This is my son’s birthday and all the best to Angus! It is also Earth Day and an opportunity to be grateful for the beautiful place where I live. Before we can save the earth, we must be grateful for it, and to feel gratitude we must take the time to observe nature and become awed by its rhythms, diversity (surprises), and sheer beauty. Angus is going on a fishing trip with his dad in June, so last night my husband and I discussed the life cycle of bugs that are copied as flies to catch trout as we walked to the town docks. School children are always entertained by caterpillars , which seal themselves into cocoons or chrysalises, and emerge as butterflies or moths. But how about nymphs that wriggle in the water and then become flighted insects to mate and fall back, dead into the streams or lakes from which they flew?

Learn something new about the earth and it’s creatures today. Take a stroll on the beach,  in a park, or the woods. Visit a zoo or aquarium. They aren’t just for kids! Allow yourself to be amazed!