Round Top, New York: My Climate Origins
Brookline, MA
2024, Senior, Creative Writing
The most connected I’ve felt to the environment is at my grandmother’s house. It’s in upstate New York, in a “hamlet” called Round Top after the Catskill Mountains right next to it. Her house is on a dirt road that doesn’t exist on Google Maps – the pin just drops on a green patch. Every room in her house is etched permanently in my mind: the green tile in her kitchen, the sun-bleached couch upstairs, the shelves and shelves of books and photos. The air in her house is full of stories: seeing Joan Baez and Bob Dylan live in 1963, being kicked off of the Navajo reservation she was teaching at for being too radical, living down the street from members of the Symbionese Liberation Army in Berkeley, and writing the chapter about venereal diseases in Our Bodies, Ourselves. I became rooted in the strong beliefs and activism that are what makes my grandmother the person she is. She likes to say that a lot of traits skipped a generation, from her, over my dad, to me. We have a similar way of thinking and doing, and we both can’t resist the satisfaction of foraging for mushrooms or digging in the dirt for potatoes. I learned to drive on her dirt roads in a crash mix between a golf cart and a very very small pickup truck: it doesn’t have power steering and can’t go more than fifteen miles per hour. My memories best memories there are all outside: harvesting vegetables in her garden, picking wild berries, making jam, walking around the pond down the road, or seeing bear cubs near the dumpster. This is the country, completely divorced from my everyday life in Brookline. In my mind, I always naïvely believed Round Top would be there forever with my grandmother, her garden, and every piece of landscape I remember since I could remember things. In my mind, Round Top would always be there for me to go back to. Obviously I know my grandmother won’t be there forever, but I always thought that the land would stay the same.
However, I’m not five anymore. I can see what’s happening right in front of me: severe storms, long droughts, and high heat. We haven’t had a real snow storm in years, summers are hotter and hotter, and every rain storm feels apocalyptic. Round Top may not be the same forever. My cousin is a farmer half an hour from Round Top, and last year her entire fruit crop was decimated by inordinately high rain levels and late frosts. Those wild berries might not flourish like they did three years ago. The pond might begin to dry up or overflow. The bear cubs might not survive if there isn’t enough food for them. Things already feel different. The land feels like it is holding its breath, waiting for our next move.
It’s easy to feel hopeless in such an existential crisis. Maybe we should just enjoy being outside while it lasts and then forget about it. Even if I wanted to, I don’t think I could do that. Round Top feels foundational to my being. I couldn’t leave it behind if I wanted to. While it’s hardly the only reason I care about the climate, my experience at my grandmother’s house is integral to how I think about my environment and climate. I’ve been involved in climate work since fifth grade, when my teacher started a club to reduce plastic waste at our elementary school. I organized a school walkout for climate in conjunction with the broader climate strikes happening in seventh grade. I got involved with the Sunrise Movement and the Jewish Youth Climate Movement. I’ve helped organize actions that shut down the investment firm BlackRock and worked on mobilizing my community ot fight hard for climate action. I’ve worked on a variety of political campaigns and for different political organizations, all with the fundamental goal of addressing the climate crisis. In everything I have done, climate has been essential because, in my opinion, how can we attempt to fix other problems when we have the largest existential crisis facing humanity ever looming over our shoulders. For me, inaction was never an option. I needed to act and feel as though I was doing something, even if it was small, to help out. I think I would have felt a need to be politically active even if the climate was not as big of an issue. In case you haven’t noticed, we have a lot of things to work on. Within climate work, we can address lots of other problems such as racial and economic disparities in society. I have really internalized what my family implicitly taught me: when there is a moment of mass movement and crisis, why would you not be involved? My grandmother was part of the anti-war, civil rights, and feminist left in the 1960s and 1970s, my grandfather, along with other doctors, published lists of safe abortion clinics before Roe V. Wade, and my mother advocated for nuclear disarmament when all-out nuclear holocaust seemed like a real possibility. To be raised on stories of the Black Panther Constitutional Convention, the March on Washington, massive anti-nuclear weapon protests, and countless phone calls for various candidates, there is no other option but to be involved. Political organizing and activism practically felt like my birthright, and a needed one, in the contest of the climate crisis. Getting involved just felt right, like a necessary and obvious progression of my life.
It’s really hard to feel like we can have an impact on this gigantic crisis, but I know, when I’m sick and tired of fighting so hard for something that seems impossible, I go back to where it all started. I think of the rolling hills and endless trees, the smell of good food spiraling out from the house, and the rollicking stretches of garden full of snakes and garlic and lavender. I feel the sun beating onto my face as I weed and cut and harvest. I hear laughing around the kitchen sink, music radiating across the yard, and stories being passed down with reverence. Round Top taught me how to be brave of bears (they’re more scared of you than you are of them!), how to find the right kind of mushrooms (there’s a book, and don’t eat anything you’re unsure about), and what it meant to create a community space outdoors (everyone must be fed and have somewhere comfortable to sit). This place will change. Leaves will fall, rocks will erode, and buildings will be consumed by the earth. I’m going to fight like hell to keep it that way, in the timeline of nature and not the timeline of fossil fuel corporations.
Reflection
Reflection
I’ve written climate stories before, more geared to a speech angle and have learned the basic structure of establishing your personal story, how bad the crisis is, and how we can all fix it together. I used that vague structure to write this but focused more on the personal and sensory details and memories that define my relationship with my grandmother and her house. It was really nice to reflect on my connection to her and the land that I’ve known forever. My message is pretty personal telling my story of climate involvement but I hope it encourages other people to think about their connection to our land and how they care for it. I’ve learned that the biggest action on climate requires a lot of political will and power to accomplish things. I will continue to be involved in climate organizations like Sunrise and JYCM in college and plan to continue my political involvement. I’m going to be in Canada for college so I’m looking forward to learning how to effectively make change there.