Let’s take a minute to appreciate the planet we live on. It’s a pretty amazing place – even the parts that don’t have prairies. Here are a few photos to help remind all of us how great the world is.

Helping to keep our planet clean, healthy, and productive is no different than investing time and energy into maintaining and improving your house/apartment or neighborhood. We all benefit from clean air, clean water, food production, aesthetic beauty, and all the other perks of living on a healthy earth. Doing your part to conserve natural resources and ensure the vitality of ecosystems doesn’t mean you have to chain yourself to a tree or march on Washington. It’s more about doing little things that don’t greatly impact your lifestyle.

On this Earth Day, please consider whether there are one or two small ways you can help. Start a compost pile in your backyard, buy some native wildflowers for your garden, or take your kids out to a nearby natural area and look for frogs or butterflies. Grow your hair and beard really long, buy a yurt, and move out into the wilderness (I’m kidding, of course – the beard is completely optional.)

Most importantly, please help depoliticize conservation. Investing in the future of our planet and natural resources isn’t something that should be tied to political parties or philosophies. We don’t have to agree on the best path to keep moving in the same direction. Our planet is awfully beautiful, and it is the only we’ve got for now. Thanks for your help, and happy Earth Day.

I spent Friday at the Niobrara Valley Preserve, helping with a prescribed fire, so didn’t have time for a blog post. However, I did find a few minutes to climb up above the river as the sun came up through the fog Friday morning. Here are a couple quick photos from that spot.