Everything is So GREEN! How Do We Keep It That Way?
Friday was Earth Day, which is kind of an amazing. day. Earth Day is celebrated on April 22nd to raise awareness about environmental issues. Almost 1 billion people celebrate Earth Day every year! Isn't that cool? Imagine 1 billion people focused on our environment and protecting the planet! I hope you got to go outside and enjoy nature. Here on the east coast, it was a bright and shining day. It was absolutely beautiful!
Here's a meme I made for Earth Day this year:
This is an amazing creature called an egg yolk jellyfish. I met this neat looking guy in Monterey, California in the kelp forest.
So, back to Earth Day for a minute. Yesterday (I know, I know, I was a day late!), I took a glorious hike in Great Swamp in New Jersey. It's become one of my favorite places to hike and have a little wander. It's spring here and the flowers are beginning to bud. Glorious green is emerging after winter. Here are a few photos from yesterday:
As you can see, spring is busting out all over. My overall word for the day was GREEN! Green, green, green, green, green! Everywhere! And, what a welcome sight it is!
But here's the thing: I did a 3 1/2 hour hike by myself. In that time, I saw a total of 6 people. I was totally alone in nature, with only the birds, the turtles, the snakes, the chipmunks, the frogs, the insects, and other creatures I didn't see hiding all around me.
I didn't see a single piece of trash. Nope, not one.
Everything was pristine: nature at its most untouched. The only signs of human life were the boardwalks, designed to keep human visitors on the path and not stepping off into the swamp and signs directing humans to stay on the path! (Oh, and at the end of each path, a nifty bird blind: a place where you can sit and watch the birds through peep holes).
Bird Blind, Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge
Photo Credit: Liz Summit, 2016
That brings me back to my jellyfish picture from Friday. I have never been on a dive in the ocean when I haven't seen trash. You might remember this post from last summer when I went on an underwater cleanup.
Now, to be fair, the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge is a very special place. Sometime, I'll do a post on its history, but for now, you should know that it is a protected wildlife refuge. That means there are all sorts of rules when you visit to make sure that the refuge is a safe and welcoming place for animals (and plants!). So, it's not an everyday sort of place.
The ocean, on the other hand, is a place where people play, live, do business (like fishing!), and work. But, if that's true, why is it so polluted? How can we help keep our waters clean and pristine, just like Great Swamp?
Do you have any ideas?
#HappyEarthDay!
