> slowly
My grandfather, who raised me, was born in 1919 and died in 2003. He didn't say much about anything, but he watched, listened and observed, always.
He lived most of his adult life in suburban Southern California, but thanks to a 30 union job, and an early retirement, we spent each summer, all of it, camping in the eastern high sierras. Growing up with them, I first went in 1970, and (with them) last went in 1990.
He noted on more than one occasion how much less wildlife there was in the deep woods we used to hike together. He said it was 'quiet', and I sensed anxiety from the old man as he said it.
This moved the young me, profoundly, because my grandfather was the most stolid person I've ever known. No surprise: he spent his teenage years in the dust bowl, following a 5 mile trap line in the often brutal Nebraska winters, with a rifle, by the age of 14, in order to help keep the family from starvation. As a young man, he survived some of the most brutal battle in the Pacific.
A man who, faced with armed and dangerous gangs in the neighborhood he bought into decades earlier, showed no fear.
A man connected to the land in ways most of us can't even imagine today, he was worried about how the land was changing.
Thus, I effectively automatically, by default, became a young person who cared very deeply about the environment.
> we boil
I consider all of this, and my 16 year old son, and no clarity is apparent to me.