The air quality in my neighborhood was recently affected by the wildfires. For days, there were no blue skies; a pall of smoke hung stubbornly in the air. One morning I looked out and wondered how we came to this. I thought about viruses, fires, heatwaves, and summer snowstorms. I thought of our current politics, the extreme polarization of our views that paralyzes us into petty arguments and lofty discussions, but no action. And most of all I felt the longing build inside me. The longing to be able to walk, see the mountains, feel the morning sun on my face, hear the birds, the squelch of mud on my hiking boots, and taste the salty ocean on my tongue. 

“Is there hope?” I wondered.

Behind me, my family was engaged in a different search. “What’s the heaviest creature on earth?” my eight-year-old asked. (We do this often – the heaviest, the biggest, the fastest, the tallest.) While my husband typed the question into his browser, we guessed the answer – An extinct dinosaur? The blue whale? The sequoia tree? Turns out, the heaviest creature on earth is a giant organism called Pando. Pando is a forest. A colony of quaking aspen trees in Utah with the same genetic identity and one root system. Its been around for thousands of years and weighs around 13 million pounds. 

I visualized this massive creature, the trembling giant, born of a single seed, spreading over acres; branches, leaves, bark silently bearing witness to the history of humankind. My husband continued reading of the current threat to this organism’s survival, its vulnerability to drought, grazing, human development, and fires. My wonder turned quickly into desperation and an urgency took hold of me. 

“We must see Pando,” I exclaimed to my family.

“My eight-year-old looked at me and said, “No Mamma, we must save Pando.”

Maybe, there is hope after all.