Our Autumn 2008 issue features a beautiful photo essay on our forest friends building their food reserves for winter called “Harvesting in a Time of Plenty”. Our website now boasts a lovely slide show presentation of this same essay.
These images keep coming back to me as I consider the current economic realities facing all of us. If our current financial crisis can be compared to winter in the animal kingdom, how will the human world respond to the scarcity? We are clearly going into a time that is more likely lean than plentiful.
The animal world keeps things pretty basic; birds and beasts know their preferred foods, they know their beechnuts from their berries. They don’t always make it through tough times and extreme conditions, but they do try to prepare as best they can.
Like all nonprofits, Northern Woodlands relies on the largesse of our supporters. We plan ahead and have some reserves, but the larder does need to be replenished. Have we stored away enough of those beechnuts? If not, is it too late to gather what we need? I don’t think so.
In these past few weeks, I have seen testament to the best of human nature. I am awed and inspired by what I see and by its implications. Perhaps we do know what’s important.
I am the person in the office at Northern Woodlands who gets to process all the donations. We just mailed our annual appeal out on Thanksgiving week. We make “the ask” only twice a year, in the interest of saving paper and patience. This year was a huge unknown. It would not have surprised me in the least if we did not receive one single envelope back. That would have been completely understandable. What will next year bring, how will the economic downturn ripple through our community, and what will recovery look like? No one really knows, though we do love to speculate.
So here I am with a pile of new envelopes. A five dollar check almost moves me to tears, suspecting that it took serious consideration to shed that from the root cellar. The larger checks amaze me, that there is still enough faith out there to give to others. In one pile of about 40 envelopes, over half of the gifts are from new donors, subscribers who have never contributed to our nonprofit before beyond the cost of the magazine subscription. I am shocked that someone will still add a new concern to the list of things they care about. We are choosing to extend ourselves, to share resources rather than let fear take its grip.
Maybe this is how humans create our new bounty and what our economic recovery will look like. We will take a step back and consider what constitutes dinner as opposed to a smattering of berries for dessert; sweet, but not enough. The black bear instinctively knows that the beechnut is 50% fat and will serve him well. He’ll climb pretty high to get it.
Just like the animal kingdom, we all have basic needs to meet and we know our priorities when we stop to think about it. All of us at Northern Woodlands are truly grateful to be a priority in the lives of our readers. We work hard to make a difference in the future of our forests because we believe it’s critically important. Apparently, so do you. Thank you.