Facebook, the present-day harbinger of all things bright, beautiful, disturbing, joyous and enlightening, informs me
that there is a climate rally of sorts at the New England Governors’ Conference
this weekend. The hope is to gather enough popular support to urge the
governors—all of them—to ban tar sands oil from New England. I support that action.
This meeting is being held at Bretton Woods, at the base of
the Presidential Range of the White Mountains and just across a thin ridge from
the Pemigewasset Wilderness area.
I came to know my best self in those mountains, came even to
the concept that I might have a best self that could be better striven towards,
cleaved to. I never sought to leave my mark on the mountains, but I now and
continually seek to do justice to the mark they left on me. It was in summer
camps and mountain huts and winding trails and long conversations on porches
and roofs and under stars that I learned how to get along with people, how to
treat and be treated, and how to hold something sacred and unspeakable in
common delight. At least, I like to think that whatever drew each of us to the
hills was coordinated if not near identical.
When I get hot and bothered about the scourge of climate
change—which is regularly—the thing that drives me forward against the despair
is the idea that this place, and all that it has ever meant to me and to those
I love, could be lost. When I can spiral that out further, to imagine that the
soul-identifying places and landscapes of strangers are similarly threatened,
then I have a larger more urgent fire in my heart. If nothing else, I want to
preserve the places where such wonder and awareness can bloom.
By rights, then, I should be the first person pounding on
the door of the Governors’ Conference. What they do, by not banning tar sands,
by not acting with the power citizens vested in them to protect the lands they
represent and lead, is to allow dangerous ways of being to continue. To not
actively reject tar sands or coal burning or fracked gas is to passively,
permissively accept to the fuels that are violently destroying the world as we
know it.
However, I am sick of being schooled in anger. In writing
formulaic letters that talk about the beautiful and meaningful places that are
threatened—letters that will not be read, in chanting “no” on street corners,
signing petitions begging legislators to oppose bills and movements and
factions, I am sick of being scared into action by new studies, by new
photographs, by the new reality. Fear is not a sustainable fuel; it burns
through our hearts and leaves us exhausted without hope.
Let’s try this, instead: Imagine if the politicians, the
power industry bigwigs, the fossil fuel barons and whoever else is dirty with
power, whoever else we would rally against, try to push towards righter action,
imagine if they all walked out to the climate activists, large and small, and
said, “Okay. You win. Tell us what to do.”
What would you say?
I would take them by the hand and bring them to the
mountains. I would sit them on a mountaintop at sunset, and have their loved
ones draw near. I would have them walk, alone, through a glowing birch glade in September.
I would let them feel the wind on their face, the peculiar delight of not quite
outrunning a hail storm. I give them a wrench and ask them to fix the loose
bolt on a solar panel. I would have them live for a time with only what they
can carry on their back, among strangers who become friends. I would hand them
a pitchfork and rake out a composting toilet. I would take them to places in
this world where people live so differently and love so similarly to each of
us. I would have them watch closely as an osprey dives into the ocean, popping
its wings out of joint to avoid breaking on impact. I would have them awaken to
the prehistoric call of a single loon before dawn. I would have them sit by the
ocean and watch a full change of tides. I would stand them in the moonlight,
holding hands and singing under the night sky with friends. I would show them
pipes that connect a mountain spring to a faucet, and the frogs that live near
the spring. I would bring them to the farm, bid them dig and plant and watch
how things grow from the labor of their bodies. I would dress them warmly and
bring them into the frosty beauty of the morning after an ice storm in the
mountains.
I would do anything, everything, possible to imprint on
their souls how precious—not rare—beauty is in this world, how varied. And how
much more we are each capable of—our bodies, our hearts, our minds—than is
ordinarily assumed. I would show them the places where I have found joy, where
I have learned to put my one little life in perspective, to be at once capably
self-reliant and interdependent on the people around me, and all the things I
know about how satisfying it is to live off kilter from normal. I wonder what
laws and policies and business plans the (allegedly) powerful people would
enact if their hearts where known and free to be followed?
I do not think that anyone can witness the beauty that is
out there and remain as they were. The challenge, as ever, is how to hold that
truth once out of the woods. How to connect the dawn chorus of Bicknell’s
Thrush with the rising sea levels in the Pacific, and with the habits and
routines of your own life. I write this on my computer, with the lamp on beside
me, the fan going across the room, my phone plugged in and charging, and my car
gassed up outside. In the winter, my apartment is heated, and in all seasons
the gas stove runs, the lights flick on and off every day, and hot water is
boiling and abundant. My life is normal, in these ways, but I know I could be
happier with less. I know I have been happier with less of these “necessities.”
I feel cleaner and sleep easier. I try to live more and more away from the
lulling, devastating ease of normal. I can want this, because I have seen it,
know it is real and viable.
How we live, each of us, does matter. Why is there a “need” for tar sands oil, for natural gas, for coal burning power plants, for wars over oil in holy lands?
The answer is in the choices and traditions and habits we
have formed as a people. We cannot ask our leaders to make changes we are not
prepared to make ourselves.
It is not just about keeping tar sands out of New England or
the mountains whole in Appalachia or the water inflammable in fracking country
or about letting fossils rest in peace. It is not about who signs what paper
and what law degrees what degree of pollution is acceptable and what is not. It
is not about what banner you make, what march you join, what rally you attend,
whose ear you pour what plea into. It is about learning how to live without
dirty fuels, without always cars, without relying on entities larger than your
heart to make the shape of your life. It is about learning the truth of less is
more, about the priceless nature of one wild moment, of a lifetime of such
moments strung together. And it is about sharing what stories we have of all
those gorgeous ways in which we each know
what is possible out there.
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