April arrives again, and the senses come to fullness in its light. There is sun and moisture, and green in every shade pushing out of the earth. There are flowers in profusion along the paths that run the meadows in the hills. There are animals testing their new feathers, fur and scales, making ready their routines for the dance of life that soon will claim all of their attention. All over, the earth is reaching that moment of aliveness that gives energy to those who draw on it to run the cycle of life another time around.

Sometimes it is hard to be an ecologist, even an amateur one. Time exists in many scales when you study how the world has come to be, in vast orders of magnitude that make our moments here tiny by comparison. These long views illustrate our fragile nature, and frame our beautiful, arrogant, personalities with hard truths that we are too small to see. You see the need to tell others that we are living in a culture that is insane, that we are dashing toward misfortune. You know that at some level many of us already understand. There is an unspoken feeling that we can't do anything about it. You also know that humans are beings that are remarkably adaptive, creative and caring, and that maybe, just maybe, we can.

What it would take is a unity that defies our multicultural and multi-perspective world. We all would not only have to share a belief, we would have to act on it.

We are not stupid. If the process of change is slow, and what is required means discomfort, and others who do not follow the long path seem to have a better life, then why should we follow it? By ignorance and by attrition then, individuals from many cultures head one extra child, one extra luxury, one extra peice of nature used up, closer to a fate none of us wants.

What I think will make a difference, at least in our part of the world, is if we can create alternatives, models of sustainable living that are not uncomfortable, that instead are so pleasing to our hearts, minds and bodies that we are attracted to them rather than coerced to use them. I wish I knew what these models looked like. I believe that they have yet to be created, to be built out of the wide range of ideas and technologies and spirit from around the world that for better or worse exist in profusion in our area.

I also think that Sonoma Valley, for all its faults, presents a unique opportunity to explore these models of sustainable living. We have diversity in ideologies, in means, and even in culture. We also have a natural environment that is as diverse as California gets, with microclimates and habitats in abundance connected by water that flows to the bay, forming a foundation for our human community. If we can use these gifts to assemble a community that can live well without compromising the future, we are likely to help our future greatly, and may help the future in other places.

We are already in the process of exploring our future as we look at our community infrastructure--water, sewer, development boundaries and educational facilities. As we do these things we can take the extra time to imagine what they would need to be like "in 100 or even 200 years", as one local commissioner aptly suggested. As each opportunity is presented to make choices about our future, we might link parts of our community and nature together. We might try to be creative enough to breath life into our projects, and conservative enough to have our projects be timeless.

Whether or not we are ready, the future is knocking at our door. We have an opportunity to meet it as a friend, and to set our sights on making our community mean something in the great space of time. I honestly feel this is something we can do.

Happy Earth Day.