Even in a time when environmentalism is all the rage, to do something truly environmental—even something as simple as asking someone to pick up litter or a cigarette—is to invite some degree of scorn and ridicule. So what? Scorn and ridicule are not so bad in the face of love. When you’re energized and motivated by joy for something rather than just being against something, asking someone to clean something up or think twice doesn’t feel superior or moralistic, it just feels logical.
I scribble down my emerging picture of this creation, this prototype, my new environmentalist. Eastern but Western. Romantic but practical. Able to quote a poem and swing a deal. Equally unafraid of thought and action. Of course there is no such animal, or no such exact animal. But the encouraging thing is that there are thousands of like animals, all prowling and defending their territories, all around this country and the world.
As I write, I am aware that the examples of fighters that I have used, from Dan Driscoll to Art Cooley to Ken Sleight, have their limits. Many are male, which is certainly not to say that even a majority of “fighters” are male—look at Rachel Carson, Terry Tempest Williams, Diane Wilson—just that a few of the ones that I’ve bumped into are. They also may tend to be a tad on the aggressive side, and are not exactly teetotalers, which again likely reflects the character of the writer who sought them out. But the beauty of the fight, and the fighters, is that they are in no way restricted to this small group or to the narrow characteristics of that group. The fact is that this ideal environmentalist does not have to be a chipper entrepreneur or even an entrepreneur at all, doesn’t have to hew to any of the specific characteristics I have outlined. All they need to do is pick a fight worth fighting and then, in accordance with their own temperament, personality, and DNA, fight that fight in their own way.
We couldn’t have asked for better seats at the spectacle of exploding colors. I tell Dan that I like to think that the hundreds of thousands of people below are all here to celebrate the anniversary of Thoreau’s move to Walden. He thinks perhaps not. Whatever the case, the now-darkened skies fill with fire and music. We are on the thirteenth floor of an apartment building at 260 Beacon Street, almost directly above the Hatch Shell, and Dan and I toast the success of our trip with the champagne our host just poured us. Everyone goes inside when it starts to drizzle, but Dan and I stay out, and are rewarded for our perseverance by the roar of two planes, F-17s, that fly like fighter jets out of Star Wars right at our balcony, seeming to head directly at us before swerving away. We toast to that too. Even two hardened nature boys can’t help but be impressed.
The rain picks up but we stay outside. We’ve been wet all week anyway and this is too good to miss. Boston is laid out below us. I tell Dan about the notes I was taking earlier, about my ideas about environmentalism, and pretty soon he is off and running, once again preaching to my choir.
He points down below us.
“Look at Storrow Drive. Right now Boston is spending millions for this party. They spent fourteen billion fucking dollars on the Big Dig. But try to get them to spend a million on bike paths and re-planting and all the sudden everyone’s wailing about ‘waste.’ ”
He shakes his head.
“One of the hardest things now is to be connected to the land and to be working in environmental fields with people who aren’t. At my lectures I ask people if anyone has spent time alone in nature in the last month. No one raises their hand. That’s what’s missing. A lot of environmentalists are losing the sense of magic of why they cared to begin with and just becoming these bitter ranters. And if environmentalists are acting angry and beat up and disheveled, you’re not going to be something people want to be. What people want is happiness. And if you show that you are elated about your life and you’re happy with your life and you love it, they’re going to want to know what the formula is for that and I say the formula is get out in nature. Get to the outdoors with your family. And a lot of environmentalism is so downtrodden. Oh, we’re doomed, we’re fucked. People aren’t drawn to it.”
And what can I say to that? Nothing short of “Amen” would seem to do. Instead I propose a toast:
“To our glorious adventure and continued wildness.”
We clink our glasses and drink.
But you’ve heard all this before. Yes, we get it, you’re saying. You and Dan are like-minded—you are a couple of kooks who love nature and at least one of you (Dan) actually does some good. But what does all this really have to do with anything, and more importantly what can it do in the face of GLOBAL WARMING? You’ve talked a lot and meandered plenty, but have we really gotten anywhere? Dan can say what he will, but the world is still doomed. The fact that he likes to plant some plants and that you like looking at birds and going for walks is not going to change anything. Not really. When your daughter is your age the world she faces will be crowded and cooked.
I will grant the cynics the fact that I don’t know where the world is heading. And I will grant them the fact that if we are honest we need to admit that individuals acting as individuals have relatively little impact on that world. But that still leaves the question of what to do while we are here. It is the same question Thoreau faced, in fact it is the same question everyone who has ever been born to this planet has faced.
If there is something egocentric about assuming we can change the world, there is also something not unappealingly human. We boomerang back to the same old question. What is to be done? What can you and what can I—individually—do right now?
These days writers of eco-manifestos are required by law to answer that question with bullet points. I would like to comply though I’m not sure I know how to start. It may be my own flaw, but I still don’t believe that cleaning the lint in your drier is the surest road to changing your life. My bullet points are, of necessity, not practical but vague and grandiose.
I suppose it would be asking too much of this little book, but this is my fantasy of how a reader might respond to what I’ve written.
My fantasy reader would do three things.
1. Have a small love affair with something in the world.
2. Get in a fight.
3. Launch a larger project of self and world.
I think I’ve covered point number two pretty well, how fighters begin and then continue their fights, and I’ll end on point number three. But let’s circle back to the first point, how the infatuation begins, how we fall for the thing that we will ultimately fight to protect. Let me begin by saying that I am not stressing “love” just because it ultimately leads us to protect something or someone or some place, but for its own sake. In other words, I don’t think the only thing that’s worthwhile about loving a place is that it turns us into fighters, i.e. it is good because it makes us fight. No, love is good in of itself and that is true even if steps two and three don’t follow. At first our love has nothing to do with its usefulness, and in fact should be celebrated precisely because of its uselessness.
There are parallels between this sort of love and the wild places that are its object. In his famous “Wilderness Letter,” Wallace Stegner spoke of the spiritual resources of wilderness beyond any obvious uses for recreation or extraction or development. Stegner wrote of this wilderness ideal: “Being an intangible and spiritual resource, it will seem mystical to the practical-minded—but then anything that cannot be moved by a bulldozer is likely to seem mystical to them.” He urged that we consider “some other criteria than commercial” when it came to putting aside wilderness lands, stressing open spaces not just as a counterbalance to “our insane lives,” but as something integral, and vital to, our national character.35 I would argue that we have to nurture that same love for the wild world closer to home for similar reasons, reasons that have nothing to do with the practical and reasons that at times might be beyond, or below, words.
The simple fact is that being outside, being in so-called nature, is a joyous part of being human and, it would stand to reason, of being any sort of animal. Most of us
do not like being caged. The natural world offers us delight and love, and freedom. Whether this converts us into do-gooders or not depends perhaps on temperament and genetics, and anyway is really beside the point. The very fact that being in nature causes this reaction is enough. More than enough; it’s a reason to celebrate. I am not suggesting that we send our children out into the woods with protest signs. I’m suggesting we send them out so that they can learn about delight and spontaneity, and learn what a wildly diverse party is (still) going on out there. Hopefully a few of them—nine out of a hundred, say—will end up handing out leaflets. But if fifty others just get a little hint that there’s a world beyond screens and walls then that is good enough.
Of course, as Stegner points out, to fall for something in the world—let’s take a flower, for instance, the most obvious and cliché of nature icons—is also to invite scorn from the purely practical-minded. But follow these passions, without the approbation of others, and you may have what Thoreau called “unexpected results.” Then again, you may not. You may head to the peak-oil hills or become a ranter or dogmatist. You may become lazy and abandon your family to lie around smoking pot in a field of lilies. These are possible outcomes, but, I would argue, not likely ones. It has been my experience that those who actually make nature part of their lives, as opposed to those who theorize or write policy about it, tend to have their minds stretched a little and their perspectives widened. They also tend to laugh a little more and to build muscles of nonconformity, developing the capacity to love it even more. And while that doesn’t save the world, it isn’t such a bad result.
The goals that I have set out may seem too modest given this time of crisis. I do not prescribe them for everyone. If you are a scientist on the verge of inventing an anti-global warming laser beam, please do not give it up to fight for your local flower bed. But for the rest of us there may be no global solutions. For the rest of us the best we can do it to tackle a project of self, something that excites our imagination and marshals our limited forces. Which is not to say that that project of self should be un-ambitious. Think of Thoreau’s project of knowing Concord, which included its plants, creatures, and its seasons. Think of Dan on the river. In fact, you could argue that any project worth its salt should be beyond your reach, grand to the point of stretching you beyond yourself. I have talked to many scientists over the last couple of years and as it turns out, many of their projects now include ways in which the ecosystems they work with will adapt to the changes wrought by climate change. The point is that everyone’s project is different. But all the best projects excite, incite, ignite, all that.
Even if you agree with this premise that we all need a great project of self, you might still ask: Why can’t a self project that focuses on the stock market be just as vital, just as absorbing? Why does this answer have to include Nature?
Maybe because it always has. Maybe because, despite what Nordhaus and Shellenberger say, it is not thanks to post-affluence that we are interested in the “environment,” but because it is our home and has always been our home. It is where we evolved and where, if we are very, very lucky, we will keep evolving. And to reintegrate it with our lives, even in the smallest of ways, can be a stroke of personal genius.
Which brings me, finally, back to language. One of the things that gets in the way of making nature, even limited nature, a part of our lives is the way we talk and think about it. While I have argued with Nordhaus and Shellenberger throughout this book, I agree that we need to shake out some of the old myths, to beat the rug with a broom and let the dust fly. Our new language needs to be more open, less school marmish and less fuddy-duddy. We need to throw out the bunk. We need nature lovers who are more hard-nosed and direct, but also more wild and more willing to tell new stories that stir people. What will drive post-material man? More money? A bigger house? I don’t think so. I’d like to imagine that that man or woman, his or her basic needs met, might look for something deeper than that. I’m not just talking about a life of buying all green consumer products. Sure, a smaller car and a smaller house are a good start, but I’m talking about something more than green underarm deodorant or green toilet paper, something that can start with spending a part of your life getting outside into the world and getting to know your non-human neighbors. If that sounds modest so be it: For my part I’ve noticed that when I put my body outside my mind tends to follow. What I’m tossing out is the possibility that a life intertwined with the non-human, a life intertwined with the wild, provides both a more stirring story and a better life. Yes, I said “better.” Not just wilder, not just more moral and more fun, but also, though we’re not allowed to say it in this age of relativism, better.
Maybe one reason so many of us keep going back to Walden as if it were a sacred text is that we get to spend time in the presence of a young man, a cocksure and bold young man, who by doing things exactly his own way struck some sort of gold. The gold is still there for all of us. I first picked up Thoreau’s book when I was sixteen and I don’t think I’ve ever recovered. Henry ruined my life, but in a good way. I was hungry for something different, something authentic, and that is what I found.
Maybe that’s who I’ve really been talking to in this book: the sixteen year old I was then and others like him. Maybe I want to ruin his life all over again. And I want to ruin your life too. I want to put forward the crazy notion that hoarding money, and that hitting computer keys that move that money from one pile to another is not the road to fulfillment during the brief time we’re here. In its stead I want to suggest falling in love with the world, and maybe battling to alter it in some small way, while radically opposing the perception that humans are the only important thing in the universe. To suggest that we are just a part of a world of plants and trees and animals and mountains and seas and rivers. As it turns out fighting for these convictions is, by happy coincidence, both a fulfilling way to be and an obvious good. So here’s my final word to that sixteen year old who used to be me.
Go get ’em.
BEYOND
I sleep on Dan Driscoll’s couch and commute in to work with him the next morning. Since getting a lift on his handlebars is impractical, he decides to drive today and we head down a littered and war-torn Storrow Drive. We park near the dam to the harbor and Dan chats with the parking guy for a while. This is another side to Dan, one I didn’t see on the river, the man-of-the-people side, and it continues when we cross a small park and run into a state maintenance worker. He is a big guy, easily 6’4”, and the two men greet each other like long lost relatives. A little while later, after I say goodbye to Dan, I double back and talk to the man. I ask him about the perception of Dan within the state government.
“He’s not like a lot of government people,” the guy admits. “I guess sometimes he rubs people the wrong way. Even me sometimes. Sometimes I want to say, ‘Dan, stop bugging me.’ But he’s persistent. That’s the only way to get things done. And Dan gets things done.”
The sun is out and I have a whole day in front of me. Later I’m meeting my wife and daughter to explore the Charles in an entirely different way: by duck boat. Duck boats are a big tourist draw, amphibious vehicles that travel through the streets of downtown Boston before plunging into the river. The highlight of the trip will be when the gruff captain lets Hadley, all of four, take the wheel. For now though I content myself with an older means of travel, walking the couple miles along the river from downtown to Cambridge. A massive morning effort is underway to take down the stages and pick up trash from the previous evening. Four hundred thousand people were gathered here last night but now I have good stretches of the river to myself. I follow the wending water, the robin-egg blue dome of Harvard’s Eliot House acting as my snooty beacon. After about a mile I come upon a spot where I used to take my lunch when I worked as a carpenter in downtown Boston. I wasn’t very fond of my life at the time, and sought out the water as refuge.
For the most part I stick to the river, with only one detour
. I hike inland and over to Fenway Park. There’s a night game but the bustle of preparation is already in full swing, and when I see a tour group heading in one of the Lansdowne Street gates, I file in behind them. Then, at gate C, I slip away from the tour and sneak up to the seats. There’s another urban nature book to be written about this place: the wilds of Fenway. Is there a better Boston moment than first seeing the grass and orange dirt, the jewel inside the city? (Not long after my trip, in fact, a pair of red tail hawks will take up residence in a nest below the press box, only to be unceremoniously evicted before opening day.)
Workers are hosing down the seats and a player is out running laps. In left field, the old wooden scoreboard reveals the season’s narrative to date: We are eleven and a half games ahead of Toronto, and more importantly, twelve games ahead of New York. I make my way through the stands to the Green Monster seats. They are still relatively new and I’ve never sat here before, and when I get there I can’t believe how steep and scary they are. I imagine reaching for a hotdog or beer and tumbling to my death in left field.
It takes only ten minutes to get from the Green Monster back to the river, or would if I didn’t take a second detour. I climb down out of stands into the catacombs and exit discreetly through the bleachers gate, before heading to the Boston Alehouse for a beer and a lobster roll. From there I hike through the mess of Kenmore square, cut down Deerfield street, take a left on Bay, and head out over the footbridge. Back at the river it’s a steamy day, haze rising off the Basin. My arms are sore from three days of paddling but I feel good. I take a seat on a park bench and look out at the water. I think it’s fair to say that my relationship with the Charles has changed, maybe even deepened, over the last week. I watch the river flow out to the sea.
My Green Manifesto Page 17
