Earth Day Challenge

Earth Day Challenge



         The very first Earth Day was a Wednesday and I was there.  Eighteen, just three days earlier, I was on an adventure—my first trip to New York City to see a Broadway show.  It was bright and beautiful—the quintessential spring day! 

         Long haired youths in sandals, wearing jeans and peasant shirts, stood in Time Square and on other Manhattan street corners.  They were handing out daffodils and talking about our planet, Mother Earth.  And everyone—tourists, secretaries and businessmen accepted these glorious tokens of spring and rebirth.  Then they displayed them proudly.

For you young ones, there really were ‘hippies’.  Not the stuff of urban legend, these free spirited youths cropped up in little colonies, like mushrooms in the dark.  They believed in ‘free love’ and expanding their minds with hallucinogens.

These ‘liberated spirits’ preached a philosophy of peace and love.  They wanted to be free to live as they chose, existing off the land.  And while they claimed they were uninvolved in politics, their anti-war movements influenced our lives, both then and now.

They didn’t warn us of ‘global warming’, but spoke of our planet, Earth, as our mother.  How she provided life and sustenance for all of us.  But how she would wither and die if we all did not give her the love and respect she deserved.  And perhaps that is really the salient point of Earth Day—respecting our planet.  For without her, we have no life—no future. 

          

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