No such thing as small actions

There’s a saying about how Earth becomes smaller every passing year. There is an element of literal truth to that. Each day, several hundred tons of hydrogen, helium, and oxygen leak out of our atmosphere, more than offsetting the 40-some tons of asteroid debris and other space dust that enters. But the saying is really about how technology makes our world feel smaller.

With the internet, information travels across the planet at light speed. Commercial jetliners allow us to get virtually anywhere in under a day. But as the world feels smaller, we may feel smaller still. While the shrinking world puts more within reach, our influence seems to be shrinking, too. There are plenty of factors that make us feel personally insignificant.

I’m reminded of how small I am even as I stand in my small yard. The primary landscaping feature is a Douglas fir tree. Its trunk has a circumference of well over 20 feet. The tree is almost certainly older than I am. Even an apple tree that I planted a decade ago now stands taller than me.

Given that it seems that we’re dwarfed by everything, does anything we do as individuals really matter? My own yard reminds me that it does.

These past few weeks, I’ve been watching hummingbirds feed from apple and cherry blossoms and flowering currants. A pair of juncos have been exploring parts of my yard to find the ideal spot to nest. A brown creeper has been finding food in the rough bark on the Douglas fir.

That so much is happening in the yard is because it’s somewhat of a relic in my neighborhood. It’s a throwback to what the neighborhood was like 40 years ago with well-spaced homes and suburban-sized yards. There are now just a few such homes left here. Most have been replaced with town homes and more densely packed, larger homes.

There is wisdom to the development. The population is burgeoning. There’s environmental benefit to putting residences within a couple miles of a commuter rail station. But not every square inch of the neighborhood needs to be covered with pavers and plywood.

The neighborhood is so much bigger than me that it would be easy to throw up my hands and check out, thinking that in the grand scheme of things, nothing I do really matters. But I do have the means to do something. And I have. I’ve replaced my lawn with native plants. There likely aren’t as many creatures that live in the neighborhood as there were 40 years ago, but there are more than if I was of the mindset that none of this was my responsibility.

And that’s the thing about being part of an ecosystem. Everything ultimately has a role to play. To see it, you just have to shift your perspective. If you were to look only at the remains of an old-growth tree decaying on the forest floor, you might think there’s no point in growing because destruction eventually wins. But the fact that there’s even a forest at all is the product of millions of organisms turning the decay into new growth over and over again.

Hopelessness is a uniquely human feeling and it’s not one that serves us well. My yard is not large enough to support all the world’s hummingbirds. And it doesn’t need to. It turns out a neighbor two houses over has planted a couple of fruit trees. Another has birdhouses and bird feeders. We’re not likely alone, even when it feels like we are.

Kevin’s book, Five Minutes in Nature, collects images and stories about his experiences in the wilderness, curated to help you have deeper encounters of your own. Preview and order it here. Prints of his images are available through LivingWilderness.com. Learn about new work by joining his mailing list.)