Picture yourself on a boat on a river
With tangerine trees and marshmallow skies

Perhaps it's the phrasing of the question, but when I picture myself in a world in which transportation has become green, I imagine flying. Not drug-induced, like those women in the 10th century who believed they flew with Hulda, going from house to house cleaning up disheveled households; nor do I think of individual jet packs that zip us from place to place.

I think, instead, of Icarus and Daedalus, who longed to slip the chains that bound them by making wings of feathers and wax. We know what happened to Icarus: he flew too close to the sun and burned up and crashed. But Daedalus, he had the knowledge, he knew what it was to fly, and he watched in horror as his son abused the privilege and drowned.

I have long envied birds. I stop and hold my body still when a hawk soars above me. We have so many here: marsh hawks, red-tail hawks, sharp-shinned hawks, the occasional bald eagle, and in fantastic news, the peregrine falcon has made a successful return to New York state. We now have more breeding pairs of peregrines than any other states in the east.

I imagine myself on a hot day, picking up a draft, and flattening my wings so that I might glide. What would I see? If I was graced with the eyes of the raptors, I would see the tiniest vole knocking down individual grass blades as it searched for food, or, if the peregrine falcon, the pigeon flying below me. I would aim myself at 200 miles per hour and snatch that pigeon from the air, take it home to my nest and eat until  was sated.
In my green world, I would inhabit space where no one could touch me, just the wind, feeling the ripple of air against my wing tips, hooding my eyes against the sun, screaming my delight so that the goddess might hear my joy.

At daybreak, I would watch the swirling pinks and blues paint over the dark of night, and in that netherworld between light and dark, I would begin my journey, marking my territory, reminding those who lived below me that I would take them only if hungry. And at night, like it was last night, I would soar against the mushed pumpkin waning full moon, breathing in the smells that signal the end of day: the drying mud, the alfalfa dancing in its fields, the smell of life, and of living.

The tree I would perch in would be a snag, some old tree that despite its hollowness, stands tall,  and I would build my nest at its apex, raise my babies there, teach them the wonder that is all around us.

In a green world, I could transform myself from a slow, clumsy biped into a aerodynamic raptor, queen of all I survey, but a humble monarch, keeping watch, protecting the earth.