To Earth, with Love

Dian Parker offers a love song to our beautiful planet in her celebration of the “extravagant diversity” she sees all about her in two places, Vermont and Costa Rica, that she intimately knows.

(From the 2024 issue of Deep Wild Journal)

The lush fecundity of this earth is radical. In the jungle, the world expands. Everything appears plump, watered, swollen, robust, and large. In Vermont winters, everything tightens, shrinks, goes inward, slows, hibernates, becomes still. The air is dry, static. The Toucans in the early morning tropics sing and chatter, dive-bomb down valleys, and flip bananas in the air. And here in the North, the early morning ravens clatter and swoop, just as wild and free.

In the jungles of Costa Rica and in the woods of Vermont, life celebrates in diverse splendor. Whether in the midst of dripping humidity or the harsh biting winds of winter, everything is lushly itself. Look at that bright yellow and maroon beak, the flash of red then white at the tail as it swings airborne, its blue feet, the glossy black body—the Chestnut-mandibled Toucan does not quit its excitements all day long. And neither does the sleek blue-black raven that cackles, swoops and glides along the tops of trees. Down below is all white and frigid and the raven still dances with the wind.

White-faced monkey and winter-white hares; scarlet macaws and pileated woodpeckers; parades of leaf cutter ants and snow tunnels of voles; the Guanacaste tree with a massive hemispheric crown wider than its impressive height, and all the trees in Vermont that withstand high winds and moaning frigid nights—these contrasts are shocking, miraculous, bewildering, astonishing, and electrifyingly impressive.

I don’t want to ever lose the wonder of our world. At home or afar, nature flaunts. It sings and flies, plays and proliferates. It thrives if left alone. Nature flourishes, every day, on every corner of the planet where humans don’t interfere with its bountiful aliveness.

Dian’s essay is one of over fifty essays. stories, and poems from wild places in the 2024 issue of Deep Wild: Writing from the Backcountry. This winter, bring more wild words into your life! See deepwildjournal.com.