It can be hard to get started with investing. It doesn’t feel like much, it grows so slowly, it doesn’t feel like it’s going to add up to anything worth while. And you may feel like the only one trying to do anything.

But we can draw analogies to nature, where we’re proving that a trail, a corridor, a pollinator patch, an un-mowed yard, can add up to successful nature preservation. And that we care enough about our future to do it.

Earlier this month, three thread-like trail systems that weave their way throughout the Midwest through the Northeast were added to National Park System. One is still growing, the North Country National Scenic Trail, with the end intent to span from North Dakota to Vermont. And another already spans almost 1200 miles across Wisconsin, the Ice Age National Scenic Trail, also still growing. The third is a much shorter trail, although still a long hike at over 200 miles, in the Northeast, the New England National Scenic Trail.

Meanwhile, various parts of the UK have been busy adding bee corridors. Bee corridors counteract the decline in wildflowers, and are designed to link together locations where pollinator habitat is thriving so that bees can get to and from [1, 2] those locations. They can be roadway verges, or strategically placed hives.

While a bee corridor is the second best thing for pollinator movement, after broad reconstruction of pollinator friendly habitat across the country, neither of those are something we individually have power over. Maybe you don’t live near a swath that’s already being reconstructed, or you can’t get your neighbors to buy in. You still have control over your own yard, and you can consider ideas such as No Mow May, leaving some pollinator friendly habitat be a little more over-grown than you would usually do, when there are so few nectar sources early in the season.

Yes, we’d all like to have new national parks spring up in our backyard, prairie restored in broad swaths by someone else, and pollinator populations recovered at the snap of our fingers. But you can let your dandelions and your clover bloom, plant a pollinator patch to help make bee corridors, hike a national scenic trail, make a frog pond, and keep investing. It will add up.