Your assignment is to help turn the lights on for another person.
When we understand certain concepts, we have the opportunity to help others have an epiphany, a revelation, that sticks with them and helps guide their future actions. There’s a teacher out there who helps a student do this every day — we’ve all had a teacher or three who stoked the fire for us.
I remember comments, lessons, statements from teachers, parents, friends, and writers that have stayed with me throughout my life. Many of those enlightened phrases and actions have helped to shape my character.
But let’s get specific. We all have our collection of adages or astute statements that are the lanterns of our lives. For this column, let’s talk specifically about resource sustainability and environmental preservation.
On April 12, I attended the world premiere of Nick Mollé’s new movie, Water: The Sacred Gift, at the Estes Environmental Film Fest at the Historic Park Theatre.
Including insights by a host of scientists and Rocky Mountain National Park experts and composed of pristine filming throughout that is the trademark of Nick and his cinematographer Séan Doughtery, this film helps one understand the progressive climate challenges facing the Park and Planet Earth.
Much of the film explains how things have changed in recent decades and explores the potential for even more dramatic change in future decades.
It covers how RMNP, the Rocky Mountain Conservancy, our universities, and others are taking steps to try to repair the damage done. The work is often very laborious, in cold, windy conditions high on the Continental Divide, but these are amazingly dedicated people, young and old, who do this critical work.
The film’s most important message relates to the continuity of our efforts at perpetual harmony with nature. And that idea is the theme of this article: How do we turn on the light of awareness of resource preservation in a child, or anyone? If they’re not already tapped in, what are the trigger words or actions that light that fuse?
While not everyone will work in environmental science careers, it is worthwhile for anyone and everyone to understand our human impact on our world and try their own way to steer toward a balance.
Teachers, parents, rangers, elected officials, writers, artists, spiritual leaders, musicians, workers of all kinds – as we encounter others, we have a chance to turn on a beacon. Approach with kindness and positivity, create relationship, sow seeds of sense.
Finding a balance to our often human rapacious treatment of nature is the key to planetary health. If replenishment happens at a rate that balances the depletion of resources, that’s sustainable.
While the youthful members of our society are the most critical, it’s the next generation and the next that we must continue to look to, to “sustain that sustainability.”
We have to create knowledge systems that turn on future lights. Devolving is not an option. I think most of us want our great-great-grandkids to have a good world in which to live.
Then there are the tourists, visitors, and guests. What are the keys to teaching them as they plan their visit, travel to town, move about here, hike, shop, and drive over Trail Ridge, and prepare to depart? They, too, must be engaged at all of those touchpoints.
Our combined wisdom is the key. While there are actions that Visit Estes Park can take to promote ecotourism, and there are actions that the Town and other entities can take, it really comes down to all of us, each of us. We have an opportunity with each human interaction to bring the light.
Even while I write this, I know that we have to keep the electricity on and keep using the water resources as they pass through town, mitigate fire danger, clean out the waste, and we need more supplies to feed and maintain our population and our visitors. The cycle of resources is perpetual.
Some feel a connection to the natural world intuitively, spiritually. In Nick’s film, some of the descendants of the Indigenous people of this land have that awareness as part of their cultural background. I believe that if we each look within, we all have the innate ability to feel that connection.
One final comment: This is not a political comment. This is just proper maintenance and future planning for our Planet Earth. We’re all members of the same party here. There’s only one planet. My years in hospital operations and other fields and my Air Force parent helped make me a practical fellow. It’s just practical common sense to take care of this globe of green and blue.
This is not Mission: Impossible. Preservation and perpetual sustainability are possible. It is our destiny.