by Svetlana Konnikova

 Today is the 39th Earth Day. This sunny day is started as a holiday of celebration of our green planet and nature in 1970 to honor our generous earth, to promote sustainable living and ideas of ecology, to encourage people to respect our planet and express our concerns about preservation the soil without chemicals, keeping air and water pure, and taking good care of natural resources.

140 nations around the world celebrate today Earth Day. Colorful exhibits, outdoor dancing,  performances and picnics, state fairs. Everything today is about environment and how to preserve it and our Earth in healthy condition.     

Honor the Earth Day and get outdoors. Celebrate the magnificent beauty of nature around you. The Green Generation is the global theme for this year’s Earth Day. Here are some Green living tips:

  • Go to a state park where you live. Spend some time there and explore the beauty of nature.                                                                    
  • Exercise outdoors to cleanse lungs and bronchi.
  • Walk and move your body.
  • Have a picnic in your local park with fresh food from local farmers.
  • Discover what trees are growing in your area.
  • Get on the bicycles and ride through the park or towards the ocean with your loved ones.
  • Go to the flower shop and buy fresh flowers.
  • Make green, healthy meals.   

American poets Robert Frost and Joyce Kilmer, naturalists Henry David Thoreau and John Muir, and many others have penned their reverence for nature and our earth. As a naturalist, explorer, and writer, Muir left us an enduring legacy. He founded the well known Sierra Club while lobbying as an activist and a writer for the establishment of Yosemite National Park. John Muir shares with us his observations and some of the wonders he found in the great forests of the West.

We all travel the Milky Way together; trees and men; but it never occured to me until this stormy day, while swinging in the wind, that trees are travelers, in the ordinary sense. They make many journeys, not extensive ones, it is true; but own little journey, away and back again, are only little more than tree-wavings–many of them not so much.

When the storm began to abate, I dismounted and sauntered down through the calming woods. The storm-tones died away, and, turning toward the cast. I beheld the countless hosts of the forest hushed and tranquil, towering above one another of the slopes of the hills like a devout audience. The setting sun filled them with amber light, and seemed to say, while they  listened, “My peace I give into you.”

                         Let’s we all give our peace and love to our precious Earth.           

Source: From John Muir The Mountains of California, New York, The Century Co., 1894; Excerpt Mama’s Home Remedies:Discover Time-Tested Secrets of Good Health and the Pleasures of Natural Living by Svetlana Konnikova, Aurora Publishers, 2008

Photos: a) Sunrays Through Green Leaves, b) Sunrise and c) Fresh Green Leaves by Petr Kratovchil;  Sunset by Anna Cervova; On the Forest’s Path by Peter Griffin

Copyright 2009