Birds, Hurricanes, and High School girls

          We gathered last week after recent travels all over the world – Seoul Korea, California, New York, Mongolia, New England, Greece – to congregate on the coast of Nova Scotia. Eleven of us, all members of the class of '78, turn 65 this year. We’ve led full lives, raised families, suffered tragedies and losses, celebrated the usual life milestones, including the fact that we’re all here to share our 65th birthdays, alive and kicking (notwithstanding a few creaks and rusty joints). Unbeknownst to anyone, we also shared covid 19, which came home with several of us to run its course. Covid doesn’t care who we are or where we came from. It courses around the globe, doing its viral thing. We just have to deal with it. Luckily, covid seems to have mostly lost its fangs.
            Hurricane Erin is ripping up the east coast of our continent this week, illustrating our shared susceptibility to nature’s tempestuous moods. Weather doesn’t care if your daughter’s getting married this weekend, or if your travel plans are ruined, or if your neighborhood is in its path. We all live here on the planet with the weather; we have to deal with it. 
            Last May I visited Long Point Bird Observatory on the Canada side of Lake Erie. I learned a lot about birds – their travels to and from South and Central America, their difficulties finding sufficient insects to fuel their migrations these days, their dwindling populations and valiant efforts at adapting to the changing ecosystems and resource depletions. Birds cover thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of miles each year in their annual travels. Birds don’t care about international boundaries or politics or ownership. They all live here on the planet with the plants and insects that house and feed them; they have to deal with whatever state the globe has to offer. So do we. We just don’t seem to have the intelligence to recognize it. Who’s the birdbrain here?
            My pre-school grandchildren (five of them!) are learning how to share. It’s not easy, but it’s an essential skill. I hope we older folks can model what we’d like them to learn:
            We share this planet. Imagining that we can isolate ourselves within some imaginary boundary lines is the height of idiocy. No wall exists that can shut out the haze from wildfires or the swollen seas of a hurricane or a killing infection or the rising tide of indignation against injustice. We have no other home but this one. The Earth doesn’t care if humans survive. Our extinction might cost the planet some turmoil, but it will shrug us off and move on if we can’t deal with it intelligently. If we want to live here, we’re going to have to learn to open boundaries, not close them, starting with the boundaries in our hearts and minds.