Hello to you all on the Eco-train! It looks like you are all having a blast and keeping yourselves very busy indeed. I am running on similar tracks to yourselves and have noticed your train passing by a few times lately. As we all know, the search and feed features on steemit could do with a bit of a tweak, but who am I to grumble. This place is awesome and yet again I have read a post that just made me want to stop and think for a while.

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It was a question posed by @eco-alex, in one of his most recent #ecotrain blogs. Now it is not often I get chance to stop and smell the proverbial rose. Life seems to be as busy as ever and lately I have been accomplishing some good things along the way, so it is all time well spent. As far as steem-world is going, things are rosy. However, the same can not be said for the world around me and this is probably why Alex's question struck such a cord with me.
I yearn for the world to wake up and for us all to return to our real selves again.

When I read the question for the first time and contemplated an answer, all I could think about was picking up litter and saying hello to folk as they walk by. Like they say, a smile costs nothing and saying hello isn't really anti-social is it? from the looks I sometimes get, you'd think it was...

There were other more obscure answers popping up in my head, but they involved matchsticks and a Guy Fawkes masks. It's not really in the spirit of things and I do like to embrace my less-cynical side, from time to time.
I think the matchsticks can wait for now.... 💥

In the end I gave up, after realising I was trying to hard and decided that getting dinner ready for my Daughter would be a good idea, as she was due home from school very soon. This led to a walk down to the local shop, to pick up some milk and cigarettes. It was on the way back over the railway-bridge that I started staring into the distance, for no real reason other than I like to look at landscapes. The one in front of me was one of large well-established trees. Clifton wood's is what the locals call it and it was where my mother grew up and played. The River Trent separates my town from Clifton woods and I have been there very few times myself. I often wonder how my own mum used to play, back in the day... From what I have been told, my mum sounds like she was quite connected to nature when she was a child and it appeared she took full advantage of it being in abundance at only a short walk away.
My own upbringing was very similar and although I was brought up on the opposite side of the Trent, we had Attenborough nature reserve and, as a child, that place was my enchanted forest.

So milk in one hand and a pack of cigarettes in the other, I was totally in the moment and then the answer to Alex's question hit me.... It was just as I was day-dreaming about just packing up all my stuff, picking a large tree in the middle of Clifton woods and just building my daughter and I a tree-house. Obviously with an 11-year-old girl on board, it would have to be the most over-engineered tree-house on gods green Earth, with unlimited wifi, constant butler service and the Trent would have to be stored and heated in case a power-shower ever packed up.
Haha, I'm just kidding. My little girl is a trooper like her Dad and she loves nature just as much, although she is far too cool to admit that right now...

As the vision of my daughter and I, living in a luxury wooden high-rise, and the imaginary sounds of the birds began to build, I suddenly remembered the question Alex had asked and decided this would be my answer...

The thing I would change is that I would plant a tree.

Wait... Let me finish....

I would plant a tree at the birth of my child and that would be the home she lived in, once she grew to adulthood. If this tradition would have been started before me, I would already be living in my own family tree and the seed wouldn't have to fall to far from my nest.

My word, this idea is just stacked with pre-loaded puns and ironies. I think I could be onto something here...

As I were saying. I would plant a seed and while the years passed and all the necessary lessons had been passed down to my daughter, the tree I had planted 18-years earlier would now be strong enough to hold the beginning of her first home. She and her husband would inhabit the tree and go on to extend both the home and the family. And on the birth of their own child, my grandchild, they too would carefully plant a seed next to the 2nd family tree and again pass down the same traditions.

As you can imagine, after a few generations I would have my whole family living like Ewoks and I reckon that would be pretty effing awesome!! And just imagine if the whole worlds populous decided to do the same? How cool would that be?!

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Until a forest fire comes and wiped us all out, I reckon we would all benefit, massively, from this change. Nobody would have more than one tree and if things did go south, you could always plant another and start again. This would also mean we would be a little more in tune with nature and hopefully become a lot more respectful of it. The wood to build the next generations house would be taken from the trees of the elders and this way nobody would need to take from a stranger, in order to be equal.

Life would become more simple and the lack of consumer needs would create more family time and begin to concentrate life on experiencing what's around us, rather than the drop below us.

Or maybe not and it all turns into a terrible, real-life, mash-up, of 'Planet of the apes' and the 'Lord of the flies'.... Even so, I would be willing to give it a go. It has to be better than the status quo, right?

Video sourced from Nordic Sniffle's Youtube account

Big thanks to @eco-alex and the @ecotrain for posting this question. I have really enjoyed playing out this scenario in my head. I just hope it has come across in my writing, the same way as I see it in my mind.

Big shout outs to @trucklife-family, @familyprotection, @globocop, @pennsif and @scaredycatguide for being so supportive, while I have been on steemit.

Please say a big hello to my friend and brand new steemit member @mrbullet131. He has come onto steemit to help promote his fight against Dementia Fraud in the UK. You can hear Scott's story on @pennsif's radio show, just follow the link below and hold onto your hats!

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(Where sources are not supplied, please assume picture either my own or from pixabay)