It was just two days ago that I was talking with the director of the SLA about how lame this winter was turning out to be; we felt bad for those members of the LRCC program who had never been to New England. They were dreaming of a white Christmas- a white winter- and they were missing out. The first snow storm we got on December 17th was incredible. Some reports around the lakes region were getting totals of 44 inches! The SLA got between 16 and 18 inches of pure powder and it was time for me to teach the troops to snow plow. That night I was removing snow until two in the morning- now that’s a New England winter! After that, we didn’t get much else other than flurries and another fair snow totaling to about three inches. The temperature was constantly hovering around 35 degrees, while getting into the teens at night. What a tease. Everytime a wintry mix was forecasted we would all have our noses pressed against the windows of our cottage, watching, waiting, hoping that the giant saturated snowflakes would hold strong and fast and resist the urge to return to liquid form. Spoiler alert: they always turned to rain. “Snow removal” duties marked on our schedule were turning into making any weather exposed surface look like a beach with the amount of sand needed to keep people from slipping. It was a constant freeze at night and thaw in the morning cycle. The sky was often cloudy with nothing to show for it and I was beginning to wonder if we had the calendar mixed up- was this March?
More and more I recalled the New York winters of my childhood, which were INSANE. On Long Island, they were milder than many upstate areas, so I can only imagine what that part of the state looked like during that time. Snow days were always a possibility and you’d have at least three “blizzards” in a winter. My father would carefully craft and shape a big snow slide that started at the very back of our lawn and stretched down to the curb- extra bonus points if you were able to cross over the driveway or reach the mailbox. Within a single night the slide could be just an indistinct mound underneath all of the fresh packing snow. There were times when the front door (covered by a fairly large overhang) could have a foot of snow packed up against it. And don’t worry, I’ve checked with my mother on this, it is not my kid imagination or the fact that I was very small. We’d have TONS of snow growing up. And then, one year, about eight to ten years ago, it all went away. You’d still get a snow day for icy road conditions or a wintry mix, but hardly ever for the sheer amount of snow. I can recall maybe three storms from my high school and college years combined that lived up to what I had experienced multiple times in a single winter as a kid.
I’ve always loved animals and the environment and knew that climate change was a real thing that other nations were dealing with directly, and that we (as a consumerist nation) were not helping to mitigate it. It didn’t register until late high school that I was seeing climate change in my backyard, literally. Last winter, my parents had three days of flurries from November to March. In one case there was some accumulation, but overall there was simply no snow. Last winter in New Hampshire we had a decent amount of snow, more than what we’ve had this year, and people still considered it a mild winter. That’s climate change for you, pretty lame, eh?
But that’s how it starts- and that’s why people here don’t see it as a big threat. It starts with less snow and before you know it, my hometown will be underwater. It’s hard to be positive about the future of the planet when you’re sitting in a classroom learning about nations that are fleeing their borders as climate change refugees, knowing that the food I pick out at the store is part of a system causing potentially irreversible damage to our soil and human health, knowing that the car I own and depend on is emitting immense amounts of greenhouse gases. And it’s even harder when you’re in a place where the effects don’t seem as dire. I could give you a million analogies for what trying to get people to care about the planet feels like, but the truth is that the people reading this probably aren’t the ones that need to hear it- you all feel the same way, too. It’s discouraging and sometimes makes you wish the earth would erupt into flames already and start over. Then maybe this poor planet could have some peace for at least 4 billion more years.
It’s easy to personify the planet and make people see it as if it’s something with feelings and emotions and that we’re making it angry or sad; I mean, what better to reach people than with empathy? (Mm, maybe that’s a flawed statement, as we’ve seen). The fact is: the planet doesn’t care. Earth doesn’t care if it’s uninhabitable. The planet doesn’t need us to save it. We need to save ourselves and the only way to do that is to make sure the planet is inhabitable for the rest of the life that resides here. Younger climate change powerhouses have done well with shifting the focus from the planet as a personified being to the future generations, and of course our documentary champions such as Sir David Attenborough have done well to show the intrinsic value of life itself as well as how our lives depend on creatures and plants that can be on the other side of the globe from us. Storytelling seems to be a key in getting people’s attention when it comes to science, especially climate science.
For me, I like to think of the memories I had as a child of snow and how quickly they disappeared. Maybe my hometown will never get snow like we used to, but maybe I can keep the snow from disappearing in other places like here in New Hampshire. Maybe I can make people rethink their priorities and vote for change by telling stories about my memories of snow. It makes me wonder what other, smaller natural processes that I never cared to notice while I was growing up have changed. I wonder about what things have changed for people in other areas, besides the horror stories we hear of like flooding, wildfires, earthquakes, and several years of drought. What are the things happening in developed areas that the average person might not realize is climate change? Now more than ever it is the time to act, and we are still way behind on the support we need. If we share our stories of the little things, maybe that will help more people understand the big picture, and that it’s right here in our backyards even if we didn’t see it before. I’ve found that spitting scientific facts at people who don’t care to begin with doesn’t make them care any more. Maybe they acknowledge that they’re facts, but facts don’t make people feel. Stories do. So let’s start telling stories- maybe they’re scary, maybe they’re sad, but maybe they can be fun and reminiscent, like a snow slide.
Maggy is a real pro when it comes to designing education programs, routing signs, and cultivating sourdough starters. Her mortal nemesis? Cheese puffs. Learn more about Maggy here!