Coming Home

Ever since I can remember I have felt a connection to the Earth. I just always remember loving how mystical and inviting nature was. As a little girl I would run my own mini-anti-littering campaigns in school. I would draw pictures of what a good green world looked like versus a nasty polluted world and hang them around my desk. I even remember asking my teachers sometimes if I could miss a little bit of class after recess in order to clean up the field that kids had just littered with their juice boxes and napkins. There was even a time when I was in the fourth grade that I saw a bunch of 5th grade boys hitting a bird with rocks, so I ran to them pushed the one with the rock in his hand to the ground and asked him what the hell he was doing. When it came to "saving nature" nothing came in my way.

I think all of this comes from my upbringing. I have always lived in cities, but whenever we went on vacation, my parents would envelope my brother and I with nature. When I was a baby and toddler in Venezuela, my parents would drive us to the beach every weekend. They had been doing this ever since before I was born, in fact, my brother learned to swim very well before he learned to walk. For the year that we lived in Akron most weekends were spent going to the woods for day-long walks. I suppose that I learned to associate nature with security, family, and happiness, and so it was my duty to protect that.

However, the most thrilling non-human experience I had growing up was the trip my family and I took to the Iguazu Falls in the Argentinean/Brazilian border. I guess in a way it was also human because we were staying at a hotel and we were on a speedboat with tour guides when we went into the "the Devil's throat." Yet experiencing the whole majesty and power of the falls was a remarkable encounter with nature. The beauty of the jungle's flora and fauna surrounding the falls was breathtaking and I felt like I had been transported into a new world. The whole trip left a lasting impression with me because I remember that before the trip so many people kept telling us to be careful with the dangerous animals living in the jungle. But, I never felt even slightly afraid, instead it felt like coming home in a weird way. All I could ask myself was, "Don't people get it? We're the dangerous ones."