I've been reading John McPhee's classic book on David Brower called "Encounters with the Arch Druid". David Brower continued a tradition of environmental activism that is sustained in a line starting with John Muir and ending with, maybe, Bill McKibben. The reality is that we don't have a major figure arguing poetically for nature, the land, wildlife, leaving it alone.
David Brower said famously (and I paraphrase) that environmental victories are always temporary. Generationally, the temptation to drill into wilderness land or to enlarge a suburb across a "green line" (as is happening in Chico)--well, these things are just too tempting. And we have a generation of kids coming online that have been online since they were in diapers and have no clue what a Monarch butterfly is, or what Milkweed is; they haven't a clue that it took just as much effort by tenacious Activists to get the Wilderness Act of 1964 passed as it did to get the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In my view, the two pieces of legislation are related. Joined at the hip. And both are being assaulted today.
Joni and I took a hike today. Down the blessed trail to our canyon that we had to all to ourselves. Joni went skinny dipping. I thought the water was too cold.
The water is green in our own private river. It has never been that way before. Of course, we are in a drought year(s). Water flow is minimal. But the green appearance is from algae that is suffocating our little stream. And the algae is created from run off of a few lawns in Paradise and also from the myriad of Pot Farms that dump pesticides and fertilizer into the runoff.
Environmental victories are always temporary, said the Arch Druid. And there are fewer and fewer Granola Heads willing to take on the Greed Heads. Sad.
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