{one of} my climate stories
When I was a little girl, my mom would drive us to my grandmother’s house about an hour and a half away. The beginning of the drive was always boring, although it had the crackling anticipatory energy the start of every road trip contains. It was the second part of the journey that was the most interesting, once we got off of the major interstate and began winding down I-264 through Wakefield and the other farming towns. There was the sign for peanuts, one of Virginia’s proud staples, the Virginia Diner, and then on either side of the highway, farmland.
The corn was easy to pick out and it was fun to try to guess what the other crops in the field were. Was that soybeans or peanuts? There was cotton, but what was that crop just in the field beyond? If you were quick, you’d see deer in the distance grazing at the edges of the field furthest away from the cars. The sunsets were always spectacular on this stretch of interstate and once the sun set stars would dot the sky and wink down at you. The drive always felt magical.
It was as I got older that I would note with a frown that the corn this year didn’t look so good. It seemed shorter than it used to be at this same time the previous year. The following year I’d note the same thing; the corn didn’t look so good, but this time it looked dried out in the field. We hadn’t gotten enough rain. Gradually, the corn started to look less healthy consistently and the other crops in the fields I’d love to guess slowed down until eventually there would be for sale signs where there were once green leaves. Fields became overrun with wildflowers and weeds and more and more land began to have for sale signs.
My climate story is two-fold because I traveled extensively internationally as a child and witnessed just how wide the disparity is between the United States and other countries. However, it’s the slow change of my once beloved stretch of road trip interstate that drove the point home to me the severity of climate change. It’s not coming. It’s already here and we must meet the moment with courage.
I look forward to sharing some more of my experiences that have led me along my current journey fighting for climate solutions and climate and environmental justice in the future. If you have a story of your own, I’d love it if you would contact me to share it. I plan to post a compilation of other stories to help open our eyes to the climate crises around us.
in resilience,
