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Holding the Earth in our Hands: Blog Action Day 2009

This past week, one of the largest social change events ever to occur via the internet reached 17 million people across the world in a single day. Thursday, October 15th, marked Blog Action Day 2009. Bloggers in 155 countries across six continents took the time to write about a single issue that impacts us all: the Earth’s rising temperature.

I’ll be honest; I missed all of the excitement surrounding Blog Action Day. I didn’t even know about it until it was too late. Little did I know that we were all on the same page metaphorically speaking. While folks all over this great planet were hunkered over their laptops and computers writing, Elf, Giant and I were out braving the cold, wet and rainy temperatures in search of pine needles and pine cones.

You see, Giant is fascinated with trees. From Ashes to the mighty Redwoods, it really doesn’t matter to my little guy. He likes to climb them, read about them, paint them (ah, a topic for another day) and examine them. Recently the obsession is with pine trees. Giant will stop, touch and gently place pine needles and pine tree cone droppings into his collection bag. He’s also been known to jam on his bicycle breaks out of the blue to stop and pick up pine needs and pine cones, which frankly can be dangerous and a bit cumbersome especially in the early days into the pine tree love affair when I made the mistake of leaving home without a collection bag! (Tree sap can do some real destruction to the inside of a diaper bag. Then again, the bag has a certainly piney fragrance to it that it never had before…)

Giant’s pine tree obsession isn’t all bad, no, not at all. It’s actually become a family-wide interest. Elf excitedly joins in during collection outings and hubby is on a father/son collection trip even now as I stay home to write this entry.

So while many folks stayed inside staying warm last Thursday, Elf, Giant and I were outdoors in the Climate that appears to be so clearly in jeopardy. We were outdoors, discussing pine seeds, emerging theories about how pine trees grow best, why they grow best where they do and what we can do to better protect them.

Honoring as well as instilling a love and appreciation of nature is what I was doing that day with my children, but I clearly wasn’t alone. Countless bloggers were hard at work, too. On that day many people across the world planted ideas, generated conversations and facilitated action. Whether you’re writing about the planet or holding a piece of it lovingly in your hands, raising awareness about the natural world and the responsibilities associated with living in that sacred space is the right thing, the timely thing and the necessary thing to do…now more than ever.

Photo source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loblolly_Pine