About as Green as I Get

Kids-

As you probably know, no one has ever seriously accused me of being a hippie. I think your Tata referred to me as a “freeloading hippie” a couple of times in high school while trying to encourage me to get a job once I turned 16 (I very quickly did), but that’s pretty much it. I’ve never campaigned to “save the Earth” or to “help the trees”, I don’t drive an electric car to ironically plug into the coal power plant, and I’ve never really thought about my carbon footprint.

I recycle, drive a 4 cylinder engine, and don’t litter. That’s about as “green” as I get.

But, that being said, a recent event struck the teeny tiny environmentalist in me. A few guys were hiking through Utah’s Goblin Valley, an expanse of unique natural stone formations. In their wanderings, they decide to do this:

This caused an uproar in Utah; a cry rang out for the law to step in due to the vandalism, which isn’t a surprise, the rock had been there for an estimated 180 million years. It’s like someone just went to the Natural History Museum, pushed over an entire T-Rex skeleton, then cheered and high fived afterward.

Kids, this world is a beautiful, incredible place. From its undersea wonders to its towering redwoods, there is beauty to behold that could never be shaped by human hands. I’m not going to tell you to not touch the planet or anything like that, but here’s what I will tell you:

Don’t be a toolbox to nature.

Do people still use “toolbox” to describe jerks? I hope so, or that will be an odd turn of phrase…

Seriously though, it all comes down to one word: respect. I’m not telling you that you need to dress in all hemp or never use hairspray, but  this world is spectacular, and if we don’t treat it with respect, places like the Goblin Valley will just look like a pile of boulders. Houses need to be built, we have an unfortunate reliance on fossil fuels, and we still rely on the internal combustion engine, but none of this means we should aimlessly destroy such beauty. You don’t have to be an environmentalist to appreciate places like Multnomah Falls or Dead Horse cave (some of our local wonders). It’s not hard to realize that defacing them is childish and moronic.

Respect natural beauty. Appreciate the world around you. You don’t have to “go green” to do that.

Love you guys

1 Corinthians 1:4

                        Dad

PS: This is literally an incredible coincidence, but I happen to be posting this on Earth Day. I seriously had no clue until I saw it on Google. Well, happy Earth Day, kids. Respect the planet. Don’t be a toolbox.