Are you inspired to write?​
If you are inspired to write a page based on keeping well and active in an age of climate and nature emergencies, we would be pleased to hear from you. We're looking for a maximum of 380 words for each reading and it must be an original piece written by the person submitting it. All entries that are published will be anonymous. 
For more information, or if you have any questions, email [email protected]

Most of the nature I experience in my daily life now is fictional. It’s in the books, in the films, in my own memories and imagination. But when I pay attention to the hills of Arthur’s seat as I cycle around it on a crisp end of summer afternoon, I am in awe. The world is so so much more beautiful than any representation or memory of it.

I cannot wait for my son to see those things for the first time – the clouds, the trees, the bees. These days I keep well by reading and watching stories and by staring into his innocent eyes. I feel hopeful and I feel strong because I must. I must, for him. I must, like the characters from the stories thrust without a choice into adventures, quests and challenges by the mighty hand of their creators. In that moment, I too am just a character, a piece, moved by the hand of God. Then I must do my best to survive and make sure my son will be safe to grow and have control of his destiny even if I didn’t.
 
Today I Will Remember
The image of my son’s pure toothless smile. Every morning he is happy to be alive and to spend another day safe with me. I grab my notebook and scribble a note for him, maybe the beginning of a long letter. 
​
My dear boy,
I swear we have tried. Whatever you came to find, perhaps it could have been worse. We tried to hold the ship a little bit longer but now it’s up to you to sail it or steer it.

Are you inspired to write?​
If you are inspired to write a page based on keeping well and active in an age of climate and nature emergencies, we would be pleased to hear from you. We're looking for a maximum of 380 words for each reading and it must be an original piece written by the person submitting it. All entries that are published will be anonymous. 
For more information, or if you have any questions, email [email protected]

To those who have the power to change things:  

​I love this earth.  

All of it.  

Boulders, rocks, hills, mountains, lochs, lakes, rivers, oceans, ponds, puddles.
Bushes, shrubs, flowers, weeds, plants which provide food for all of the beings on earth.
Birds, insects, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, fish, fungi, protists, prokaryotes - the whole myriad of life forms from fungi and amoeba to elephants and whales.
And yes, we humans and our pets too.

​I love this earth.
 
I don’t love what we humans are doing with the place. We are so busy with the day job, with a focus tomorrow and maybe the year after that. We somehow manage to keep a small, sometimes glowing, ember of hope to dream all will be well; to think beyond?, outside? the truth:  species extinction moving inexorably and ever more rapidly; forests burning and droughts increasing at an exponential scale; oceans rising and rapidly warming; glaciers melting.  Believing, beyond pure intellect that connecting with like-minded people, all doing their best, will change the outcome.
 
We need to stop, step back, evaluate, and look with eyes and minds wide open at where our current trajectory will very soon take the whole of planet earth. If we must remain narrowly focused, focus on the fate for our human descendants. What does the next bend on this path we are on look like? Really, truly, factually with brutal honesty.
 
Take just a moment, or maybe two. Strip out thoughts of personal power and profit. See the truth.  You will know what to do with your power.
 
I don’t have a big enough stage. So I say it here. My power murmurs, becomes louder as I write. I was not a writer, but I have started.

Are you inspired to write?​
If you are inspired to write a page based on keeping well and active in an age of climate and nature emergencies, we would be pleased to hear from you. We're looking for a maximum of 380 words for each reading and it must be an original piece written by the person submitting it. All entries that are published will be anonymous. 
For more information, or if you have any questions, email [email protected]

Wild fragments of what used to be my country hang on and are economically inaccessible (for now) or are cared for by the enlightened. These places, the wildlife and the people who look after them, fire my love, rage and activism.
 
There is a growing movement of people that understands a reckoning is barrelling our way. Most flora and fauna on Earth is already being blasted, poisoned and consumed into oblivion and it’s unlikely, on the current trajectory, that even wealthy people will be able to insulate themselves from the consequences.
 
But I am only one person, whose greatest love is her country. I’ve lived a lifetime of loss of country and however much tat, drugs, burgers, play with balls and other self-obsessed and self-serving diversionary activities our species prioritises over Earth, these never compensate for the all-consuming destruction of country and the cruelty, greed and stupidity I have witnessed.
 
Today I Will Remember
To accept what the day brings and hold off on any significant action when I’m angry.
If I fully accept something, however painful, I can attempt to understand it and join with others who strive for enlightenment, courage and love to inform their decision-making. I will never know all these other people, but I like to think of us walking quietly together through a vast, pristine rainforest listening with joy and wonder to wild sounds and waterfalls.

​Are you inspired to write?​
If you are inspired to write a page based on keeping well and active in an age of climate and nature emergencies, we would be pleased to hear from you. We're looking for a maximum of 380 words for each reading and it must be an original piece written by the person submitting it. All entries that are published will be anonymous. 
For more information, or if you have any questions, email [email protected]

illustration by Sonia. 
See more about Sonia's illustrated stories. 

​Are you inspired to share your experience?​
We welcome all contributions to the group in whatever formats enable people to express themselves. Please contact us to discuss how best we can share your voice, experience and stories. Thank you.
​For more information, please email [email protected]

I make a footprint in the mud, then stop to look. I’ve come to the park for some inspiration. How much carbon was generated making these boots, I wonder? And these clothes I’m wearing? There is no escape from the commerce machine, from cheap foods, and from ultimate doom! 
 
Then I see something, and the wheels of my mind switch gears, so to speak. 
 
An oak tree. They can stand for a solid 1000 years, about as long as the Roman Empire. How will the world look when this one drops its final leaf? Will we still have rainforests and coral reefs? Will we still have glacial ice? Will New York be aquatic, and Great Lakes empty craters?
 
I think of gears, and systems, and operations. Human beings are good at these things. We’re industrious, organised, always machining away at something. Our capitalist economy is a fine example: both efficient and destructive, at least for now. But what if it worked for the planet?   
 
I leave the park and walk. I feel as solid and green as a giant oak. I spend on eco-things only.   

 
“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.”
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
 
My reserves are dwindling.  There is only a small number of insects in my garden compared to earlier years.  Buddleias, butterfly bushes, attract only a few each year, rather than the veritable hordes of a few years ago.  A clear summer – clear skies, clear of insects.  I rescue bees exhausted from the heat and drought.  Various insects, birds, and mammals visit water receptacles I fill.  My garden turns brown; I water the buddleias and am rewarded by the butterflies’ return.
 
I wander in the woods on too, too hot days, breathing in rich smells, filling my eyes with dappled green leaves, being tickled by bracken, resting in shade offered by venerable trees, marveling in the ancient wisdom of boulders. Sitting on the earth I am not swarmed by the small beings that live there – because there are not so many of them now.  Struggling, I remember I come to the woods to find solace and assurance.  Relaxing into the present, connecting with all beings, sentient and non-sentient, heals me, just for today.  Enough to fill my reserves….just for today.
 
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Wendell Berry

Are you inspired to write?​
If you are inspired to write a page based on keeping well and active in an age of climate and nature emergencies, we would be pleased to hear from you. We're looking for a maximum of 380 words for each reading and it must be an original piece written by the person submitting it. All entries that are published will be anonymous.
For more information, or if you have any questions, email [email protected]

Then I need to move for a period – change my location, physically or metaphorically (within my memories or points of focus).  Let’s say move for ten minutes and then to stop and look at what’s there.  In detail – what holds my attention, my sensations, what takes me out of myself. Consider it and marvel, as if I’ve never seen it before (grassy bank, abandoned shopping trolley, shop window)*.
 
Let it suggest to me what to do next, and marvel again at the recurrent prompts of stimulus and imagination.  Engage my emotions again, and feel that I have done something unexpected, individual and creative – share it with others.
 
* if this feels hard, as it often will, imagine drawing or describing what you’re looking at, or think about how you might photograph it to put a frame round it.

 I’ll jump over the dark reality of accelerating species loss and the decline of the living world in general, and instead invite you to go into a piece of nature. There is no hierarchy - whether it’s a step into a garden, onto a balcony, a park walk, forest bathing, or out onto the open sea or resting by a quiet lake. Hills with rivers are calling me, making my feet step into chilled, running water. Likewise, trees are magnets. Wind rustling the leaves on the trees is my favorite sound. At times of confusion or hopelessness, I will even claim they can speak to us. “To let go is not to give up,” whisper the dark green leaves insistently from their mosaic clusters, when I have a visit from an internal hurricane of worries.

Silence is not only golden as a figure of speech. The planet is wrapped in noise, and silence has become as rare as metals and minerals exploited to make phones, laptops, TVs, radios and cars. But once pockets of silence are exposed, you have the power to connect in ways devices can’t - connecting to oneself, to dreams as well as to fear and grief. Silence can be the stick in the wheel of a negative, spinning mind. Have you ever sat together with an unpleasant feeling in silence? Not trying to solve it as a problem but embracing it, like you would listen to a friend in need.
​
Stories are portals to time travels, known emotions and unknown places. Opening books can also be like inviting friends, you didn’t know you had. Feeling understood and infused with ideas being integrated in your personalised storage of experiences, might be the seeds for the future you dream of.

“To see that your life is a story while you're in the middle of living it may be a help to living it well.”
Ursula K. Le Guin, Gifts