Why I am flight free:
I am a child of inherited wealth so there have been endless opportunities to fly all over the world. But being born to wealth, though assumed to be the ultimate free ride, comes with stereotypes, bigotry and isolation, and I was deeply lonely as a child. Yet the one real wealth that enough money offers is endless time and the freedom to follow your heart.
I went early into the company of the wild Earth and she welcomed, received, mentored and cared for me. I climbed high into trees, wandered the trails of deer, fox and coyote, and eventually worked with domestic animals and at sowing, tending and harvesting. I have lived richly and joyfully accompanied by wild neighbors, weather, seasons, moisture and drying, freezing and thawing, all in an ever changing, infinitely balanced, exquisitely rich and challenging symbiosis with life on a spectacular planet.
But for some years now the simple turning of seasons has shown its disturbance. Strange anomalies are presenting new and impossible problems. Cyclic structures are disrupted and dyings are randomizing. What humanity is causing the Earth to respond to is no longer subtle and no longer recoverable.
I will never fly again, or travel far, both because it is the only sane response to what is happening to our planet, but also because I have daughters, nieces and nephews lives to care for. And I’ll stay Placed, here at home, in the only way that intimate knowledge is available so that I may meet what is happening not as witness, though that too, but as a deeply imbedded participant.