"Let's Build"

"Let's play cars!" Elias says almost everyday. That and "Let's build." He likes to make skyscrapers, elevators, mazes, and car washes with his linking blocks.

His love of cars and trucks is typical for an American boy his age and yet he'll most likely never drive one with his limited vision. I'm not sure what I think about this. On the one hand, I worry about him missing out on this "right of passage" and ease of travel, and yet on the other hand I find myself relieved.

Last night, as we zoomed a red metal sports car and a green plastic semi around his car rug in his room, taking breaks to fill our tanks with gas or roll in the mud so we could go through the car wash again, I found myself thinking about peak oil, sustainability and the western notion of speed and progress.

"Let's drive our cars to the mountains," I said and rolled my semi off the mat, up his reading pillow, to his bed.

Elias laughed, rocked back and forth as he waved his arms: "Let's park here!" He lined his flashy car next to my truck on the quilt his Aunt Silvi made him six years ago.

"Let's just hang out up here." I said.

"Let's chill." Elias said, testing out one of his new expressions.

"Yeah, let's chill; we've been moving too fast." I lay my head on his reading pillow and studied Elias's eyes. His tangle of black lashes that frame two roaming sparks of blue, wondering as always what he sees.

"Aaaah look at the view," Elias said, before I could say it.

As I write, I can see Elias's metal dump truck parked next to a yellow school bus in our backyard. Across the country pundits argue about global warming, climate change and renewable energy.

Some say it's too late to change the way we live.

Some say we don't need to change.

Some say change is inevitable.

Some say sustainability with gloom on their tongues. Some say it with hope in the timber of their voices.

In all the convoluted debates, I think we forget that preserving the earth is not just about Polar Bears or Monarch Butterflies but about little boys who dream of climbing mountains. Even if the mountain is merely an old dirty snow pile in a parking lot on 16th. Or a sand dune on the Cape. Or Mt. Saint Elias, my son's namesake here in Alaska.

Its about the breath of children, soft and steady, like the sound of the creeks that no longer wind through our backyards, filled in by progress and our desire to build.

"Let's build something," Elias says. "Let's do it!"

In honor of Earth Day, lets build an understanding that sustainability is more than a political debate between donkeys and elephants but the heartbeat that moves through us all, red and blue, loggers and tree-huggers, oilmen and naturalists, farmers and city-dwellers...

Lets do it!

Our children and grandchildren need us to stop arguing and start acting on their behalf. Elias may not be able to see the details on a butterfly's wing, he may point to a bush on his car rug and say, "That's Cuzuncle David" or tell me a picture of a bear is a dog, but everyday, along with "Lets play cars" and "Lets build" he says to us: "Let's go outside!"

"Lets go in the woods!" he said yesterday during our evening walk around the neighborhood. "Let's go really really in the woods!"

Let's Do it!

Comments

[Mom]

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder and Elias sees it all!!

[Noel Dennehy]

Wow, as always, your words leave me speechless.

[Nicki]

I know what you mean! I live in the suburbs of Chicago, and I WISH I could teach the kids what real nature is like! The best I can do is drive them to local forest preserves, where we walk on paved paths and play in woods littered with fast food wrappers and dirty diapers, with the sound of traffic not far away. It would be lovely to get back to a more natural, sustainable way of life!

[Christy]

Thank you Mom and Noel!

Nicki, I hear ya. Even here in Alaska, a place known for its natural beauty, I'm amazed by the amount of trash I find in the woods. I think no matter where we live, the wilds of Alaska or the urban hustle of Chicago, we can make changes for a more sustainable world, It doesn't mean giving up city life or everyone moving to the country but redesigning our communities around local economies...oh I could go on but I know you know.