Choosing A Legacy Of Nature

I get a little sad sometimes, thinking about how most of my life is already behind me.

Maybe if I'm lucky I've got 30% left to live. And maybe only 20%. Maybe less.

I don't have children. There will not be grandchildren or great-grandchildren. And yet I want to be remembered.

So I write. And I hope some - a few - of my words might last.

I have nieces and nephews. And grandnieces and nephews. They might remember me - their silly, vain, old Aunt Nancy.

I suppose the advantage to being old today is that I will die before the planet does. It may be a blessing that I have no grandchildren or great-grandchildren who will suffer as the planet deteriorates.

But I do love those nieces and nephews and their children. And their children's children, even though I don't know them yet. I love them already.

So this week is especially sad.

I want all those future children - the ones who might rememeber me and the ones who don't - to see and hear and feel the wondrous things I had the privilege of experiencing while on this earth.

I wish for my great-great grandnephews and nieces:

The squawk of a seagull as it swoops along the shoreline

Warm summer mornings when the dew rises as steam off green blades of grass

Snow swirling in the streetlights in the middle of the night and in the morning, icicles so heavy the door won't open.

A little fox stopping by a puddle for a drink. Chipmunks stealing the strawberries. Deer at the birdfeeders.

Fields of daffodils at the end of April

Skies so blue that artists cry for the beauty and their ultimate inadequacy

Proud mamas and new babies

The diligent superhero of an ant carrying a crumb three times its size.

The thick lush carpet of autumn leaves.

Hiding in the cool silence under the branches of an ancient weeping birch.

I will not be here.

I may not be remembered.

But it may be enough if our beautiful earth is still here.

*** Read more from Nancy at her blog, Not Quite Old.