Dancing in the park

Is it just a coincidence that Earth Day shares the month of April with the anniversary of the nuclear meltdown in Chernobyl? Some kind of cruel joke? Or a cautionary tale?

In my fragile memory, Earth Day predates the disaster at Chernobyl (twenty years ago this spring) by at least a decade. I remember the big Easter Sunday “be-in” in Central Park in 1967 (or ’68) as the modern-day genesis of today’s celebration of earth in her natural state.

We were called hippies then, as we danced in the Sheep Meadow in our Indian bedspread-skirts and buffalo-hide sandals. But really, we were just teenagers, celebrating the return of warm weather after a long urban winter. And we were pretty sure that dancing in the park was preferable to fighting in Cambodia or Laos. We were not ignorant of world politics, but we were not hopeless, either.

In a recent NPR report on the after-effects of living near the site of the world’s greatest accidental nuclear disaster, a woman from Belarus, in an area heavily damaged by radioactive fallout, described the hopelessness that still infects her and her fellow citizens. “We don’t celebrate holidays,” she said. “There is no singing or dancing as there used to be.” She described a pervasive depressive state common to victims of a traumatic shock.

This is not the physical toll of radioactive poisoning, but it is as much a result of the accident as the slow, agonizing six-week death of unprotected clean-up crews at the reactor who regurgitated their internal organs.

After the disaster at the World Trade Center, in my Manhattan neighborhood, a similar malaise affected, and continues to affect, many members of our community. Use of mental health services has skyrocketed in our area of Manhattan. The Red Cross continues to provide acupuncture and holistic healing services free of charge to local residents who enroll in the 9/11 Mental Health program. Schools regularly use the services provided by NYU Child Study Center.

An eighth-grader in our local Tribeca middle school recently committed suicide. This child’s profound hopelessness, of unknowable origins, is a concern for all of us. As my daughter said, “I can’t wrap my head around it, Mom.” Good, I thought, we shouldn’t be able to understand such profound hopelessness, at any age.

Unlike human beings, earth always works to right her disasters. Remarkably adaptable, she usually cleans up her own messes, creating something new in the process. I’m still waiting for her to clean up last year’s flood debris from our islands, although the local wildlife are busy using it as a ready-made habitat.

In contrast, we humans use our vast intellect to concoct elaborate fixes to make nature conform to us. I read a recent report that Senator Schumer had secured $600,000 for the Town of Monroe, to help them in their battle with goose poop. The irony is that the problem itself arises in part from human actions: Canadian Geese have changed their migration patterns, and one reason for that change is the alteration of weather patterns caused by our overuse of fossil fuels. Now, too many of them use town parks like the ones in Monroe to nest and raise young. The $600,000 solution? Arm town workers with vegetable oil to coat the fragile shells of goose eggs, and umbrellas to fend off the angry mother geese. Ingenious and non-lethal? Or, ingenious but short-sighted?

We who live in the Delaware River valley are witnesses to the great regeneration of the bald eagle, after the banning of DDT. My spirits soar with the eagles whenever I see one. They are graceful reminders of the power of nature to rebound.

But I worry that my children’s generation has no such hope for the earth. Either they have not lived long enough to witness a victory like the eagle’s return, or they are overwhelmed by the doomsday scenarios that headline our world news.

This generation will have to work hard to break the cycle of war and greed that continue to batter our spirits and the earth’s resources. But I hope they also remember to dance in the park every spring. For earth’s life, and for theirs.