Response 3: Stomping on Pretty Flowers; Damn You, Environmentalists

“…Nature’s polluted,

There’s man in every secret corner of her

Doing damned, wicked deeds” (165.)

In our nature and environmental writing class, we are advised to steer clear of charged environmental issues.  There is nothing more off-putting than a writer who is actually trying to get a point across about the environment, especially right now, when we’re all so busy more important things, like Facebook and our investments.

            I can appreciate this class’ purpose to have its students form an intimate bond with the natural world and explore that relationship through writing.  I think it’s beautiful.  The poetry and art that has come out of

 this connection between man and nature is more special than any other.

            But what if we do have something more provocative to comment on about the current (or past) situations of humans and their relationship with nature.  Should we muffle it?  Where else are we to write about it?  In my other courses, writing fiction and non-fiction, I always focus our little hundred word story assignments on some environmental issue.  This works without coming across as an “angry environmentalist” because there are characters that convey the emotions, speak the dialogue, portray the sentiments through my subtle imagery.  But I should think it would be here in my nature and environmental writing class where I can directly speak of such environmental causes of which I am passionate.

We are reading Edward Abbey in this class, and he is the master of such writing.  In Desert Solitaire, Abbey employs beautiful prose with sprawling descriptive language to show us the desert that stretches around him in every direction.  Reading the poetry he uses to show us his vision of the desert is left me in awe – it was simply so vividly and sublimely magnificent.  In the first chapter, Abbey describes a sunrise: “Suddenly it comes, the flaming globe, blazing on the pinnacles and minarets and balanced rocks, on the canyon walls and through the windows in the sandstone fins.  We greet each other, sun and I, across the black void of ninety-three million miles.  The snow glitters between us, acres of diamonds almost painful to look at” (6.)

But then Abbey will shift to a different voice completely – one that lets us know he is not just a romantic; he has strict beliefs about how the wilderness should be treated and how we humans are ruining it more and more.  Abbey is an environmentalist, and spares no space in his book sharing his opinion on how to improve our nation’s environmental procedures.

Abbey has strong ideas about our national parks, which I very much agree with.  He believes that in order to preserve our wilderness from further erosion, no new roads should ever be built through the parks, and all motorized vehicles should be forbidden.  In response to the complaints Abbey foresees, that “they can’t see enough without their automobiles to bear them swiftly through the parks,” Abbey retaliates, “A man on foot, on horseback, or on a bicycle will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motorized tourists can in a hundred miles” (54.)  Like Abbey, I think that people have been separated from their natural surroundings to the point that they don’t even realize there is a difference between seeing a forest on foot from seeing it through the glass window of an SUV.  Abbey believes, “…[W]ilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread.  A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself”(169.)  His beliefs about the roads and motorized vehicles is important in regards to the human spirit and its necessary interaction with the environment, but not only that – for the preservation of the ecosystems, the roads and vehicles have to stop.

So, without scaring us, Edward Abbey manages to reveal to us his environmental “agenda” by alternating it with poetic imagery of the natural landscape.  This juxtaposition is important because the more we get of Abbey’s criticism, the more we feel the beautiful scenes he’s painting are precious, threatened, retreating before our very eyes.

Nobody likes an angry environmentalist who hammers hard truths at him: You are depleting the ozone!  You are raising the global temperature!  You are eliminating important species!  You are dooming the planet!  But when this information is conveyed in a meaningful way, translated through art, is that so harsh? so painful?

Westport, my hometown in Connecticut, is a beautiful beachside town with a strong sense of community.  Because of its close proximity to New York City, Westport’s citizens tend to think of themselves as very liberal – they prioritize the arts in their school budget, and they love their farmers’ markets.  They also pride themselves on living in the first town in the eastern United States to ban the distribution of plastic bags at stores.

The town is indeed idyllic.  With rolling acres of forest, dark nights where you can stand outside and feel the presence of nothing but cricket song, yet to know that you are nestled tightly within a community – it is calming.

My favorite place is Burying Hill Beach, a small private beach that I much prefer over the packed, stroller-ridden, kiddy-fun in the sun (still private,) Compo Beach.  There is a tidal creek that runs next to the beach, and I always go straight to it, for that is where everything is to be seen. 

It’s one of those scorching days in late July, where the sky is a vivid robin’s egg blue.  Far away at the horizon, clouds are forming soft peaks like marshmallow fluff, foreshadowing a late afternoon storm.  I wade out into the shallow water of the creek, which shimmers against the sunlight when the breeze strokes its surface, ever so gently.  The water is warm, and I can see clearly through to the bottom.  There are mollusks and bright green seaweed that I always mistake for some mystery creature, as it lurks toward me with a sudden surge of the current.  I stand still and let my bare feet sink into the warm sand, which gets comfortable in the crevices between my toes.  With my hands on my hips I raise my chin to the sun and let its warmth beat down on my face.  This is my beach, my creek.  Nobody feels the way I do when they come here.  I remain still so that whatever is swimming or crawling about below the surface of the water will become accustomed to my presence.  Soon, I feel little nips on my ankles – minnows testing out my skin to see if it’s palatable.  I don’t shake them away.  Snails crawl across my feet, their slimy bodies suctioned to my body.  I giggle and squat down to get a better look at these molluscan pioneers.

The tide is going out and the water that was trickling out of the channel begins to gain power.  Within an hour, it is surging out toward the Long Island Sound with enormous force and my minnow friends can no longer keep themselves from being carried outward to deeper waters.  I turn toward away from the Sound toward the mouth of the creek, feeling the water push against my legs, white-water cascading around my knees.  A plastic bottle floats by me, faster than I can reach and grab it.  Moments later, a plastic bag on the other side of me.  As the tide goes out, it’s as if someone is emptying the trash from the inland marsh into the polluted Sound.  I start to get a knack for seeing the trash before the pieces rush past me, and I seize as many as I can, tossing them onto the beach so I can dispose of them properly.

            I traipse over to the garbage can, arms filled with disgusting briny garbage, and I get interested looks from fellow Westporters retrieving their beach chairs from the trunks of their BMWs.  Why don’t you go grab your reusable canvas bags and make a couple trips back and forth from the creek to the garbage cans?  I don’t say that.  Instead I stare uncertainly at the garbage cans into which I’ve disposed the salty trash, realizing it’s no better off in there than it was in the ocean.

            Westport is so proud of its plastic bag ordinance, but I still see plastic bags in the grocery stores.  I see those plastic bags that you put produce in before you weigh it.  Are those not plastic bags?  What about plastic in general?  Since Connecticut is working on a state-wide ban on plastic bag, maybe Westport, if it’s so “eco-friendly” should be taking the next step and working toward minimizing as many plastic product as they can.  And while they’re at it, they can improve their recycling routine, which is one of the worst I’ve ever seen.  I’m tired of seeing the plastic bottle graveyards, disgusting evidence of a society that doesn’t know how to recycle or convert to reusable bottles.  Ever in the area?  Go to the Green’s Farms Train Station on New Creek Road, and walk along the side of the creek I’m describing here.  If you take a garbage bag with you, you’ll easily fill it with plastic products in five minutes.  Careful thought, you might hurt yourself trying to carry it on your own.  Westport, you try.  Try harder.  Recycle more plastic, use less plastic. 

Will we get there?  Edward Abbey believes that “Wilderness preservation, like a hundred other good causes, will be forgotten under the overwhelming pressure of a struggle for mere survival and sanity in a completely urbanized, completely industrialized, ever more crowded environment” (52.)  Written in 1968, Abbey could not see that the two, wilderness preservation and survival are inextricably linked; if we hope to survive as a species, we must appreciate that our pollution is destroying the natural world, without which we choke, we die.