We all have each had transcendent experiences of nature. Hiking meandering brown brushstrokes of dirt trails in the Redwood Forest walled by towering trunks of timber like giant pencils growing from the ground. Sights of geological phenomena like the lava red craters of the Grand Canyon or the steel blue rises of the Grand Tetons with bleached white toupees. Maybe like us, you have also been in the midst of preternatural landscapes that could only be matched by our childhood dreams of heaven. In those moments, we take a breath. A sigh of relief. It is as if creation talks to us in its sights and sounds, smells and textures. Creation affects us in its commanding equilibrium, grounding our souls to the rhythms and reverberations of peace. But it’s not the only way it communicates.

Sustainability consciousness does not come naturally in a culture of capitalism. Capitalism teaches us to master the art of taking from the land. It reinforces a consumer relationship with resources, automating a modus operandi within us that prioritizes accessibility, convenience, and affordability. It plants a seed of consumerism within us at such an early age, seducing our eyes with all the possibilities of what we can have and overwhelming us with the question “what do you want?” that when we finally realize that production of a thing comes at a cost, it is too late. Uprooting our lives is too unimaginable. And everything does come at a cost. Much of what we consume comes at a cost far too costly than what it is worth. What might not cost us in dollars may cost us the earth. Incorporating sustainability practices into our everyday is a practice of decolonizing our minds, and therefore, unbecoming colonizers of the land.

One of the truest things I have come to know through my craft is that we parents, in the most mundane things, in the way we dress our children, and the way we make them food full of nutrition (or not, as is the case sometimes in our home), we are putting our love for our loved ones into tangible, physical objects.