No matter which side of the political spectrum people are on, there seems to be a consensus that the Earth, this home of ours, needs protection. How we do that is where it gets complicated and political.
Working off that commonality, we can all celebrate Earth Day today, a moment dedicated to environmental protection, making the places we live in sustainable and keeping harmony between us, between us and the landscape and between us and the wildlife we share it with.
It is a basic tenet that we take care of our homes. This is our only collective home (For now).
At Great Plains, we are privileged to be operating in some of the Earth’s epicentres of pristine nature, where it is at its best, showing off its finery in flashes of colour as birds take off, or in the shadow of Kilimanjaro, where the land stretches both horizontally and vertically from our camp ol Donyo Lodge in Kenya. Very few people don’t enjoy natural spaces, and here it is in abundance. We thrive on it, it’s quiet, it’s power.
I am often surprised when guests look out at the view at Duba Plains in Botswana, for example, and marvel at it, “There’s nothing out there!” and say it with appreciation.
Actually, there is everything out there except the detritus of humanity.
I am not surprised when a guide stops and, without interrupting his discourse about something, gets out of the vehicle and picks up a plastic bottle in the Mara. It is not the training, but the innate drive to be a caretaker of nature, to quickly restore harmony. It takes little or no effort, and today it almost takes more effort to see waste and ignore it.
We have come a long way, and while Earth Day was established to highlight what we must do, in many ways I see it as a celebration of how far we’ve come…and to keep it up.
Each and every safari goer with us is here to appreciate and celebrate that harmony. You come because it is harder to find these epicentres of harmony now, and because we need them so we can remain centred ourselves.
