personal narrative

As many people know, the state of California has burned with some 7,600 fires this year. Many of these were large and leveled entire towns, leaving thousands of people homeless. California’s recent largest recorded fire ever was the Mendocino Fire. The fires have cost about 2.975 billion dollars in rebuilding and fire suppression costs. I live in California. Yesterday morning, I woke up to a blanket of smoke covering the landscape outside my window. Later, when I went outside, I could hardly breathe through the fumes, which made my throat burn. I was supposed to have a soccer game at noon. It was canceled due to the air quality. My school was scheduled to have a volleyball game against a school in Paradise, a town razed by flames just a week ago. That was canceled. I began to wonder why there were so many fires. I didn’t have to look far for the answer. Climate change, or global warming, has become a growing concern for the world these past couple of decades. Severe weather patterns, large fires, flooding, erosion, and droughts are only some of the disasters that are becoming more and more common. The question is, what causes climate change? Global warming is the effect of an imbalance of where carbon is stored on the Earth. When too much of that carbon is put up in the atmosphere, it creates a barrier that prevents heat radiated by the sun from escaping Earth. When this happens, our planet slowly begins to heat up, changing the weather and leading to a great increase of the natural disasters we have been experiencing. An increase that, for example, leaves hundreds of thousands of people homeless within a matter of weeks. However, carbon is not our enemy. In fact, carbon is what makes up every living thing on Earth! The problem is the imbalance. Around 500 million years ago, plants began to creep out of the ocean and onto dry land. There, they started to pull carbon out of the air and turn it into sugar through photosynthesis. This created a shift of carbon into the soil and out of the atmosphere, so Earth became more inhabitable. Soon though, humans came along and figured out how to burn carbon for energy. This began to transfer more and more carbon from the ground back into the air, which started this imbalance that is the root cause of climate change. The plants that once were able to pull enough carbon from the atmosphere can no longer do so to the extent needed. This is because our agricultural system is disrupting the balance. Through photosynthesis, the plants turn the carbon into sugar and pump it into the soil, feeding millions of tiny microorganisms. In turn, the microorganisms make nutrients and minerals more available to the plants, which make the plants healthier. When we put chemicals such as weed killer and pesticides on the plants, it kills those microorganisms. Tilling the soil also disrupts the microorganisms as they work, which makes it harder for them to help the plants flourish. Not only this, but deforestation greatly decreases the amount of plants pulling carbon out of the air. The effect of this system of agriculture is the imbalance of carbon on Earth. And the effect of the imbalance is climate change. In addition to this, the ocean has absorbed a lot of the carbon in the air, which is resulting in a slow acidification of ocean waters. This is greatly accelerating a mass extinction of ocean life. The solution to global warming, therefore, is closer than most of us may realize. In fact, the solution is right under our feet. Literally. In order to reverse climate change, humanity has to strongly reconsider their agricultural system and stop relying so much on carbon or fossil fuels to create energy. In other words, we would start using regenerative practices in agriculture, instead of sustainable practices. If we stopped using chemicals to protect our crops from bugs and weeds, and didn’t till the soil, we would be helping the microorganisms make the plants healthier, as they wouldn’t be disrupted in their work. Another aspect of regenerative agriculture is to plan the regular grazing of cattle. Their dung would apply a constant layer of compost, with more microorganisms in it. Planting trees and crops to cover unplanted areas would greatly increase the amount of plants pulling carbon from the air. The soil would be able to hold a lot more water, preventing major droughts and soaking up much water that might cause a flood. Damp plants and soil also would help prevent the large-scale fires we have been experiencing. All of these regenerative practices combined would make the soil healthier. The healthier the soil, the healthier the plants. The healthier the plants, the more carbon they can pull from the atmosphere to reverse climate change. Not only that, but humans eat the plants, and the healthier the food, the healthier the human! It all contributes to an amazing cycle, returning the balance that will keep the planet healthy. The smoke yesterday morning was still here today. And it will be tomorrow. Climate change, for me, is no longer something I just read about in a book. It is something I am living every day. But the truth is, we can reverse it. The solution is right underneath us. We just have to grasp it and put it into motion.   Please comment on what you think. If you would like to learn more about climate change, visit http://www.thesoilstory.com  

My fingers crept along, slowly following the pattern–wrapping the yarn, twisting, poking, prodding. My sister’s fingers flew. “You are still there?” she would say, teasingly, every few minutes. By the time I had finished the first row, she was at the fifth, by the time I was at the fifth, she was at the fifteenth. How embarrassing. What was I doing letting my younger sister tell me what to do, act like she is better than me?! And yet, here she was. Carefully guiding me, experimenting, correcting, laughing with me, at me. Who was I to pretend that I wasn’t having fun or that she wasn’t doing a perfect job? Zoe kindly–like always–helping me with my sock on a ferry.   There is usually a bizarre discomfort that older siblings have when their younger sibling–or any younger person–starts teaching them something. I feel this discomfort sometimes and try my best to fight it. My sister, Zoe, and I have a wonderful relationship. We homeschooled together for 6 years and my parents mostly decided to pull me out of school so that we could spend more time together, resulting in a close relationship between us. However, children grow up these days with a strong distinction between ages. When we start school, we are separated by age into grades, almost never crossing in between. We are led to believe that older kids learn more complicated stuff, so they must clearly be more advanced, and therefore do not need the help of younger kids.   In the homeschooling world, ages interlap often. My close friend group for most of my homeschooling time was made up of kids both four years older and younger than me. We were a group of varying ages, personalities, and experiences. The differences in our ages didn’t separate us, instead it enriched our friendships. Now that I am in school, I can feel myself slipping back into the mindset that I should not hang out with kids that are a different age than me and it impacts my opportunities for friendships at school and at home. When I push myself to break the barrier of age, the different stages that the kids I meet are in and the interests that come with them push me to think harder and be more compassionate, resulting in my greater happiness.    When I think of Zoe as an equal, someone who I can learn from and grow with, I find myself growing in ways that I wouldn’t normally. Our personalities and interests overlap and twist together, like knitting, making something special.    I finished my sock a couple of weeks ago. It is a little crooked in some places, has holes in others, and is in no way compared to Zoe’s pairs of socks, but it carries the air of a new skill. It has reminded me that I am not stuck to people only my age, but am able to learn from everyone. My finished sock! This summer, reach out to someone younger than you and let yourself learn from them. Whether it be your younger sibling or someone else that you know, try to push yourself out of your comfort zone. Happy learning!

By Wholtone [Public domain], from Wikimedia CommonsThe wooden doors loomed in front of us as we struggled to put aside the thought of what was on the other side. Blackness seeped in and the door swung open, cueing the circus music to blast and multicolored lights to shine on. “Who is ready for some theater?!” was cried and we burst out through the aisle and onto the stage. My hands are shaking uncontrollably and my teeth are chattering. Deep breaths. There is no going back now. What is the worst that could happen? And then it begins. For almost my whole life, when someone asked me to act in front of someone, a surge of intense emotions would overtake me and I would cry so hard that I wasn’t able to breathe, speak, or act in a reasonable way. These feelings used to come up when I had to speak to someone I didn’t know too well, be in a video, or even introduce myself in a new class. It slowly lessened and grew more intense for bigger things, like being asked to act, play my cello or piano in front of someone I didn’t know, and so on. It barred me and bars me from doing many things, making me feel uncomfortable and ending up with me not being able to do things that I should. Multiple times, these emotions hit me especially hard. When I was eleven, my cello teacher tried to convince me to play in a recital during one of my lessons. I slowly began to start to feel more and more trapped and when she asked if I wanted to play for someone who just walked in the door for her next lesson all the stress that was building up burst out. I froze and started crying uncontrollably, unable to stop myself. I ended up not participating in the recital.  The play whirls by, I slowly start to get more comfortable. The glare of the lights dim, my hands slow their shaking and my teeth stop chattering, my fear dissipates into giddy excitement. The moments tick by, each one nearing the goal of the end, but the seconds stop feeling like minutes and more like seconds. It is the last scene, then my last line, then the end. I did it. I had broken a barrier that had held me back for my whole life, or had carved a hole to step through. I proved to myself that I could, that I did, and that I didn’t let myself be held back by something that made me uncomfortable. Have you ever thought that there is no chance that you could do something? Has something ever held you back from doing something? Have you ever then made yourself do it, or succeeded in something that you thought you couldn’t? If so, then leave a comment below! I would love to hear your experiences.