06/18/2025
We had the pleasure of planting a food forest at P.S 62 π±
When I was a kid, I spent almost all my time outside. I caught bugs, fish, various animals, Iβd keep notes, try to build ecosystems, and maintain an overall wonderment about nature. As adolescence reached me, I stopped flipping rocks and digging in the mud and began focusing on my social life and ultimately survival of middle and then high school.
After many years away, I eventually returned to these interests last year through a goldfish I won at Coney Island. As I began looking around me again, I was stunned by how much it felt I missed all these years; the animals, the plants, even the bugs that we casually dismiss on a daily basis. Things that have taken millions of years to be where they are, weβre either afraid of or readily destroy it in apathy.
And now, as an adult, the same bugs I used to count the days till summer for, are disappearing. Water ways begin surfacing trash, and people are too wrapped up in temporary social issues to consider the environment around them that has existed forever, and is now vanishing under the weight of our negligence.
Most of this is due to lack of exposure. Growing up in cities, most kids never really experience nature or are under the assumption that it doesnβt really exist in their concrete jungle. Which isnβt true, as we can never be apart from nature.
As a kid, my Trini family never lost that love for the outdoors. I was taken crabbing, fishing, my father always planted a garden, and knew lots about insect species⦠Which stimulated my interests and care about the natural world around me.
I remember having a program in 2nd Grade which taught us all about birds here in NY. They took us on trips to see swallows and identify pigeons. To this day, I still use the knowledge I learned when I glance at any ordinary bird.
So now, 20 years later, being able to show almost 200 2nd Graders how to plant their own food, is truly an honor of my life. If kids donβt see a seed become the flower, if they donβt see the bigger fish eat the smaller fish, or the worm wriggle in the mud, they wonβt know why it matters, and why they need to take care of what remains.
