Earth Day Talk

Holly Hughes is a poet and writer who, like me, fished commercially for salmon in Alaska and draws much of her inspiration as a writer from those experiences. She also teaches English at Edmonds Community College, and this week invited me to speak there as part of an Earth Day series of events at the college. Holly is one of my favorite people. In fact we will be co-teaching a retreat on writing and meditation next October at the North Cascades Institute, something I'm really looking forward to.

The talk was a lot of fun to give, and a good way for me to take the pulse of what younger people are thinking in relation to climate change and personal lifestyle choices. I've been touched by how many high school and college age kids have thanked me for what I'm doing this year with my car-free experiment. It seems to compute for them, and seem less onerous than to older Baby Boomers. I suppose it's something about being at a time in life when choices still feel more open. It's an attitude that is refreshing to be around.

I opened with a joke about the sequel to An Inconvenient Truth, one that is having far more success at the box office. This new movie is called A Comforting Lie. Too often we think our only choices are denial and despair when we come up against something like climate change. But each of these false choices are their own kind of comforting lie. Denial is a comforting lie because it allows us to pretend we don't see what is right in front of us. Despair is a comforting lie because it lets us believe we are powerless to do anything about it. Rebecca Solnit has written, "Despair is a luxury. When I despair I can drive a Yukon and watch bad TV. Despair demands nothing of us. Hope demands everything."

Returning our focus to the power we have to make changes in our own lives, without waiting for others to make those changes first, opens a third path that doesn't have to get stuck in denial or despair. That is what I'm trying to do this year, turning necessity into a virtue by getting ahead of the curve and discovering the benefits of embracing changes that ground my life more deeply in my local terrain, and that turn the act of traveling back into an adventure that nourishes both me and the place that holds me.

One kid asked me afterwards if I thought I'd ever do anything this big and bold again in my life. I told him I hope to do something this big and bold every day of my life from here forward. Why not? What are we doing here anyway? What are we waiting for?