My recent high school reunion took place in a small town. To my surprise the population has blossomed to 7500 people, 1500 more than in early 60s when I lived there. It now has a MacDonald and a TJ Max.
This is a place, like many small towns, where people know one another. It’s unavoidable. They run to each other at football games and the grocery store because, other than the new Walmart store, there is only one other grocery store in town.
Eighty four percent of towns in the U.S. are under 10,000 in population. Some are near larger cities. Many are not. Many are surrounded by farmland and tucked into forests. Lakes and streams dot the countryside. Even their urban areas are lush with the old growth of oaks, maples and poplars. This was the playground of my youth.
During my visit to Hastings, in western Michigan, the grass seemed greener and the air seemed easier to breathe than in the south Florida sprawl that is my current home. I shared updates and reminisced with former classmates. All agreed, it was a great place to grow up and, except for an occasional bully, it was a safe place to be a child.
However, as I was enjoying the innocent days of my youth, I missed what I perceived were the advantages of big city life: baseball parks, symphonies, theaters, and a great variety of restaurants and clubs. All things I take for granted today. Later I realized that my small-town environment had provided me an appreciation for something city dwellers did not have. I knew where milk came from. I learned that the fish were fewer and smaller when the lake became polluted. I learned that miss managed forests are prone to fires. I learned that we are sharing this space with other animals whose lives are impacted when we chop down their habitat to build new homes, stores and parking lots.
But within this idyllic setting it seemed as if the residents of this town, and maybe others, are detached from the climate crisis. That Mother Nature has been responding to our collective abuse with hurricanes, forest fires and floods at a record pace, may be lost on those whose air is still fresh and whose water is pure. One may be inclined to lament that the residents of small towns see the climate crisis as someone else’s problem.
I use the word “detached” because during my five days visit, I saw nary a roof with a solar panel on it and only two electric cars on the roads. Michigan has a bottle return program that encourages recycling, but if people were reducing their purchase of single use plastic, eating more organic food and picking up groceries in reusable bags I didn’t see it.
Admittedly, when I drive past the high-rise apartments and multi-family complexes in larger cities it’s difficult to notice the signs of overt action. Global warming is affecting everyone. Forest fires are laying waste to small towns and cities have become heat islands. Ice caps are melting and small towns are flooding, but so are cities being inundated by rising seas and more powerful hurricanes.
Be you farmer or city dweller, worker bee or retiree, we are all in this together. This is the crisis of our lifetime. This is what I write about. In my books Dr. Derk Bryan pursues the maniacal culprits out to destroy the balance of nature to satisfy their own personal greed while he seeks to reduce his own carbon footprint. We may not be as obsessive as him and there are limits to what individuals can do, but we must start somewhere.
For example, Michael Barnett recently published an article for Forbes magazine in which he lists the most important six or seven things our society can do to combat global warming, the primary culprit in climate change. Posted upon my website are Dr. Derk Bryan’s “Top 10 Ways you can Stop Global Warming.
Regarding my books, each has tackled a different challenge to our environment and our health. In Pest, it is pesticides. In Dead Wrong, it is toxic spills and global warming. My upcoming book, The Girl with the Red Nails, reveals the side effects of plastics — I had no idea they were so disruptive — all while introducing you to a bevy of characters that will make you laugh and cry.
Back to small towns. In 2018 I released A Letter to My Grandson. The early chapters contain humorous stories about growing up in Hastings. As news of the book was passed among former classmates, it led to a reunion of people I had not seen in decades. Each one had a story to tell about our small town and the teachers who either inspired them or humored them, the jocks, the goofballs, those who were destined for greatness and the dismay about those who grew up there and never left. After a few days in my small home-town I now know why. It was and still is a great place to grow up and live.
To order any of my books and gain insight to what inspired me to write the Dr. Derk Bryan environmental crimes detective series, go to my website: www.GSpencerMyers.com.