When I was young I remember the white cherry blossoms floating in the air as the breeze would pass. I remember the constant hum of the bees as they would flutter from blossom to blossom and then continue to their hive. Even now as a high school student I love the blossoms in spring and even more the fruit that comes in summer. I have lived on a farm with many acres of cherry trees and apple trees; they have provided the best childhood a person could ever hope for. Hide-and-seek was more challenging, there were always different animals to spy, and incredible running space. I never really knew the impact that nature had on people and their families; not until I started to work out in the cherry orchards themself.
It was the end of June, time to start picking cherries and time to start helping my family with the business; I was 14 at the time and was the only girl out of two brothers who were five to six years older than me. I had to show I could pull my own weight and could keep up. We began early in the morning to work in the cherry orchards; many workers were there before us eager to work but you could tell they were worn out. I never really knew why so many people chose to work for more than nine hours a day on a ladder picking fruit, it never occurred to me that many of these people had no high school degree and had nowhere else to go. My father informed me, “These are the people that provide America with most of their fruit and get little respect and hardly enough pay for what they do,” then my father walked away in the cool morning breeze. I then began to realize how much nature has an impact to these people and to everyone as a whole. These people needed the orchards but more importantly the orchards needed them. I pondered that without nature many people would have no jobs and there would be no precious and different fruit to eat. That summer as I worked for long ended hours had developed a sense of respect for people and respect for the environment.
To this day I recycle and try to help the Earth become a cleaner place. It’s funny how we as society can be blind to something that is fragile, I ended up learning that summer, as well, fruit must be picked a certain way or it could damage the tree, also I learned that trees can get sick almost similar to humans, mostly by parasites. After that realization I started a garden my father and I cared for and I experienced the new life that I took care of and created. Nature helps provide families with necessities but a more momentous realization nature gives people hope and changes people, just as simple as me.