Earth Matters: Quoth the Raven

The cursor blinked back from my computer screen with the visceral impact of a thunderbolt. The time had come to pass: My favorite gadfly and topic of ridicule is finally tending his two longhorn steers down in Texas. The cursor, like Edgar Allan Poe’s Raven, bobbed above my imagination’s door croaking, “Nevermore.”

Hogwash, I told the Raven. History is out there to get written, and by god I’ll do my share of writing it. But the thing about history is that it needs to cure a bit, percolate around in the consciousness, get digested into a coherent cause of future effects. Naturally, I lack time and energy to wait that long and crave immediate gratification. I’m spoiled; the last eight years were easy pickin’s.

The Raven ogled me with his shiny black eyes, reproachful and taunting. He is no muse, but maybe he’s open to a little dialogue.

“You got lazy,” observed the Raven. “Now that you actually have to think, you’re experiencing a failure of imagination. Maybe you should go back to your roots,” he grumbled. Thanks, Raven.

My treehugger taproot runs deep and my rhizomes spread wide. Being a treehugger is a calling that requires participation on a personal level, and action on a collective level. A sincere treehugger must do all the day-to-day things which a person can do to “make a difference,” while at the same time recognizing big-picture issues and taking action to make them better.

When I started out in the treehugger business, I quickly realized that big-picture issues were often out of my reach. I couldn’t save the whales or keep gorillas from becoming bush meat; I couldn’t keep Russia from cutting down the Taiga forest or Japanese trawlers from scraping ocean fisheries clean of every living thing.

I decided instead that I would make my difference in the place I lived, Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. Shortly after that, I realized events had outstripped my efforts, which no matter how well-meaning couldn’t hold their own in the face of big-picture stuff. It didn’t matter how hard I worked to save the Uncompahgre fritillary butterfly, for example, while global warming continually vanished its habitat.

What to do? Throw up my hands and declare despair? No. The thing to do was take a closer look at the big picture. Whether or not I could actually do anything about it didn’t matter. The macrocosm was the only real game in town.

My macrocosmic consideration manifested two realities: First, if the planet’s climate collapses, nothing we do, except maybe preserving our ability to build fire, will make a hell of a lot of difference. Such catastrophic collapse could quickly change the way we humans do business here on planet Earth.

Second, of all our human business, warfare is particularly devastating to the natural environment. The natural world is collateral damage to nations at war; we think in terms of human not environmental costs when we wage war. Pictures of burning oil wells during the Gulf War demonstrated to me how war clouds landscapes and destroys populations, human and otherwise. If earth really matters, war is one of the worst things we can do to it.

Furthermore, it is futile to address big-picture stuff like war and climate in any arena other than political. Personal choices like turning off the water while brushing my teeth or choosing cloth over plastic at the market aren’t political. Lobbying a government to regulate carbon emissions or pursue diplomacy over warfare is political action at every level.

So I transited from pure and fundamental tree hugging—rodents in the backyard and herons in the willows—to political observation and commentary that ultimately changed the nature of my thought.

“Not only did you get lazy,” said the Raven, now perched on my monitor, “but you got wrapped up in politics and forgot about what matters, the stuff politics is really about.”

“At the end of the day,” I told him, “environmental stuff is purely political. There is plenty of bad stuff going on, but a lot of good stuff too.”

I’d like to think we have turned some kind of environmental corner. President Obama said, “We cannot afford more of the same timid politics when the future of our planet is at stake. Global warming is not a someday problem, it is now…This is not the future I want for my daughters. It’s not the future any of us want for our children. And if we act now and we act boldly, it doesn’t have to be.”

Obama says he will make combating global warming a top priority, and that he will “reinvigorate” the Environmental Protection Agency. He says he will protect our children from toxins like lead, be a responsible steward of our natural treasures and reverse previous administration attempts to chip away at clean air and water standards.

In economic hard times, it is difficult to think about saving the planet. But there must be ways that saving the planet will also help our economies. “Ecology” and “economy” are related words. President Obama intends to establish millions of new “green jobs” creating renewable electricity sources, increasing energy efficiency and weatherizing homes.

Obama will invest $150 billion over ten years in advanced energy technologies. He intends to increase fuel economy standards, enact a windfall profits tax on excessive oil company profits and invest cap-and-trade pollution credits in the nation’s energy future. This is all good news for the environment.

I looked at the Raven. “So how’s that for getting back to my roots?” I asked.

“Well, it’s a start,” the bird ruffled his feathers and pecked at my mouse pad. “And you should be proud of yourself for not even once hammering the, uh…former administration.”

Ravens are thoughtful—even talkative, but I’d never encountered one quite so garrulous. I reminded myself that I had asked for this dialogue.

“But I have just one request,” continued the Raven, looking uncomfortable and shifting from foot to foot. “Will you please lay off the metaphors?” I looked at him and shooed him off my computer before he pooped on the keyboard.

“Only that and nothing more?”

Gravity Works: Avalanche

Sunlight lanced from behind scudding clouds, shining for the first time in days. The mountains remained shrouded though, and I couldn’t see any avalanches from my window. Last time the weather cleared, I noticed the whole north ridge of Coon Basin had slid to the ground. Now I wonder what I’ll see next time it clears up.

Avalanche spotting is a hell of a lot safer from my living room, through the window, than it is out in the wind and snow and danger. If actually recreating in places where avalanches live, it is important to know what you’re doing and treat that stuff with respect. It’s killer.

I was saddened a couple of weeks ago when Mike Bowen got caught and killed in a slide. I didn’t know Mike well, but I used to pick him up when he was walking Slate River Road, returning from riding the chutes off Mt. Emmons. It would be almost dark, cold…whatever, and here would come Mike, walking along with his board slung behind his back. I would turn around and drive him to town, and he’d tell me how good it was out there, up there and over there.

I always wondered at how he had the cajones to ride the backcountry alone. I’d had singularly unpleasant backcountry experiences, and at the time, was glad as hell for my companions. Mike, on the other hand, seemed perfectly comfortable with winter solitude and seldom travelled with a friend. I didn’t know him well enough to say anything; if he wanted to do it alone, more power to him. I know lots of people who would rather ski alone than with a posse. I figured he knew what he was doing.

I think it is easy to take the backcountry for granted. It is all around us, it is our medium and our métier. The mountains define us and inform what we do; summer and winter, they are why we live here. We become familiar with the backcountry, and forget it is not familiar with us. We hike the same ridge or ski the same route over and over, and think we have it down. It’s under control. Nothing can happen. We take it for granted. Then things change.

My direct experience with avalanches is thankfully limited. Certainly it is not as dramatic and lurid as avalanches sweeping cameras away in ski movies. Even so, except for watching them on screen, avalanches are always dangerous and potentially deadly. Over the years, I’ve lost quite a few friends to avalanches, and acknowledge snow slides as a feature of our place. It is our job to stay out of them.

Nor do I intend to have any direct experiences with avalanches, at least not if I can help it. This does not mean I will hover behind the window, waiting to watch Coon Basin slide. It does mean that I won’t be out backcountry skiing until I deem the snowpack consolidated and safe. Deeming the snowpack safe, of course, is a judgment call, an interpretive exercise in which the price of misinterpretation can be costly.

So I’m going to cough up the price of an avalanche refresher course offered by Crested Butte Mountain Guides. It won’t be my first such course; I attended San Juan County Sheriff’s Department Avalanche School back in the 1970s. The tools were different, but the fundamentals remain the same.

Although I think they do the same job, avalanche prediction tools have been refined and become more sophisticated. You still have to observe relative densities in the snowpack and identify poorly bonded layers. You have to be able to spot a potential slide surface and integrate that information with aspect, terrain features and…well, the list goes on.

Rescue equipment has also evolved. Avalanche beacons or transceivers are more accurate and—hopefully—more user-friendly. Although my old Pieps still beeps when I turn it on, I’m told it is obsolete and that I’d best buy a new one. I griped about paying $350 for my new BCA Tracker until someone asked the obvious question: How much is my life worth? Damn, I hate questions like that.

Having shelled out all that money, though, I figure I’d better learn how to use the thing properly. Furthermore, what is the sense in hauling it up the hill if I can’t figure out how to use it in the urgency and adrenaline heat of an avalanche burial? Better go to school.

But a probe is still a probe and a shovel is still a shovel, and you still have to dig a snow pit. At least I think you do; that’s why I’m taking the refresher course, to find out for sure. But even then, properly trained or at least exposed to the information, I may still not venture out onto a snowpack I know from observation is sketchy. Call me timid, call me lightweight, call me whatever, but call me alive.

In acknowledging another friend lost to winter and avalanche, it is important to also recognize the men and women of Crested Butte Search and Rescue, and all others who worked hard in dark and dangerous conditions to rescue and, sadly, recover Mike Bowen. For those of us who enjoy winter, wilderness and all those tempting backcountry lines, it is good to know Search and Rescue is there.

Mike Bowen, I’ll wave at your spirit walking Slate River Road and know you had some fine turns out there, up there and over there. It is heartrending to lose a man who shares many of our common motivations, enraptured by cold smoke and gravity, deep in winter’s thrall.

Earth Matters: Upside

Between the time I write this and the time you read it, we will have inaugurated a new President of the United States. My most significant challenge will be a grammatical one: not knowing whether to write in the future or past tense. My challenge isn’t in the same league as that of President Obama who by every metric will have his hands full.

They tell me to experience great joy we must have experienced great sorrow. To experience great knowledge, we must have experienced great ignorance. To enjoy the good, we have to taste the bad. Presumably, it is education: to appreciate something, we have to know its antithesis. For every upside, we require a downside to compare it to.

It is easy to distill a downside from the last eight years of bumbling, malfeasance and self-serving misdirection. The upside is more difficult to define in a distillation of hope and speculation. Furthermore, my present is the emotional maelstrom of pre-inauguration frenzy. Yours is the hard reality of a man three days at his desk and facing daunting tasks. He wanted the job; I hope we are indulgent with the honeymoon.

My first concrete glimpse of the horrible downside was called “rollback.” Previously, I didn’t know what a rollback was or that it could be so easily implemented. I didn’t realize the man at the top could wield so much power or be so evil…so vindictive.

I was busy hugging trees and basking in the relative environmental enlightenment of the Clinton Administration. Having worked for over a decade, I felt we were making progress on the enviro front, although we didn’t yet understand global climate change as the thousand pound gorilla. Many of my environmental bogeymen appeared to evaporate in the heat of climate change, but regardless, I thought we had advanced on a number of levels.

Then came the rollbacks. The Bush Administration decided it didn’t like any science that didn’t support political and business agendas. Administration delegates refused to sign the Kyoto Protocols, for example, and join with other world leaders in studying climate change. No science was good science unless it made money.

Within hours of assuming office, Bush rolled back proposed protections under Bill Clinton’s Roadless Area Conservation Rule. I had worked hard for roadless area protection in Colorado, figuring it wasn’t too crazy to preserve as much roadless public land as we could identify. Bush immediately cancelled implementation of the rule.

Roadless preservation was a forgotten pipe dream in the face of energy development roads which threaded western public lands like some kind of disease. Thumpers and drill rigs threatened Wyoming wilderness and Utah national parks. Even Western conservatives were shocked as dozer blades scraped their favorite places to bedrock. Roadless? Yeah, right.

Sorry: I’m raving. This is my own personal grievance. As it turns out, my other grievances feel personal too, but I’ll try not to rave.

So far, I have not been personally scarred by either the justifiable Afghanistan War, or by the totally unjustifiable Iraq War. Yet American men and women remain in harm’s way on distant shores. The upside in Iraq is that fewer Americans die there now. Yet I wonder if families of the million Iraqis killed see any upside at all?

Afghanistan, justifiable or not, has been a downside for hundreds of years. Rudyard Kipling wrote: “When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains, And the women come out to cut up what remains, Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains, And go to your Gawd like a soldier.” Cool place to have a war, eh?

In Afghanistan we are trying to facilitate peace between factions we don’t understand, and whose only commonality is their hatred of the United States. Osama bin Laden still finds sanctuary. Afghan opium producers quickly identified an upside in a burgeoning heroin trade, but then they have known about that for millennia.

On our domestic front, the war on what was once a healthy economy can only be called successful. That may be an upside for some folks, but for the rest of us, finding an upside will be a long row to hoe. Unemployment claims rose over 30% in the last five weeks; almost a million Americans lost their jobs last week alone. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, job losses are large and widespread across most major industry sectors.

Economic analyst John Mauldin writes, “We are in completely uncharted territory in terms of the economic landscape.” Mauldin predicts unemployment headed above nine percent, consumer spending off by at least three percent in 2009 and 2010, and Gross Domestic Product down as much as five percent. He predicts the longest recession since the Great Depression. I keep trying to find the upside, but I’m having trouble with that.

The upside lies in our choice of new leadership and a new worldview. Although it is difficult to overcome skepticism honed over the last eight years, maybe—just maybe—we can shame the greed mongers into doing the right thing. Perhaps that is too much to ask.

We can only hope President Obama is equal to a job whose difficulty and complexity are unprecedented in American history. We are optimistic he can bring about health care and entitlement reform. We hope he can strike a balance between environmental stewardship and energy independence. We pray he can stimulate production to generate jobs and invent new models to resurrect our economy. We hope Obama can create partisan inclusion to forever eliminate historic gridlock. Post-partisan politics: what a concept.

While I’m writing this, I’m still living on the downside and it is difficult to see beyond the disaster that has been the last eight years of American governance. You reading this, on the other hand, are living under enlightened leadership that offers hope and the promise of change in a new day. You are reading this on the upside. Be proud of the choice we made…and enjoy.