Gratitude for the unseen

It’s the season of giving thanks and as I took to writing this, I thought about all the things worth being grateful for. Family. Friends. Food. Time together. Football on TV. Time off work and a chance to get the fall yard work done. 

All great things. 

But writing about gratitude in late November feels so cliché, so overdone. As I sat thinking about all the ways I didn’t want to write about gratitude, I noticed the hum of my space heater (it’s cold in my office). It occurred to me that at the other end of the electricity powering it, there must be some people. I don’t know who they are or exactly what they do, but surely they have to keep the turbines spinning, the generators generating, and the electricity flowing. I’m fairly certain that doesn’t just happen by itself. 

At there it was. The epiphany. The gratitude I’m going to carry through this holiday. Gratitude for the unseen people that make my life situation possible. 

It makes perfect sense, really, considering my position as a conservation guy and nature aficionado. I know that in nature, what you see is only a fraction of what there is. For every tree that contributes color to the fall, there are miles of roots under the soil holding it up. There are entire networks of fungi, mycelium, bacteria, and untold chemical processes that combine to create those leaves and give them their color. 

Beneath the leaves, whether on the forest floor or in my yard, there are insects and decomposers living out unseen lives turning biomass into soil. Or, considering the season, simply settling in under the protective leaf cover in hopes of surviving the winter. Or the rake.

In nature, it’s the unseen organisms and forces that make it all work, that give us all that is necessary to sustain life. And dinner.

The same is true in our human ecosystem. It’s the unseen that makes it all possible. 

That delicious oven roasted turkey, football on TV, and WiFi for all those devices? All possible because people somewhere keep the gas and electricity and communications flowing.

The food on the table? People at grocery stores put it on the shelves. People in trucks brought it to those stores. People at truck stops provided fuel for truck and driver. People in warehouses put it on trucks. People in factories put it in packaging. People in other facilities made the packaging. People on farms grew it, harvested it, and sold it to distributors. People in other factories built the tractors used on the farm. People at NASA (I think, anyway) launched the satellites used by the GPS systems in those tractors and trucks. 

Oh man, this is turning into a rabbit hole I wasn’t expecting. C’mon Alice, it goes deeper. 

Someone, probably at a university somewhere but maybe also in a military research facility, developed the technology used in those GPS systems. A different university research team came up with the medicines, treatments, and seed varieties to grow that turkey now in the oven.

People somewhere wrote the recipe for that turkey, or green bean casserole, or pumpkin pie. Yet more people curate the content and host the website or social platform upon which you found that recipe. 

It’s all so easy to take for granted because it’s unseen and seemingly so far removed from our here-and-now. So let’s bring it closer to home. 

As we spend time with loved ones over the holidays, it’s easy to take for granted that if something should happen, a single three-digit number punched into a phone will send emergency services our way within moments. For that to be possible, there must be people in our own communities not spending time with friends and family so they can pull shifts at the fire station, police department, ambulance service or hospital.

When a winter storm hits over the holidays, who clears the roads so we don’t miss the family gathering? Who fixes the power lines when the ice gets too heavy? Who answers the call when the furnace quits or the sewer backs up? Who keeps the few stores open so we can run out and grab that one ingredient or gift we forgot to get and absolutely must have right now?

Who prepares and serves the community dinners so those less fortunate have a place to gather, eat, and be grateful, at least for the day?

These people are not exactly unseen or unknown to us. They’re our neighbors. Parents of our kids’ friends, brothers, sisters, spouses, parents, grandparents, sons and daughters. 

They’re members of our community. The forces of nature that make this big, complex, often unseen but no longer unrecognized, beautiful and bountiful ecosystem of ours work. 

And for that, I truly am grateful. 

"The Living Land" is the monthly column I write for local newspapers.