If you have read earlier posts, you know that my interest, advocacy and activism related to the Great Lakes is relatively new. It’s not my professional work, and not my sole interest, but the Great Lakes have become a significant actor in my life. I’m sharing today how I shifted my energy in this direction, which is by listening to a whisper.

In her fantastic book The Lightmaker’s Manifesto: How to Work for Change Without Losing Your Joy, Karen Walrond shapes this activist origin story and I immediately connected with it. She interviews a consultant and activist in the arena of women’s and girls’ rights who shares about “the call”:

… for some people there isn’t a single awakening experience. Instead, it’s just a whisper. And I’ve talked to young people who hear the whisper, and they want to get involved more, but they don’t know how.  When they ask for my advice, I always tell them to keep listening to the whisper. Don’t ignore it. Keep listening, and let it guide you to do the very first thing, even if it’s just getting curious.

Getting curious is exactly what I did after my January 2021 retreat on Lake Erie. That year, I read two books about the Great Lakes that anchored my knowledge base – The Living Great Lakes by Jerry Dennis and The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan.  

In 2022, I started to volunteer for two organizations. I became an Ambassador with the Alliance for the Great Lakes, a nonpartisan nonprofit working across the region and in Washington, DC at the federal level, to protect the lakes. As an Ambassador, I join monthly virtual meet-ups with others from around the region for learning sessions on Great Lakes issues. I represent the Alliance at local events in Northeast Ohio. Last year I tabled at Cleveland State University’s EarthFest and at an environmental justice event. I even had the opportunity to be on a panel after a local documentary film festival showed a series of short films on water resources.   

I also joined the Cleveland Metroparks Watershed Volunteer Program (WVP). My volunteer efforts with the WVP focus more on the watershed systems in Northeast Ohio that feed into Lake Erie rather than the lake directly. I have participated in water monitoring activities, planted trees, and cleaned and sorted seeds for rain gardens. These efforts and learnings have impressed upon me the incredible interconnectedness of land and water.

As a result of my advocacy and activism, I’m living in an atmosphere of growth – and a space of creativity I didn’t know I inhabited. As Elizabeth Gilbert writes in her book Big Magic, “I believe that curiosity is the secret. Curiosity is the truth and the way of creative living.” I’m so thankful that you are curious enough about the Great Lakes to join this blog community. But I wonder what other whispers you might hear as well. I encourage you to listen to them.