To my niece, Kathryn

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I’m writing on a cold late-November day in 2019. I’m sitting in a warm storefront room in Missoula, Montana with a lovely group who have come to write their thoughts and pledges of action on climate change. They are smart and motivated, mostly women, and they have brought their children.

I hope you will read this letter 30 years from now, maybe with your own children around you. It’s fun to imagine you not as a wriggling, dancing 6 year-old, but as grown-up and living as the capable and thoughtful citizen that your parents are now nurturing. I wonder what your world will look like; what is wonderful and what is terrible, what inspires you and what furrows your brow. A central idea of my writing companions this morning is that what we do now on climate issues will profoundly shape your world and the contours of your lives.

My greatest hopes are that we here now will participate in a global movement that demands and builds a new way of living that can persist on a small planet. Further, that way of life must deeply connect us to the natural world. The first part is essential for our bare existence as a culture and species, the second is crucial for allowing lives that are worth sustaining. These goals have been the guide stars that my parents instilled in me. I pray we are able to move decisively in that direction. I hope you have found that celebrating and connecting with all the lives around you is among the greatest satisfactions we can know.

In 2019, the storm clouds over the future are dark. Every climate report arrives with deeply difficult news. Our action must accelerate NOW! But our politics are paralyzed and compromised in ways I never imagined could happen. Fear, division, and greed for short-term wealth are rampant - for now. If today’s trends continue unaltered, 2050 will be one very tough year among many.

But those trends are far from inevitable. Averting the worst of the projected futures, and building on the positive potentials that also teem around us, is what I commit to doing. 

  • I will continue to teach upcoming generations to love the wildness in towns and rivers and mountains. 

  • In the coming year I will ride my bike to a world conference on the climate in Scotland. 

  • I will help build programs for people to offset their carbon emissions with beneficial projects in their own communities. 

  • I will organize and participate politically, and I will write and speak widely on these issues.

  • I will work to connect local actions to national and global efforts.

  • I will refresh myself and my communities in nature as often as I can.

  • I will meditate and pray to set the intention to foster a lovable and vibrant world.

I have already been so surprised at changes that I never imagined could happen, for the better and the worse, that I will make no predictions. But I know that the paths toward greater engagement, love, and abundance will always exist and we must set our faces and feet that way. Be well Kathryn!

A letter from an uncle to his niece submitted as part of the DearTomorrow Missoula project. Submit your letter online or at one of our drop locations around town.