Au natural
Ok. Enough. These days everything stands puffed up like the Lorax, proclaiming to be all-natural this and organic that. So just who do I think I am with my holier-than-a-tree-hugger-attitude? After all, didn’t I just this morning fill a ziploc baggie for Kira’s lunchbox? And what about all the plastic water bottles we guzzled from on vacation last month? 
And pah-lease let’s not talk about all the high fructose corn syrup in that noggin size snow-cone the girls devoured at the Rockies’ game. Greener Biener indeed. What do I mean we’re going green?
Fair enough. I’ll tell you this much: we are trying; trying to make choices that are healthier for our bodies and smarter for our planet. Trying, even if some days life is more la vida loca than la vida verde.
Journeying a little lighter is not just agonizing over the P.C. purchase of the day at Whole Foods. It’s bigger than that. There’s a fuzzy montage that loops in my head when I try to articulate what I mean by living green. It finally snapped into focus one weekend this summer.
We were in the mountains with our friends, the Eagans. We always camp with the Eagans (and no Brian, it’s not just because you make the best dang campfire coffee around.) As opposed to our action-packed adventures of earlier in the summer, what I wanted from this weekend was a cozy camp chair and some fireside chatter. What I got, inconceivably, was just that. The four children eagerly disappeared into the woods, happy to leave the boring adults behind to lounge around and sip our beverages. After all, there was fun to be had.
I’m talking old school fun. With nothing but each other, a muddy creek, and some active imaginations they became children of nature, four kids on their own in the woods. Kira laid out the scenario over an enforced break for some food:
We are on our own, you know. All us nature kids have lost our mothers.
Um, verification, please.
What do you mean, lost them? Like, left them behind at Target?
No mom. Lost. Like we are orphans on our own in the woods. Nature kids.
She went on to explain that they were The Nature Children, finding food, building houses, and scaling small streams in single bounds. They were coated in dirt with twigs sticking out from their frayed braids, but their smiles were the biggest and most authentic I had seen in a while. Peace and quiet reigned supreme. We were all, undeniably, content.
I sat in my chair, swatting mosquitoes and reading a book, periodically looking up at the busy fantasy the kids were creating just across the creek, and it hit me. This is it. This is what I’ve been trying to say. It’s more than a garden and reusable bags. It’s not just eating from the slow-food movement menu, it’s taking it all more slowly. Life in the slow lane.
Because let’s face it. When you’re rowing up stream with your best friend in tow it doesn’t matter that your canoe is a sunken log. It doesn’t matter that that your paddle is a stick. What does matter is that the dragonfly is hovering close enough to show off the iridescent green of her wings. And the fish are jumping high enough to flash an orange belly before diving back into the deep blue. And the children are unplugged enough to drink it all in. Here’s what I figure–if we slow it down, really slow it down enough, we can get it right. And then what does color matter? We can go right ahead and call ourselves green.
Or blue.
Or even purple with orange polka dots.