South of the Gnat Line PART 1

It started with one tree.A hemlock tree just outside the window of my childhood home in northeast Ohio was a peaceful haven, an escape, and launching pad for a lifetime of Creation care. After school, I bent its branches as I climbed as high as our home’s flat roof, where I often rested on a blanket to read in the sun.There, I listened to the wind rustle the maples and oaks, I watched birds and clouds meander by, and I whispered prayers. “My” tree connected me to a wide and beautiful world, and to God—a connection strengthened later by trips to church camp, my grandparents’ farm, and the shores of Lake Erie. Friends and I created our own neighborhood nature club, and I saved my paper route profits to help save the endangered California condor I head read about in Ranger Rick magazine.Fast forward to adulthood, when I headed up the campus environmental club (and recycling program) in college, edited an environmental journal in graduate school in Montana, edited guidebooks to help others explore wild places, fought for Wilderness in Montana, and eventually landed in south Georgia. Here, agriculture became the focus of my environmental work, and I helped cultivate the sustainable food movement in Tifton (where I live) and across south Georgia. As an ordained Episcopal deacon, I now lead our diocese’s Creation Care Commission.I’ve grown to love the unique wildness of the Coastal Plain and Georgia’s coast—cypress knees, gators, herons, dolphins, sprawling oaks, Spanish moss, black water, and marshes. My family co-stewards 160 acres of over-logged wetland swamp, restoring wildlife populations and trees. Our two sons love to explore the waters and woods around us, fishing, camping, hunting, and canoeing.Now I have the great honor of serving as GIPL’s South Georgia Outreach Coordinator, helping faith communities “south of the gnat line” preserve and restore the rich gifts of Creation—gifts we  all depend on to survive and thrive. I look forward to connecting congregations in this region to GIPL’s resources, and deepening their connection to Creation, God, and neighbors near and far.  If you’re part of a congregation in south Georgia, please be in touch! Together, we can create a cleaner, greener, safer future for Georgia and the world—one tree, one heart, one congregation, one community at a time.By Rev. Deacon Leeann Culbreath,GIPL Outreach Coordinator - South & Coastal Georgia