Author: Christopher Hall

Okefenokee NWR – Images from years paddling across those trembling waters.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
—Mary Oliver

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry

My time at Alligator River NWR had come to a close. The next morning, I would head south through the Outer Banks. When I started planning my journey to the Outer Banks, I knew I wanted to take a different route coming home and that meant following the road on the Banks south and crossing back to the mainland via ferry through Ocracoke. It would only be a short hour to my next overnight stay, so I decided to take my time. I headed a little north to see the Wright’s Brothers museum, which was fascinating and then headed south.

If you’re going to the coastal area you’re going to see lighthouses. Along the way, I stopped at Bodie Island lighthouse, Cape Hatteras lighthouse, and the lighthouse at Ocracoke. Their architecture was as interesting as their history and the role they served back in the day. As I drove towards Hatteras, my night’s destination, I stopped at Pea Island NWR. I stopped inside the visitor’s center, pilfered around, and talked to one of the rangers in between listening in on conversations about birds in the area. It turns out that she and her husband were from Michigan. I walked around the refuge for a short while, then got back in the car. I knew that I’d be back at sunset. Later that evening, I came back to the refuge, and with the sun setting in the west, I was not disappointed. The ponds behind the center were spilling over with waterfowl, an idyllic place to land for a rest. Plenty of space and enough distance from bipeds, the ponds were a safe, wintering shelter for those birds in a migration pattern.

I would spend a couple hours at Pea Island and on my journey to and from the refuge, I stopped by roadside stops for access to the beach. The site of the ocean was amazing! The next morning, I would be up early to make the ferry schedule. First up was Hatteras to Ocracoke. It was a short, but pretty trip with the wind blowing and the sky a steel gray. There was a storm that was bearing down on the coast and the trip home would be blustery. Driving onto Ocracoke, I had forgotten about the damage done during the hurricane season. It didn’t take long to remember. All along the side of the roads were evidence of the storm. I had gotten to the ferry, but had misread the schedule. I would have time on my hands before the next shot. Unfortunately, there wasn’ t much open. I had managed to walk into one shop that was open. It was an art gallery and we talked about art, living on the Island, and the hurricane. When Ocracoke was hit, it was eerily quiet. The worse of the storm was off the coast, but it was the surge that created the damage. The shop keeper said that the water came and came. At one point, it reached about 8 feet and the wreckage and the waterlines seen along buildings confirmed that. But it was quiet and it was quick. In a little more than an hour the water and come and gone, leaving flooded cars and buildings in it’s wake.

Yet, nature, and people, are resilient. I think that’s the message for me. I headed out of the shop and back down to the ferry station. It was around 2 PM and I had 8 hours in front of my on the road. Back on the mainland, I journeyed through a place I had lived once upon a time. It seemed like two lifetimes ago and as I think back to that period of my life, I see the growth and spiritual changes I’ve gone through. I’ve weathered many seasons and I was still standing, with many miles left in my journey.

Fifty years. It was 1970 and Richard Nixon was President when the first Earth Day was established. The year before, the Cuyahoga River had caught on fire. Old photos of NYC and LA show cities shrouded in smoke. Something had to change.

The environmental movement has gone through many seasons. The Sierra Club was founded in 1892 by John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt and was about protecting large swaths of land. The country was young then and places like Yellowstone NP and others wouldn’t be here today if not for their work. But in 1970, the land, water, and air were being polluted and something had to be done. It was during the presidency of Nixon that the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, and NEPA were passed. Nixon also created the EPA and NOAA. We were running amok and these actions were needed to prevent us from destroying our only home.

Through the “decade of the environment” and the early period of the conservation movement, we landed in the 1980s. While we now see many references today about Environmental and Climate Justice, the EJ movement was started in the 1980s by one who is known as the father of the Environmental Justice movement, Dr. Robert Robert D. Bullard. When a chemical or petro plant is sited, you can bet it’s in a People of Color community. Waste sites? The same. Toxic, hazardous waste? You wouldn’t see these in West Lake, Houndslake, or Woodside. The original term used to describe these kinds of practices (as I understand it) was environmental racism. It seems (white) people are just now catching on. As Dr. Bullard has said, people of color are the wrong complexion for protection.

Today those monumental environmental protections have been weakened and we see the attacks on public lands, opening them up for the extraction industries like oil, fracked gas, mining, and timber. Donald J. Trump can’t be blamed for all that’s taken place, but he has taken degradation to new depths. What’s prevented the wholesale destruction of our natural resources are groups like the League of Conservation Voters, National Wildlife Federation, and the Sierra Club. People will balk at the ‘Big Green Groups’ for all the fundraising and political work, but the fact is if it weren’t for the legal work of groups like The Sierra Club, we’d be in a much worse place. And to do this work means you have to have staff, legal staff.

You don’t truly have to be a diligent student of history to see where we’re headed if we don’t make some changes. Whether you believe in climate change or not, one thing is clear and that’s the fact that we’re destroying the natural world around us. Our choices and how we live on the land are not sustainable and we must address the systemic issues that have created the mess we find ourselves in. If it’s true that everyone I meet is my mirror, that what I throw out comes back to me, then it must also be true that the harm I bring to the land, water, air and other creatures that I share this common home with will eventually come home to roost. Nature is resilient and will bounce back, but we must take personal responsibility in all ways.

I’ve read that in Indigenous cultures when they make a decision they try to look at how it will impact the seventh generation. We must look past the short term satisfaction and think about how our choices will affect future generations. Our journey is a spiritual one and our choices reflect our collective spiritual state.