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Top ten ideas to reverse climate change

March 5, 2012 By 1 Comment
grab a paddle Top ten ideas to reverse climate change

Now that is a paddle!

After a bit of brainstorming,  I have come up with a short list of interesting ways that we can turn around the trend of climate change.

1. Drive golf carts: if everyone drove solar-powered golf carts, the demand for fossil fuels would decline rapidly.  Also, most golf carts have a maximum speed of about 20-25 mph.  It would be very difficult to be in a hurry if everyone were driving golf carts.  This would lead to a more leisurely and pleasant lifestyle as well as reduced carbon emissions. This may seem like an unrealistic goal, but several communities have already adopted this practice.

2. Walk barefoot: walking without shoes will make you reconsider how important and necessary concrete is.  I was in Hawaii years ago talking with a guy that was born there and somehow we got on the topic of concrete.  He said, “yeah that stuff is so hard, it will break your feet.” Then I started thinking about all the locals I had seen walking and hiking barefoot and it began to make sense.  Of course, one has to be careful about walking barefoot because there are so many sharp things that we might cut our feet on.  Less concrete means more soil, which can store more carbon.

3. Let your kids play in the dirt: nature deficit disorder is becoming a serious threat to the health of many children. One easy way to fix this problem is by encouraging your kids to play outside and get dirty.  You will find that most kids prefer playing outside to video games and tv once they get used to it.  Also, playing outside requires no electricity.

4. Build something out of old materials: this is a green and creative challenge.  One of my favorite things to build out of old materials are treehouses.  Instead of buying new lumber to build a treehouse, scour the neighborhood for old boards and other building materials to make a tree hideaway.

6.  Go hunting: hunting may seem primitive and barbaric to some people, but for those that eat meat, killing one’s own food can be a very connecting experience.  Factory-farmed meats uses lots of energy, water and chemicals to produce the delicacies that we buy in the grocery store.  When you have to hunt, kill and clean your own food you become more aware of what is involved in eating meat and use fewer resources doing so.

7. Pee outside: peeing outside saves water and energy and it is fun if no one is watching.  According to the American Water Works Research Foundation, flushing the toilet accounts for 26.7% of total daily residential water use.  It is most likely the single largest use of water in your home.  This means that if everyone pees outside half of the time, we could save about 2.4 billion gallons of water every day in the United States!!!  Imagine how many wetlands could be restored with this saved water.  Wetlands store more carbon than any other form of vegetation and thus greatly help reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. They also provide habitat for thousands of different plant and animal species!

8. Buy local food: local food uses less energy for transportation and growing than food shipped over long distances.  Some studies estimate that the current industrial food production system uses 7-10 calories of energy to produce just one calorie of food.  We can use of energy much more efficiently by buying local food, which requires less fossil fuels to transport the food.

9. Plant a native tree: native trees are adapted to local climate conditions and water availability.  This means that they use less water, provide shade, hold soil in place to prevent erosion and capture carbon dioxide from the air, which decreases the amount of this greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.  Planting a tree is also a very real and rewarding experience that has benefits for years to come.

10. Grab a paddle: if you are thinking about an outing on the water, try a canoe instead of a powerboat.  There are many things you can do in a canoe (fishing, whitewater, lounging) and it is good exercise.  Canoes do not use any gas or oil so they do not contribute to greenhouse gases. You will be surprised at how much more you take in your surroundings while riding in a canoe compared to a faster, gas-powered boat.

I would love to hear about your ideas to reverse climate change. Please send them to me!

 

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Laissez les bon temps rouler

March 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment

buffalo river 300x147 Laissez les bon temps roulerRites of passage are one of the most important occurrences in children’s lives.  Often the most meaningful rites are those that involve a deep connection with the natural world.  I had an arduous rite of passage one summer on the Buffalo River in northern Arkansas.

 

Silly plastic toys

I had just acquired my driver’s license a few months before and was eager to strike out into the wild.  My brother and I loaded up my GMC Jimmy with what I thought were adequate supplies and made our way to my friend Jeff’s house to pick him up for the journey. We stopped at a sports store and bought an inflatable kayak.  I had little experience with paddling and thus did not realize the uselessness of an inflatable kayak, but would soon find out the hard way.

Nutritious camp meals

We arrived at the Buffalo River campground late in the afternoon and made a fire for our hot dogs.  After a satisfying meal of hot dogs, marshmallows and Coca-Cola, we tried to set our sleeping quarters in the back of my SUV.  For some reason, I thought we could all fit comfortably in the back of it.  It never got below 85 degrees that night and we got very little sleep.

The next morning, we rented a funyak from a canoe rental shop and hopped in the car with an old Cajun man that shuttled us to the launch point up the river.  He told us dirty jokes that we mostly did not understand and when he left us at the boat launch the last thing he said was, “Laissez les bon temps rouler.”  I did not know what he meant, but no words could have been further from the reality of our river journey.

Delivered

We quickly realized that the inflatable kayak was not fit for the river.  You could not move it forward by paddling.  It had to just float with the current, which was non-existent at several places in the river.  After two or three arduous miles of dragging the kayak over rocks and unwrapping it from trees in the river, we stopped for lunch.  We had plenty of sandwiches and fruit bars until we flipped the kayak after lunch and the entire contents of our cooler went floating down the Buffalo River.  The sun was setting, we had ten more miles to go with a lot of still water and the only sustenance we had left was a single Nutrigrain bar between three people.

We tried to sleep on a sandbar in the river that night without any sleeping bags or tents.  I managed to curl up on the kayak while my brother and friend slept on a tarp spread out over the large rocks.  The one time I did manage to drift off a bit, I woke up to find a black widow spider on my leg.  Fortunately, it did not bite.  We were hours away from the nearest medical facility.

The home stretch

The next day was one of the most difficult of my life.  I had to drag the kayak with my large, lazy friend in it across ten miles of shallow rocky river on a completely empty stomach.  It took us all day and when we finally reached the launch point where my vehicle was parked, the only thing I could think about was FOOD!

As we made our way back south to my house, we heard on a local radio station that there was an escaped serial killer roaming the wilderness area very close to where we were camping.  Fortunately, we never saw him.  We had nothing to defend ourselves with on the river save the large rocks all around us.

Your call to action

This trip was rite of passage for us.  It taught us the value of preparation and knowing the river conditions that we would encounter.  I believe that every youth should have the opportunity for such experiences, but this is only possible if we preserve the places in nature like the Buffalo River.  In a time when state budgets are crunched and state parks are some of the first budget items cut, we need help preserving wild areas more than ever.  One of the greatest organizations I have ever worked with is the Nature Conservancy.  They preserve and manage wild areas all over the U.S. and many other countries.

The Buffalo River was the first national river in the United States and it is one of the few undammed rivers left in the lower 48.  It is a wonderful place to camp, hike, fish, swim and enjoy the beauty of the oldest mountains in the country.

 

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Rare nature moments in Hawaii and cheap beer

February 27, 2012 By Leave a Comment

whale Rare nature moments in Hawaii and cheap beerThe Hawaiian islands are the most isolated land mass in the world, but you would never realize this standing in the middle of Waikiki. As much as I tried to avoid this area during my two years of graduate school in Honolulu, I often found myself there for one reason or another.  Hawaii also arguably has more endemic species (those found only in one place) than any other place in the world, but habitat destruction and invasive species are quickly making this phenomenon a thing of the past.

One of the most popular tourist trips to take in Waikiki is a giant catamaran ride around the bay.  Against my better judgement and with the convincing smile of a beautiful Indian woman, I decided to take a catamaran tour one sunny day.  There were about 40 people stuffed onto the boat, which was equipped with a full open bar and lot of rail space to view the beauty of the Pacific and whatever marine life decided to show itself. After several glasses of champagne and several well-known island tunes, the trip was entertaining, but rather uneventful until I spotted something unusual in the distance. It was a large whale and it was coming closer.  It is fairly common to see whales at a distance in Hawaii, but much less so to have a close encounter with the world’s largest mammal.  No one else on the boat seemed to notice the beautiful beast for a while until we started coming closer to it.  Once a few more people had taken notice of the whale, everyone swarmed the side of the boat closest to the creature and to our surprise the intoxicated boat captain headed directly towards it!  As we got closer, I became concerned that we might hurt the whale, but we kept barreling forward.

Peak moments

At this point, everyone on the boat was hanging off the edge trying to get a glimpse of the whale and it did not seem to be bothered by how close we were.  When we got close enough to almost touch the whale, everyone stopped talking and a sense of awe fell over the crowd. Just as we were at the closest point to the whale, some guy belted out in a drunken voice, “Pour some beer on it!” I had to process what he said for a second to make sure my ears were not deceiving me.  Then he said it again.  Most of the people thought it was pretty funny, but I could not believe that in such an amazing moment, this was the most inspiring thing he could say. I continued to ponder the wise words of this drunk tourist after we reached the shore and realized that they were both mindlessly funny and disturbing.  Are we really so lost in our urban and suburban cultures that this is how best we to know to interact with the natural world?

Hawaii is particularly effected by environmental problems such as invasive species and habitat destruction because it is small and isolated.  Native plants and animals on Hawaii evolved without large predators that are present on continents and thus never developed defense mechanisms like thorns and poisons. When a foreign species such as a rat is introduced, it multiplies quickly and causes much destruction because it has no or few predators on the islands to regulate its spread.  This means that we must be particularly cautious about bringing any foreign plants or animals into the islands.

Doing our part

The question we must ask ourselves is are we going to take the approach of “pour some beer on it” whenever we see something new in nature or are we going to take the time to respect and understand the natural world. The answer to this question determines the fate of many other creatures that inhabit the planet with us and ultimately our own fate as well. Some of the biggest threats to whales today include habitat loss, noise pollution and chemicals in the oceans and climate change. We can all do our part to help by disposing properly of our wastes and buying products made locally to decrease the amount of shipping, which causes noise pollution.

 

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Top ten anti-green moments

February 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment

smoke fire burning garbage dump managua 300x200 Top ten anti green momentsEveryone has their take on how much we should do to help create a healthier planet and some ideas are more informed than others.  I have put together here a collection of anti-green quotes and moments that came about during conversations I or friends had with others about the environment. Some day hopefully we will look at these with the same humor as we now look at the idea that the sun revolves around the Earth.

1. “I think all you environmental people are just jealous.”

My friend was talking to his former boss about driving cars with better gas mileage and she made this comment suggesting that what environmentalists really want is more money to buy bigger cars.  I must admit that those big SUVs can be fun to drive and give you a sense of power over other hunks of metal and plastic on the road, but I have no desire to spend my money on a large vehicle unless I am carrying gear or several unemployed workers to an organic farm to harvest food for ourselves.  I get a certain peace of mind knowing that I can achieve 40 miles to the gallon in my Toyota Corolla.

2.  “I’d just throw some gas on it and light a match.”

I was talking to my aunt’s ex-boyfriend years ago about what we should do with the accumulating underbrush on our dry hillside and he suggested this course of action.  The problem was that many of the plants there were invasive and greatly increased the fuel load.  A smarter solution would have been to thin the fuel load to prevent big fires from breaking out. There is also the danger that we might catch the house on fire if we did follow his plan.  Sometimes human safety and environmental health go hand in hand.

3.  Can’t we just burn our trash?”

I was doing a garbage sorting game with elementary students in Sonoma County and one of the students made this comment when I asked the students for ways that we can reduce the amount of garbage in the county landfill.  Yes, we certainly can burn our trash, but have you ever inhaled burning plastic? There are nasty chemicals in plastics like dioxins, that have some pretty serious human and ecological health effects.  Apart from the health effects of burning trash, most of what we throw away in the U.S. can be recycled so it is not even trash in the first place.

4. “Pour some beer on it!”

This is my personal favorite.  I was on a Catamaran tour on Hanauma Bay close to Waikiki and we were having a fabulous time.  The bar was open and so we the mouths of thirsty tourists. Someone spotted a whale near the boat and we began to approach it.  As we neared the mighty beast everyone got quiet and there was a sense of wonder that took us over.  As we were almost within an oar’s reach of the giant creature, an intoxicated tourist yelled out, “Pour some beer on it.”  I had no idea how to respond to this, but I can rest assured that his intentions were less than green.

5. Trash burning parties in Cabuya

When I was in the small town of Cabuya, Costa Rica, several poor families in the area had trash burning parties. They would gather around sunset, crack open a cold beer, pile up their trash near the street and light it on fire.  I never understood the draw of burning plastic and other petroleum-based materials, but it apparently held something wonderful about it for the locals.

6. “Can’t we just put our trash into outer space?”

This was another comment made by a student during out garbage sorting game in Sonoma County.  There are a few problems with this solution: launching garbage into space is very expensive; the garbage could potentially collide with important satellites that orbit the Earth; we are not addressing the root issue of why we have so much garbage in the first place.

7. Q: Where does milk come from?

     A: The grocery store!

I asked this question to some youngsters at an environmental summer camp in Hawaii and one of them gave me this response.  His answer is a reflection of how removed we have become from the natural world and our food sources.

8. “I want to learn Arabic so I can jump out of plains and kill people!”

Not that our relationship with the Arabic-speaking world has ever been very green, but this is the peak of ignorance and waste! Surely, there are friendlier ways to interact with people of other cultures and greener ways to spend U.S. tax dollars than funding Arabic-speaking assassins from 20,000 feet!

9. My quest to cut down the entire forest behind my house.

Yes, even environmentalists have their weak moments.  I developed this idea one summer when I was 12 years old and did my best to make my dream a reality.  Fortunately, I ran out of steam long before I cut down even a sizeable portion of the forest.  I believe that my current passion for teaching others about the environment is a coming of age that began with time spent in the forest behind my house.  Isn’t it strange how the universe works sometimes?

10. “Go to Disneyworld!”

We all remember this one.  It is what former President George W. Bush said to Americans after 9/11.  It was a great way to stimulate the American economy and show that we were not phased by the attacks, but consuming massive amounts of plastic and energy in an artificial wonderland does little to solve our environmental problems.  Perhaps a greener statement would be, “Get out of your cars and take a hike in a National Park” or “Plant a tree with your child!”

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Habitat destruction and wild turkey 101

February 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment

habitat destruction Habitat destruction and wild turkey 101Habitat destruction is one of the most pervasive environmental problems on planet Earth. It is the reason for much of the decline in biodiversity in recent decades and plays a role in climate change.  Natural forces like floods and tornadoes have always destroyed habitat, but humans are destroying habitat at a faster pace than ever recorded before. This destruction is possibly the greatest threat to wildlife and the biggest challenge for humanity.

 

A Silent Witness

As a child growing up in Arkansas, I witnessed much destruction of hardwood forests to make way for pine plantations for making paper.  I did not realize the scale of this destruction until I was an adult.  Habitat destruction effected me personally me because I spent so much time outdoors camping, fishing, hiking and mountain biking.  One particular weekend of camping comes to mind…

Camping with Crazies

I was a freshman at Hendrix College and eager to explore the many outdoor options of western Arkansas.  One Saturday morning in April, a friend and I packed up my truck and headed west for the Ouachita Mountains.  Our destination was Iron Springs campground, just north of Hot Springs, a famous resort town where Al Capone used to hang out long ago.

We arrived at the campground on Saturday evening with plenty of beer, music and meats for grilling.  There was only one other vehicle in the entire campsite, a large RV full of crystal seekers.  This part of Arkansas is known for its high-quality crystals and valuable stones.  It is only an hour away from North America’s only active diamond mine at Murfreesboro.

Along came Freddy

It was a relatively calm evening until an old Jeep truck wheeled its way into the parking spot next to our campsite.  When the door opened, a very thin, sun-dried character hopped out of the cab and made his way over to our site.  He seemed nice, but was missing several of his teeth and you could tell that he had a rough life.  He introduced himself as Fred and said that he lived just a few miles up the road in a mobile home with his mother.  He later told us that he occasionally had to live in his truck when his mother could not put up with him any longer.

We started a fire and enjoyed burgers, beer and some classic rock songs as we found out more about Fred and his dysfunctional existence.  Sometime around 10p.m. Fred opened the back of his Jeep and pulled out a half-gallon bottle of Wild Turkey 101 proof.  It didn’t take him long to get half  way through that bottle.  As he became intoxicated, the conservation turned towards how Fred felt about the widening of the road near the campground and the timber companies in that area.

Road Rage

He told us about how much the area had changed during his lifetime, although it still seemed pretty undeveloped to us.  We talked for a couple more hours and then decided that it was time to go to sleep.  I was just about to fall into dreamland when I heard Fred screaming something unintelligible.  I pulled the zipper of my tent slightly open and looked out to see what the commotion was all about.  Fred was trying to make his way up the steep bank of the campsite towards the road and was throwing sticks at cars passing by.  He was shouting things at the cars like, “Get out of my woods!” Due to his excessive drunkenness, he never made it all the way to the road but I am sure that all the motorists in the area got the message.  They were not welcome near Fred’s forest.

Misplaced Wisdom

Ironically, in Fred’s display of distaste for paved roads and traffic, he was the only one attempting an act of destruction that night, but his actions left a lasting impression on me.  Yes, he was quite drunk and uneducated, but I still agreed with his fundamental premise: we do not need more roads in national parks and natural areas.  We need more nature.  We need more wildlife.  Sometimes we find wisdom in strange places.

Your Call to Action

The experiences like these that I had as a child in the rivers, forest and parks of Arkansas have undefinable value in my life and it is our responsibility to ensure that future generations can have these same experiences.  One of the simplest ways that we can prevent habitat destruction is to buy recycled products and reuse items rather than buying new ones. On a larger scale, we can donate our time and/or money to organizations like the Nature Conservancy that buy and protect large amounts of land for wildlife and human use. Without your help, there is no guarantee that any of the natural places we cherish will exist far into the future.

 

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environmental conservation and shotgun blasts

February 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Mallard Drake environmental conservation and shotgun blastsAs a child, I spent a lot of time in the woods.  I found magic in the forests and always enjoyed cutting trees to build forts and hunting birds without realizing the environmental impact that I was having on the forest. I knew nothing about conservation as a child, but I was developing a connection to the forest that would stay with me for the rest of my life.

 

 

Standing in freezing water

I also did a lot of duck hunting in the flooded timber lands of eastern Arkansas.  One of the greatest things about standing in ice-cold water in waders at four o’clock in the morning is realizing how much a part of nature I was. I usually went hunting with my dad and some other older men that knew the area well.  To me, the flooded forest was an unnavigable maze of sloughs and creeks that I would have surely been lost in forever had it not been for my dad’s skills in finding our way through the darkness.

One particular hunting trip comes to mind many years ago in Arkansas.  It was just about daybreak and there were hundreds of mallards circling above us.  I did my best to hide against the big oak trees so the ducks would not see me.  Ducks, unlike deer, are not colorblind and can detect movement very well.

The Firing Squad

After some hail calls and feed calls and several  rounds of circling above us, several ducks finally landed.  There was always an eerie silence after they landed and then some old man shouted, “Get ‘em boys!”  The next few moments were full of gunfire and probably the closest I have ever been or would want to be to war.  The thing that scared me the most was that the hunters were not always in a straight line.  Sometimes it was more of a semicircle, which meant that if a hunter on one end swung his gun barrel to far towards the semicircle he could graze a hunter on the other end with a few pellets.  Fortunately, this never happened when I was there.

Where does your food come from?

To some people who have never hunted before, this ritual may seem a bit barbaric.  Perhaps it is on some level it is, but the relationship that a hunter has to his/her prey is unmistakable.  When you shoot an animal you have to watch it die, (usually quickly if it is a clean shot) you have to clean and then cook it.  It is a whole process and has much more meaning to me than simply buying a piece of meat at the grocery that may have come from a farm thousands of miles away.

Your Call to Action

Hunters and conservation go together by necessity.  If there is no land to hunt on, then hunters are out of luck.  Ducks Unlimited has done a lot of good work to preserve land across the U.S. through partnerships with hunters and many other concerned parties, but there is much work to be done.  As physical beings, we humans must find a way to interact with land without paving it all over and destroying the habitat which supports us and all other species on the planet.  One of the most effective ways to help everyone realize our connection with the land is to be on it and observe the relationships that other plants and animals have with each other.  This is not anything new.  It has been done for thousands and thousands of years by some cultures, but it is becoming increasingly rare in the modern world.

If you are interested in helping people of other cultures preserve their land, Survival International does wonderful work with many indigenous groups around the world.  Conservation is not just a fad, it is a way of life.

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Organic gardens, eco paradises and a wayward thong

January 27, 2012 By Leave a Comment

capuchin Organic gardens, eco paradises and a wayward thongI had walked down to the national seashore park several times in Cabuya, Costa Rica, but never really noticed the beautiful butterfly and organic flower garden on my way.  However, after a celebratory evening on my birthday there was good reason to pay more attention to it. I spent a three-month stint in this isolated piece of Costa Rica a few years ago and I truly believe that it is a portal to another universe.  I met the wackiest people I have ever seen on this piece of land.

The Unknown Thong

The owner of the organic garden was a middle-aged woman who kept to herself until the stuff hit the fan the morning after my birthday.  I was reporting in to my station at the regular morning hour at the animal rescue sanctuary where I had helped design a new website and start an endangered sea turtle rescue project and one of the volunteers approached me with the news.  It seemed the sanctuary’s owner had found an unmarked black thong under her pillow that she believed belonged to the owner of the organic garden.  The story was that she appeared that morning dangling the thong in front of the young female volunteers at the sanctuary asking if any of them recognized it.  She believed that her husband was cheating on her with the owner of the garden and had left the thong as a warning that she planned to take over the rights to the sanctuary by stealing the woman’s husband and saving up money by going occasionally Miami to attend to her weathly, needy male clients.  Apparently, she was a practitioner of the world’s oldest profession in addition to her organic gardening skills, although I had a very hard time believing this.

An Eco Paradise?

The dust settled and we never found out who the thong belonged to.  Meanwhile, the sea turtle project was moving forward full blast and we found a nest of an endangered leatherback sea turtle!  One thing that I began to realize on this trip is that the idea of Costa Rica as an eco paradise was not entirely true.  There were monkeys being electrocuted on uninsulated power lines in the rural areas around us at an alarming rate.  We often saw the aftermath of these electrocutions and it was not pretty. Also, I learned that a lot of the issues they had with the decreasing native bird population were due to locals stealing eggs to eat and/or catching birds to keep as pets and then throwing them out when they no longer wanted them.  This causes the birds to lose their ability to fend for themselves in the wild if they are captured at a young age.  This is true for most animals.  They must grow up in the wild to be able to survive there as adults.

Your Call to Action

There are many organizations that are helping solve these problems, but there are also a lot of new resorts and buildings popping up in this part of Costa Rica that are decreasing the amount of suitable habitat for Costa Rica’s already threatened rare species.  So what can we do about it?  Well, first of all, consider volunteering at or donating to a good environmental organization in Costa Rica if you are going to visit there soon as many Americans do.  EARTH University is doing some amazing things in Costa Rica with organic farming, fair trade products and environmental conservation.  The Nature Conservancy is also working to protect wild areas and biodiversity in Costa Rica.

Here is a short video about EARTH University.

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Three men, a giant fire and the Big Piney River

January 20, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Big Piney River 001 m Three men, a giant fire and the Big Piney RiverSome of the best adventures I have ever had were the least planned.  One trip in particular comes to mind on the banks of the Big Piney River in western Arkansas.  I floated the Piney once as a teenager, but the water was very low and relatively tame.  One sunny Saturday morning in April, I convinced two of my best friends that we should pack up and head out into the wild for the weekend.  The only catch was that we had to drop off a hung over German exchange student to his host family’s home in the middle of nowhere.  He somehow appeared on my friend’s couch in the middle of the night.

As soon as we arrived at the overflowing campgrounds, it became obvious that we would have to make our own site and so we did just that.  We found a really rough, steep road that led right down to the bank of the Big Piney River and trotted down in my Honda Passport with all our gear, not worrying about how we would get back up the road in a two-wheel drive vehicle.

We built a large fire that night, grilled steaks, enjoyed the crispness of cheap beer and somehow invented a new language that I have yet been able to identify anywhere in the Americas.   It was an evening to cherish and I close as I have ever been to an Old Milwaukee commercial ( I am dating myself a bit ).

The River Rough

The next morning was clear, beautiful and had the stench of adventure written all over it.  We ate breakfast, loaded up our gear and were off to rent canoes for our trip.  We made our voyage in two canoes. I had to paddle solo and my friends took the other one. The river wasted no time in introducing itself forcefully.  Within a quarter-mile or so we were upon the first large class 3+ rapid.  They call it The Mother.  I guess whoever named that churning water did not have a very pleasant childhood.  This rapid was particularly tough due to the size of the boulders that surround it.

I managed to navigate the rapid without major incident, but my friends’ boat was another story.  As I was watching them approach the rapid sideways, I noticed a large tree branch bobbing up and down in the water just a few feet in front of them.   You can imagine what scenarios were running through my mind at this point.They ran right into the branch and the hull of the canoe went shooting straight up into the wild blue yonder just as if it was being pulled upward on to the bed of a powerful tow truck.  To my amazement, they were stuck in midair!  The next thing I saw was my friend’s semi-bald head inch over the front rim of the canoe. The look he had on his face frames one of the most memorable moments of my existence.  It was as if he had been unknowingly placed on a spaceship under sedation and just woken up to find that he was 100,000 miles away from planet Earth with only a banana to eat.

The canoe rapidly starting taking on water and flipped over spilling its entire contents, passengers, paddles, life vests, lunches and beer, into the river.  Fortunately, no one was hurt during the incident and we recovered most of our gear.  We spent the rest of the trip weaving our way around the whitewater and recounting their little dance with the prodigal river branch.

Simple and Free Rivers

There is no way for me to fully convey the laughter, satisfaction and contentment that we felt at the end of that day as we sat around the campfire, but I can imagine that the Caddo Indians of the area may know what I am talking about. The Big Piney River is lucky enough because it is far away from most major industrial and agricultural activity that its surrounding ecosystems have not been changed in drastic ways, but many of our nation’s rivers are not so lucky.  If we want our children to enjoy rivers like the Piney and have priceless experiences in nature, we have to act.

Your Call to Action

One of the ways that we can preserve our local rivers is to get involved in local river and/or watershed organizations and speak out against developments that will impact the quality of rivers and their watersheds.  The EPA has a great list of watersheds on their website. Another way that you can help is to get involved with organizations such as  Trout Unlimited.  They work to restore trout populations in cold water streams and their watersheds in the U.S.  I have spent some time with members of their organization and thus I know that they do excellent work.  I hope that everyone has the chance to experience a river the way that we did on that sunny Spring day in Arkansas.  I would recommend keeping your beer consumption under three cans if you are going to float The Mother in high water. I want hear what you think about river conservation in your area.  Don’t hold back!  We need open discussion!

Here is a taste of the Big Piney on video…

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The big, bad wolf

January 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Wolf and Moon02 The big, bad wolfYellowstone National Park is a magical place.  In 1997, I had the pleasure of working in the park.  One summer weekend I took a backcountry hiking trip with three friends on the Montana border.  The hike was long and arduous and my pack was heavy due to my decision to bring along a bottle of gin and various citrus fruits for making some sort of ridiculous cocktail (beer was too heavy).  By the time we reached our site, ten miles into the backcountry, I was exhausted.  I built a fire, shared my two cans of chunky soup and then washed out the cans to use them as mixing containers for my cocktails.  No one really wanted the drinks but me so I did as any good Arkansan would and drank most of them.

Ridgetop Sighting

Needless to say, I was somewhat intoxicated by bedtime.  I tucked myself in and dozed off into dreamland.  As I can best recall, I woke up around 3 a.m. and had to go to water the lawn.  I stopped by a little creek about one hundred feet from the tent to do my business and stared into the night sky.  To my amazement, I saw a large wolf staring at me across the ridge in front of me and I froze!  Even in my intoxicated state, I knew this was a moment unlike any other.  It was as if the wolf was telling me that I was in his territory and I should respect it.  He eventually turned and walked away, but it made a lasting impression on me.

The Return

Many of you may already know that on December 28th, 2011, the first wolf in California since 1924 was spotted in Siskiyou County.  He came over from Oregon and was originally part of a pack from Idaho.  Well, this is fabulous news for me because I love wolves.  The health of wolves is so symbolic of the overall health of the ecosystems they inhabit and the health of our planet as a whole.  What do I mean by this…?

The Importance of Wolves

Wolves are at the top of their food chain.  If they disappear, their prey species can increase rapidly causing ecological imbalances such as erosion due to overgrazing of riparian areas by prey species like deer and elk.  There must be a balance between the number of wolves and their prey species.  Like most large predators, wolves need a lot of space to roam and hunt.  One estimate suggests from 50-100 square miles for one pack of wolves and some even reach 1,000 square miles!

Early Americans hunted wolves to near extinction and some ranchers have done their best to get rid of them because of the threat they pose to their livestock.  However, I ask the reader to consider: who was here first, the people or wolves?  The loss of a few chickens or sheep pales in comparison to the loss of an entire species that holds together an ecosystem and running wolves to exhaustion from helicopters is about the weakest form of human activity I can think of.

Saving wolves is symbolic of our level of commitment to environmental health because we must be willing to ask ourselves: are we any more important than any other species? And how can we meet our own needs and allow other species to exist in harmony with us? We are all connected.

Your Call to ACTION

So this all sounds touching and inspiring, but what can YOU do about it??? One thing that everyone can do is know their food source.  If you buy meat from a local rancher, you can get information about them and their relationship with wildlife on the farm. What are their grazing practices?  Are they wolf haters? Eatwild is a great resource for this!!!

There are many organizations that work to preserve habitat for wolves.  I can personally vouch for The Nature Conservancy because I have worked with them in many parts of the U.S.  They buy land and manage it, negotiate with other landowners to restore habitat and use field science to mimic natural processes. Wolf Haven also does great work with wolves.  Even a small donation to these organizations, in time or money, can make a difference.

Ultimately, I hope that everyone can have an experience like I did with the wolf in Yellowstone (hopefully, a bit more sober than I was). No matter who we are or where we come from, there is a part of us that wants to connect with the wilderness.  After all, it gave us life…

4DH8KM8D9RUF

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Green choices and good love

January 6, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Sometimes recognizing the fact each one of us is only one in seven billion people can lead us to believe that our individual actions have no impact on the fate of this planet.  Yet we know small things that we do can have a snowball effect on other people and eventually turn into global movements.  Well, this video suggests something even more enticing…making green choices to expel less carbon dioxide can also enhance our love life.  Take a look!

We have been conditioned to believe by our culture that lots of noise, activity and other byproducts of modern technology are good and that these are habits of successful people.  There is a simple way to test this theory: turn off your tv, turn off your phone, drive or walk (if possible) to your nearest forest and sit in the middle of it.  Take a romantic partner with you, if applicable.  Sit quietly for twenty minutes.  What do you notice about the way you feel?  What do you notice about the living things around you…the trees and their leaves, the animals and insects scurrying about?  You will quickly notice that you become part of this ecosystem. Kiss your partner.  Do you notice anything different about the experience?

When you return to the world, what do you notice about it? One of things you may be thinking now is that you would rather stay in the forest.  If each of us makes small changes everyday to make our loves more green, then eventually we can bring the forest to us.  We can plant more trees and have more leisure time to enjoy these forests. Any good psychologist knows that the way we improve our mental well being is by making small, deliberate changes.  We can improve the health of our natural world in exactly the same way.

 

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