America is Still Beautiful

This past Sunday was the first time I’ve sung America the Beautiful since actually experiencing what Katharine Lee Bates saw from the top of Pike’s Peak. And I kept thinking, “Ok, now I get it.” The weather was clear the day we were there in late May, and we were told the far western part of Kansas was visible from that 14,000 foot elevation. I’m not sure what exact locations we saw, but the view was beyond amazing and one of those experiences I’ll remember forever. (Along with the idiotic tourists walking around in shorts and flip-flops despite the warnings to dress appropriately for snow and winter temperatures at the summit.)

During our Colorado trip, I kept thinking to myself, “God, we live in a beautiful country.” I have spent most of my traveling life on the East coast along with a few trips to Europe, but the west with its mountains, rock formations, and wide unspoiled spaces is a whole other world. Watching elk meandering along the streets near Rocky Mountain National Park, a moose eating breakfast, and the amazing big horn sheep climbing the hillsides were reminders that it’s really not all about us. There is so much to appreciate and preserve, and, to paraphrase Anne Lamott, nature bats last.

The gentleman who took us on a tour of Rocky Mountain National Park described these small, rabbit-like rodents called pikas who live above the tree line in the western mountains. They have a very low body temperature which allows them to survive in such a hostile environment, but they can overheat and die with exposure to just a few degrees rise in temperature. Like the polar bear, the pika is a canary in the coal mine for climate change, and they are dying at unprecedented rates.

America is still beautiful. When you start to doubt your faith in a Greater Being, take a moment and look around at this breathtaking land. Spend some time watching animals and plants figure out how to adapt and survive in the environment in which they find themselves. But as we breathe in smoke from wildfires and ravage hillsides and food-producing farms to build more warehouses to hold more stuff that we think we must have, I question if we’re capable of doing the same thing as those smallest creatures--learning to live with the world we’re given instead of trying to manipulate it to our own advantage.

I know, it’s all about politics and corporate greed. I also know there are those who can spin absolutely irrefutable scientific facts into a message that suits their own agenda, and people will believe it. I doubt that will change until we reach the point of catastrophe. We can voice all the “Yes, buts” we want, but bottom line is the storms are getting worse, the forests are burning, the icebergs are melting, and those precious little pikas living at the very top of the world are frantically trying to send us a message. We need to listen.