S̶o̶m̶e̶o̶n̶e̶ H̶a̶s̶ T̶o̶ D̶o̶ I̶t̶ I Want To Do It

 The Environment at Stake

    I saw the snake and I became a statue. Petrified, it was like Medusa had laid her cold, degrading stare upon me and it was all I could do but pray I would survive. Inch by inch, I braved myself to step back, until my foot caught hold of a twig on a tree and I was instantaneously sprung into motion, a single twinge sending thousands of volts of adrenaline down my back and compelling me towards taking decisive action. The velvet red kingsnake’s beady eyes batted in curiosity, and its black and white rings danced hypnotic mazes through my eyes. I screeched like a newborn who was deprived of his favorite toy, and my reaction beckoned the chuckles and forward strides of an administrator who was watching over us that day.

“Don’t worry, he’s harmless,” the director spoke with a warm smile made warmer by the fact that only a handful of kids were present to witness my utter cowardice. At the time, that was like telling a vegetarian that tortured animals would end up in good hands and better bellies, but however mortified I was, I decided to continue rooting out the mustard weeds and finish out that day of volunteering for the sanctuary. As a part of the Youth Action Team at my school, I knew that I needed to stay for the whole two hours in order to get my hours signed, and at that point, with the whole facade of students rushing to volunteer for as much time as humanly possible, that was all I was concerned about.

Yet as the meetings continued and the extensiveness of my contributions heightened, I began to gain a new-found appreciation for the land around me. I became infatuated by the stretches of beautiful terrain and serene nature bundling breathless greenery at seemingly every nook and corner of my volunteering experience, and I began to stay extra hours, destitute of being compensated for my labor, just to help out and spend more time preserving the wildlife around me. I started to understand what activists were fighting so hard day by day to protect, and grew frustrated at the fact that society was being leveraged further and further into an abyss devoid of such natural magnificence and spiraled into a mechanical, fruitless lifestyle without even batting an eye.

As that year of volunteering came to a close, I found out that many of my classmates would not be attending the same secondary school as me, and with a heavy heart, I bid them farewell, wallowing in the hopes that I would meet them in the upcoming months for our future volunteering endeavors. Much to my dismay, I soon discovered that several of those comrades were discontinuing their contributions, too caught up in their academics and extracurriculars to add but a shovel and some gloves to the list of things weighing down their spines as they ascended their paths to the future.

For me, that destiny was a path I knew not to pave, and I continued to pour in hours upon hours of work towards cleaning up beaches, managing green facilities, planting new species, and preserving wildlife whose extinction could mark the end of a wondrous era of time in the ecosystems around them. Through these experiences that enveloped my early life and are still a critical component of who I am today, I came to learn that our planet is not a depository for us to tarnish and trash, nor our rooms or play areas as a child where we can simply rely on our parents or guardians to pick up after us and leave the environment spick and span for our next run through it.

If we don’t do something soon, I assimilated that this precious world that I had just come to truly appreciate would have no one to pick after it, and if my work nurturing and cultivating it didn’t persist and spread influence, then our new generation, outside of these doors and communities, would dissipate slowly yet surely until all we'd be left with would be sawdust and industrial mayhem.

So now, as the days grow long and idle and the summer breeze trickles through the hair of our new generation in beaches' oceans and nature’s vast fields, I work tirelessly day by day to make sure that these simple joys we all have grown up to love and cherish are not rooted out by invasive species, corroded gradually by garbage and litter, or pummeled over by trucks and motorized vehicles that lay waste to the flowers and crops youth so vividly remember dashing through in their free time and innocence.

And I hope to continue spreading this compassion for Mother Earth in the impacts that I make, effectively yet continually, to all the world.