“Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. Not the sun or summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The late 1960’s saw a wave of environmental enthusiasm, particularly from the young people, a large number of whom embraced a back-to-nature ethos as part of the hippie ideal. This helped lead to pivotal changes in the year 1970 with the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency, the celebration of the first Earth Day, the creation of Woodsy The Owl (give a hoot, don’t pollute!), and the release of a slew of pro-environment songs, particularly from the emerging singer-songwriters like Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, and Cat Stevens. But lesser known names also helped to spearhead the ecological charge.

Welcome to Spirit! The family that plays together.

Spirit formed in Los Angeles in 1967 and boasted the rare distinction of featuring a son and his stepfather in the band. They played an eclectic mix of genres — perhaps too eclectic for your average, AM radio-loving teens — but they remained popular with the “heads” and even managed to score a fluke radio hit with “I Got A Line On You,” a song which sounded nothing like the rest of their catalog. (The rest of their catalog also includes a track called “Taurus” which arguably inspired Jimmy Page — Led Zeppelin toured with Spirit — when writing “Stairway To Heaven.”)

Instead of embracing the Top 40 and going full pop-rock on their follow-up, Spirit stuck to making their own kind of music in 1970 with an album titled, Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus. It didn’t sell well with the masses, but the album became an underground classic and one track in particular, a cautionary tale about taking care of the Earth called “Nature’s Way,” became a favorite of the burgeoning free-form FM radio stations in the early 70’s.

Guitarist Randy California wrote the song in response to two incidents from the previous year: oil spills off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, and the Cuyahoga River in Ohio catching fire. The river. Water and fish don’t spontaneously burst into flames as a matter of course and the Cuyahoga had done this repeatedly over the decades. Something was very wrong.

In 1971, other big artists would follow with songs about saving the Earth (Marvin Gaye), water pollution (The Beach Boys), and hugging a tree (Tommy James). Sometimes Nature requires a little help expressing its needs, and sometimes Nature speaks for itself.

So find out what it’s telling you … with Spirit.