Every time I ride my bicycle somewhere instead of taking my truck, I feel like I am doing my little part for climate change and living closer to my ideal of “walking softly on the land,” a phrase used by Strong Eagle on my vision quest with him and write about in my Guru book.
Walking softly on the land is about lowering my carbon footprint. Trying to leave the Mother Earth in better shape, or at least, in no worse shape, for my passing in this lifetime. This is another guiding principle in my life and includes the many other lifestyle practices that are part of my life. Here is a list of some of my other efforts:
- Reducing my overall consumption, living on less with reasonable frugality.
- Reducing plastic usage. I wash my plastic bags and reuse them, then put them into recycling when they no longer can be used.
- I carry my own containers to the grocery store and buy in bulk, thus reducing packaging waste.
- Try to buy with an eye toward the amount of packaging wastage/landfill fodder to minimize.
- Of course, use my own reusable shopping bags.
- Walk, bicycle ride, or don’t go. My truck spends good lengths of time parked. A tank of gas lasts quite a while these days.
- Raise a lot of my own food in my garden.
- Will soon be harvesting my own chicken eggs. It will be March before my hens start laying.
- Practice: Reduce, Repair, Reuse, Repurpose, Recycle, and Rot (compost). My chickens will help in this regard too. They love to go through the compost and big oot bugs and worms, etc.
- At restaurants I carry my own reusable take-home containers so that I do not have to use their styrofoam containers. Styrofoam does not recycle, and it is drowning our landfills, littering the land, filling our waterways and oceans.
- Try to use recyclable materials as much as possible.
- Buy what I can in bulk to reduce waste and packaging.
- Live in a small, not Tiny, energy efficient little house, that before renovating the attic crawl space for an office, was less than 1000 sq ft.
- I’m thinking of installing solar panels but my house is not really set up well with it.
- My rain gutters are attached to water catchment barrels that I use to water my garden and plants in the yard.
I encourage each of you to do what you can so that you and your families also try to WALK SOFTLY ON THE LAND.