You are a summer camp counselor. Last year was the hottest summer on record.

What's happening in the background of our children's lives?

This essay can be experienced as a video here:

You are a summer camp counselor. Last year was the hottest summer on record, and this summer has a good chance of being even hotter. You tie a little girl’s shoe because she doesn’t know how to do it herself. One million species will go extinct before she’s in high school. The kids try — and fail — to teach you how to cartwheel. You keep falling onto your chest halfway through. Everybody laughs. At the current rate, humanity will exceed the carbon budget before any of them can get a driver’s license. You play brainteaser games with the kids on the bus — black magic, green glass door, under my umbrella. Summers in the Arctic Ocean are projected to be ice-free before any of them are as old as the camp’s program director. You remind everybody to fill up their water bottles. 2,000 of the largest lakes on Earth lose 5.7 trillion gallons of water every year. You teach a group of boys how to rip Beyblades. It is almost certain that at least one of them has plastic in his blood. You perform skits together. In the last 20 years, the frequency and severity of extreme wildfires doubled.

You love them. Even when they are annoying. Even when they are too loud. You love them when they climb all over you and try to grab your phone and throw tantrums and ask “Are we there yet?” You love them when they dance and laugh and make bead bracelets for you and ask you how to spell “Mushroom” because they’re writing a menu for their imaginary pizza restaurant. You love every single one of them.

The youngest kids there are four-years-old. They were born during the 2020 quarantines. It was one of the worst preventable disasters in human history, and it might not be the worst one that they have to face.

Author’s Note: This poem was first written in June 2024. The climate science described may no longer be accurate by the time you read it.

Image Credits: The picture for this essay was created by mixing Ramos Keith’s photograph “big, tropical, forest, fire” with a puzzle I created for F., age 7.