters, people who care, people who walk their talk, I say, I am humbled by your ways, and truly ashamed of mine.

I wish I could join you. But, I don't really believe that I can. I've become too attached to my car, too disconnected from nature, although, I did once work as an horticulturist assistant in Florida, but all I remember is doing a great deal of watering and pruning of tropical plants I knew almost nothing about, that, and getting attacked by crazy fire ants, and giant roaches... Still there is no harm in hoping. No harm in trying, and what's there to lose anyway?

Perhaps, this is why I am here in Madison, Wisconsin. A small island of awareness, a mid-sized town with many green spaces, hills, forests, lakes, native sacred mounds, free summer concerts, people who care, rebels residing mainly, but not only, on the East-side of the University, who choose to live more responsibly and creatively, or at least outside of the consumerist mainstream box. There is so much to learn here -if only I was opened to learning.

With this said, I invite you to share with me what beauty you see wherever you are. Today, my world is one made of a thousand and one fluttering butterflies, a few crows, a gliding hawk, and a cloudless blue sunny sky.

Be well, be happy. Life is now.