Earth Day Reflections 2026: Scents, Spirals, and the Wonders of Being on Earth

Happy Earth Day, friends 🤍

It’s hard to ignore how intense this moment in time feels. With so much shifting - ecologically, socially, politically, and personally - there’s a constant awareness of what’s fragile, what’s changing, and what’s at risk. To be alive right now is to feel that weight at times, to feel the urgency and the uncertainty, the sheer scale of it all pressing gently (and sometimes not so gently) against daily life. And yet, at the very same time, there is something undeniably wondrous about being here on this Earth, something that continues quietly beneath all of that noise, asking to be noticed.

In these times, it feels more important than ever to find moments of joy and beauty while also tending to our collective grief, and the very real experience of eco-grief as we live through collapse and change. There is no bypassing that reality, no pretending it isn’t happening. And yet, one of the quiet miracles of nature is its persistence. Despite everything, the jasmine still blooms. The bees are still buzzing. Butterflies still migrate each year, making their long journey Mexico. Life keeps finding a way. Even as we witness record temperatures, even as things feel unstable or frightening, there is something that continues to move, to grow, to flower. Honoring that movement - staying close to it, letting it influence how we move through the world—has become essential for me.

Living in New Orleans, we are still deeply connected to nature in our daily lives in a way that feels both grounding and necessary. Spring arrives and the city opens. Festival season begins, and suddenly everything moves outward. We gather outdoors, we listen to live music drifting through the air, we eat crawfish with our hands, we sit beneath trees and remember what it feels like to be together in a shared space. Community feels more important than ever right now. To be outside, to be with others, to be on the land - even in small, simple ways - feels like a form of care, a way of staying connected to something real. These moments aren’t just leisure; they are grounding, necessary, and deeply life-giving.

Having a child has deepened this experience for me in a way I couldn’t have anticipated. I can’t stay in the darkness for too long, because I’m constantly being pulled back into wonder through her eyes. Watching my daughter experience jasmine for the first time, or noticing the shape of a magnolia flower, brings me back into the present in a way nothing else quite can. She doesn’t know about climate change. She doesn’t know we are living in a terrifying time as a species. She simply experiences the world as it is - alive, beautiful, and worth exploring. We spend so much time outside - at playgrounds, under trees, in the small pockets of nature that exist all around us - and through her, I remember something important: wonder is still available. Seeing nature through her eyes gives me hope. It softens something in me and invites me back into curiosity, into play, into presence. I’ve come to feel that curiosity might actually be an antidote to fear. Because when you stay curious, you keep noticing. And when you keep noticing, you begin to see all the ways life is still moving - still blooming, still becoming. The flowers still open. The air still carries scent. The Earth continues its quiet, intricate work.

The Earth hasn’t stopped expressing herself! The spirals are still forming. The plants are still growing - quietly, intelligently - shaped by patterns, cycles, and seasons. There is still so much to notice, so much still unfolding.  To sink into the natural world right now isn’t to ignore reality - it’s to remember what is still here, still functioning, still offering itself in small, intricate ways. A leaf unfurling, the smell of citrus in the air, the warmth of the sun rising across your skin, the grounding depth of soil beneath your feet - these are not small things (I remind myself of this daily). They are evidence of continuity, of life continuing even now, even here, even through everything.

From my work at Wellspring, I’ve come to understand that scent and breath are inseparable, and that this relationship offers a kind of quiet anchor in the midst of everything else. Every session, every inhale, is a reminder that you don’t just smell something once - you move through it again and again, each breath revealing something new, something slightly shifted. I’ve started to think of scent as a spiral rather than something linear - or even circular. It opens, softens, disappears, then returns, never quite the same, moving through its own rhythm on its own time, repeating like a beloved memory that changes as you do. There’s something in that pattern that feels deeply familiar to me, like the quiet intelligence behind the Fibonacci sequence - a pattern that doesn’t rush, doesn’t force, only unfolds.

To me, the spiral - one of the oldest geometric forms - holds a certain mystery, something almost otherworldly that I find myself continuously drawn to. I notice it out in the wild, in the way plants unfurl themselves toward light, in the subtle curves of growth and decay, in patterns that feel less like coincidence and more like a language my body already understands. 

What fascinates me most is how scent lives in the body, how deeply it is woven into who we are. Through the Limbic system, fragrance doesn’t just help you remember something - it returns you to it. A moment, a feeling, a version of yourself that feels both distant and immediate all at once. And that return isn’t direct or predictable. It moves through you, around you, within you - like a spiral.

Maybe this is part of what it means to be here in this moment - to hold many truths at once. The intensity of being alive right now, and the joyful, magical wonder of the Earth. Both existing together, neither canceling the other out. I try not to rush past either one. To let myself be affected fully. To cry, to scream, to rage, to laugh, to hug my friends, my family, my loved ones so tightly. To really feel what it means to be here, in this body, on this Earth, at this time, to love this Earth, in all her chaos and all her wonder.

Happy Earth Day 🤍

xo, Kathleen