The Call From Afar
When I was a child, my father planted a small vegetable garden in our backyard in New Mexico. The son of Pennsylvania dairy farmers, his hands understood how water could make the impossible happen. One day that summer, he pulled a carrot out of that dry soil like a magician pulls rabbits from a hat. Though I did not know it at the time, he had planted a seed in my memory that connects me to Earth Day April 22, 1970, and to all that has happened to our planet in the 56 years since then.
In addition to being a gardener, my father was a pilot—a fact that inspired a powerful sense of awe and wonder as I watched him take off and land as though they were mere feathers carried aloft toward the clouds before returning safely to earth. I knew nothing about aerodynamics and did not experience flight myself until I flew from the Midwest to Chicago sixty years ago and began training as a Peace Corps Volunteer bound for Thailand the following year.
That chapter in my life changed my sense of the world as viewed from the Midwest to one centered on the other side of the globe. When I looked up from my small wooden house outside of Bangkok, the sky was filled with stars in a sea of darkness. Without a phone, computer, or source of transportation except a bus, taxi, or three-wheeled tuk-tuk motorcycle that spewed black exhaust fumes, I moved at a slower pace that allowed me to reflect on what I experienced and observed over the course of the three years that Southeast Asia was my world.
On July 19, 1969, Astronaut Neil Armstrong took his first steps on the dusty lunar surface of the moon. I watched the Apollo 11 moon landing, along with an estimated 650 million people, on a tiny black-and-white TV screen while sitting on the floor of my Thai landlord’s 100-year-old teakwood house. Months later as the crew of Apollo 11 was on a round-the-world tour, I shook Armstrong’s hand at the American Embassy in Bangkok, connecting me to space, the moon, and history as powerfully as my father’s hands had connected me to the earth and its beauty when I was a child.
Images of the earth from space revealed our tiny planet’s beauty and rekindled an awareness of its fragile environment. It is up to us to act—to plant trees, remove plastic trash from the oceans, clean up toxic rivers, teach our children about gardens and where their food comes from, find alternative sources of energy that are clean and renewable, recycle trash, and raise awareness of the plight of endangered species before they are gone.
The recent journey back into space and around the far side the moon by Artemis II’s space craft and crew of four astronauts inspired the world and connected us once again. Earth Day reminds us of our mission to teach our children to get involved in some way in protecting the environment. And today, Arbor Day encourages us to plant trees wherever we can. Like the first footprint left on the moon by Neil Armstrong, every step large or small taken to improve the health of our beautiful planet is a step for mankind’s future.
Today, many former astronauts continue to hear a call from afar and are on a mission. Over 100 former NASA astronauts have created a nonpartisan organization called Astronauts for America. They have sworn to “defend the Constitution of the United States and are committed to science, evidence-based decision-making, public service and the rule of law.” They’ve seen their home from space and know that all is not well. To learn about their mission, visit www.AstronautsForAmerica.org.