Showing posts with label Sweet Gum trees. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sweet Gum trees. Show all posts

10/23/09

Save the Rainforests or else!

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Edge of Petrified Forest, a drawing in honor of denuded forests everywhere - this forest looks rather lonely and sad, doesn't it?

Well, there is something we all could use and that's keeping global rainforests alive and well so the earth can breathe! And lush rainforests have many other benefits for humankind and the animal kingdom as well.

Check out the UK's Prince of Wales, Prince Charles, as he speaks about it in a video that exhorts us to Save the Rainforests.

Then there's the Pachamama Alliance, an organization that does great work all over the place and alerts people to the issues of a what a world without rainforests would be and how serious we must become in our efforts to save them.

As a child I loved nothing better than drawing.

But that was after a day of my other love, running through the forests - 'woods' we called them in Georgia - along old Indian trails, jumping over wayward rattlesnakes coiled on the path, and generally being a wild child on what I dubbed 'safaris' leading my neighborhood friends who had no better sense than to follow me! I ran the fastest, you see, and was quite fearless, though you wouldn't guess it now.

Drawing trees and plants around my parents' yard was a biggie, too, for both my parents were good gardeners which was very inspiring to a child who loved to draw.

Perhaps somewhere in an old sketchbook there may lurk a drawing of a Sweet Gum tree which was a favorite effort of mine for years. And of course, we loved to have Sweet Gum ball battles where we'd throw the spiky little orbs as hard as we could at each other. Ouch! What good aim you have!

Fastforward to today and I still love to draw trees and the occasional forest, and the idea of a world without rainforests is not a future I can or want to face.

Now how about you? Hugged, drawn, or better yet - saved - a tree lately?
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