Earth Day 2007: What's In Your Area

One of my clearest memories is standing out on the hot, black asphalt of my elementary school's playground as a child, my tiny fist gripping the string of the yellow balloon. My friends around me were all holding onto theirs too, their knuckles red and white from holding on so tightly, anticipating the countdown. We'd all written letters (mostly just our names in crayon) on pieces of paper that were folded neatly and stuffed into the pre-inflated balloons, visible through the translucent rubber skin of the floating sphere overhead.

"3, 2, 1..." Release. Hundreds of yellow balloons drifted up, up, up, at first blocking out the sky and then get tinier and tinier the farther up they went. On the car ride home, all I could do was wonder where my balloon would pop, who would find the perfect creases of my note, my name written in rose-colored Crayola. I pictured it like a message in a bottle, washing up on some distant shore...

Of course, that was over ten years ago. And as the world has learned by now (or at least my elementary school has), those balloon releases are detrimental to animals (mainly in the ocean) who think they're food and choke on the rubber, not to mention that rubber is not biodegradable. We no longer do balloon releases, but we ONLY haven't been doing them for ten years! And our recent environmental naiveté is as bright as the sun.

This Earth Day, April 22, I'd like to give back for all the years I released a hopeful balloon only to have it pop and fall from it's swift current--it's probably still caught in a redwood tree somewhere in Northern California.

Earth Day festivals and events are springing up (or happening again!) all over this country. For all of us who live in the concrete jungle of New York, even we have somewhere to go. Head over to Brooklyn for Prospect Park's Celebration, April 21-22, and take a nature walk or a boat tour, even volunteer to spruce up the plants.

If you live in Chicago, check out Friends of the Parks event Chicago Parks & Preserves Clean-Up on April 21 from 9AM-Noon. Seattle? Join the People for Puget Sound and roll up your sleeves for the Duwamish Alive Earth Day. Nine simultaneous habitat restoration projects will be in motion along the Duwamish River.

The Los Angeles area is studded with Earth Day events. Inkwell Surf is holding their 2nd Annual Earth Day Event at Inkwell Beach on Pico and Bay St. Volunteers will be rewarded with lunch and refreshments. Rock Your Planet! is throwing it's launch party to demonstrate how to live sustainably, without sacrifice.

Throwing an event? Offset your event's carbon footprint and reduce climate change through Carbon Fund. Your donation will go towards carbon-friendly projects like renewable energy and reforestation projects. Find out how much you should give back by fiddling with their carbon calculator.

Another great way to give back is through Food & Wine magazine's Grow for Good, a campaign striving to donate $1 million for Farm to Table, an initiative that supports local farms and encourages sustainable agriculture.

And if you can't make it out for Earth Day weekend, give back to a conservation effort any other time of year. Simply plant a tree.

One of my favorite field trips as a kid was to TreePeople, a forest of a hillside in Los Angeles with walkways covered in wood chips that would crunch under my feet. Every time I went, I got to plant a seedling. Some of those seedlings must be teenagers by now, trees much taller than I am, with limbs and needles cleaning up the air I, and so many of us, have been dirtying. I'm sure they've erased a little of our carbon mess--but only a little, we still have about 7 billion footprints to go.

[Image 1 thanks to Jon Ingrham according to this license.]
[Image 2 thanks to *n*o*o*r* according to this license.]
[Image 3 thanks to sindesign according to this license.]

Adventures of a Kona Town Transplant

Two years ago, I spent a summer in the coconut tree studded town of Kailua-Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii. "Kona Town," as the locals call it, is one of two major towns (as major as it can be) on the largest island of the paradisiacal chain. The other town, Hilo, sits on the wetter side of the island connected by Saddle Road, a road that cuts the volcanic island in half. It is said that if you see an old lady on the side of this dark, windy road, you must pick her up, for she is Pele's sister and Pele is the Goddess of Fire. She controls the active volcano that is erupting in Hawaii's Southwest corner--and you don't want to make her angry.

Black fields of dry lava reach across Kona's undeveloped land and although the town is relatively drier than it's rainforest counterpart, clouds accumulate every afternoon and spill rain over the town. The air is heavy, and heavier right before the daily storm. But the storm is brief, and warm, and allows for relief from the humidity's weighty pressure.

No matter how fine the rainstorms are, when you are a waitress who caters to the only outdoor section that is unsheltered in a packed, tourist-filled restaurant, they tend to pose a problem. At first sight of water beading up on the tabletops, salt shakers are quickly rounded up. On most days, this wet stint happens before the rush, before the tables are sat and the food is a bullseye target.

One day, however, the restaurant was full. Fuller than usual. My section, unprotected by the retractable tarp that rolls out over three-quarters of the patio, had couples and singles and families at every table with hot dogs and coconut shrimp and mai tais with little purple flowers floating in them.

The rain came fast and drove in bullets, aiming directly for the french fries, the calimari, and in particuler, the fish sandwich. My customers made a run for it, snagging the last stools at the indoor bar, crouching under the tarp, balancing their plates on the rock wall. Whatever they could do to avoid watery ketchup. I headed into the storm, round tray in hand to gather what I could of the salt-and-pepper shakers, to save any salveagable food my customers hadn't been able to grab.

"Can I help you guys move inside?" I asked a middle-aged couple that had stayed put. They continued to dig into their now-soggy, and becoming soggier, nachos. The woman's glasses were spotty with raindrops and the man's aloha shirt was turning darker blue by the second.

"No, we're fine," The woman said, her glass of beer now watered-down.

"Are you sure?" I asked. The grassy, oceanfront lawn in front of the restaurant was abandoned, its lounging visitors had run for cover minutes before.

The man looked up at me and said, "This is our 35th anniversary. And this is how we want to remember it."

I stood there for a moment, mesmerized by this couple, so carefree and in-the-moment. It didn't matter how uncomfortable they might be in the hours to come, or even in that moment, all that mattered was that they wanted to create this memory and have a story to tell for the years to come.

"Alright," I said. And all I could do was hope that when I am their age, I would sit as completely serenely beneath as heavy and wet a rainstorm, just to feel so alive.

I set some dry napkins on their table, turned around and scanned the sheltered lava rock wall for my scrambling customers.