Credit: Getty Images.

Summer was a revelation 12 years ago when I left New York City, where I grew up, to live in the woods two hours north. I was thrilled to spend the season outdoors after years of cramped, stifling-hot apartments. We didn’t buy air conditioners, preferring to live in the elements we had romanticized. Running through sprinklers, cold showers before bed, later bedtimes, extra ice cream — I loved it all.

We made the big move so that my daughters, then six months and seven years old, could experience nature before global warming made things worse. This isn’t the sort of catastrophic thinking you admit to friends; it was my own climate crisis secret. And my joy at all we discovered in our new-to-us yard was that much greater given this secret. A firefly breeding ground! Butterflies galore! Bunnies, foxes, groundhogs, woodpeckers, native wild raspberries! But also illness-harboring ticks, too many deer, coyotes that kept our cats indoors, and giant black rat snakes in the ceiling above the washing machine. No matter, it was magical; my kids were living my dream.

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Now we fret because we notice........

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