Founts of wavy grass
Burst up to the sky, fireworks
Amid autumn hues

​When we're in school, we learn about a fair number of things.  Things that are preparing us for the world we live in today.  Or at least that's what the goal is supposed to be.  We learn about math, science, language (region-specific), history (less obviously region-specific), and arts.  These classes help us interface with the abstractions we've built on the world as we know it.  Instead of discovering mathematic principle, we learn foundations built over time.  Instead of analyzing the Earth and our universe, we learn how others before us did just that so we can, in time, build on that knowledge.

We also spend a bit of time learning how to interface with the constructs we've built around the world.  In addition to verbal and written literacy, we have classes for technical and digitally social literacy.  As we move the needle further down the path of humanity's growth, this will continue to change the things we learn about.

As this happens, we should be aware that some things humanity abstracts are simply things that make other constructs we've built easier to understand.  The internet was once a complex environment that only governments and college students had ready access to, and the devices we used to interface with that environment were considered too complex to be of much use to the typical human.  But humans move fast, and as that thought was quickly outdated, we develop skills and abstractions to make this truly complex idea of a digitally connected planet available, quite literally, in the palm of your hand.

However, when the abstractions we build are around our planet, we need to be aware of that.  Of the many things humans have built, some of those conveniences, in the form of abstractions, come with a few costs.  One of those costs is a very real drain on our planet.  Another is harder to see, but is felt over time: a lack of literacy.  The cost here is knowledge.  This is where environmental education can help.

Under guise of leaf
Not flowing, though rigid form
Cozy fruit abode

​Crinkle of dry leaves
Splash of prismatic color
Spectacle of fall

Ruffle of feathers
Together they weather tides
Of life's rolling sea