Environmental roots need nurturing

NATURAL PERSPECTIVES

Vic and I developed environmental leanings during childhood. Every

summer while he was growing up, Vic went to the woods with his

grandparents to stay in the isolated one-room cabin that his

grandfather Brian had built.

His grandparents lived in Portland, Ore., but owned 160 acres of

prime Douglas-fir forest east of town. There was no electricity and

no plumbing at the cabin, so Vic’s job was to fetch a bucket of

drinking water from the “crick” every morning.

Vic helped his grandfather trim branches from the Christmas trees

that they grew for sale. He chopped down alder trees to make room for

the young Douglas firs and chopped firewood for the wood stove his

grandmother used to cook the meals.

When the chores were done, he and his brothers delighted in

running wild through the ferns that grew taller than their heads.

They would get lost in the towering ferns, finding their way back to

the cabin using a guidance system known only to lucky little boys. .

.

These things might have bothered a rational adult concerned about

the safety of small boys. But the only thing that really frightened

Vic occurred one day during the long drive to the cabin in the woods.

As they left town, his grandmother commented how awful it would be

if the city just grew and grew until there weren’t any woods left,

just houses as far as the eye could see. To Vic, that was a horrible

thought. No wild places. No woods. No ferns to get lost in. Just

houses. His grandmother’s comment set him on a course that continues

to this day.

My father was an Indiana farm boy who never got the farm out of

his soul even after he moved to Indianapolis. He frequently took me

hunting and fishing on his cousin’s farm, where he had been raised. I

loved gathering eggs in the henhouse, going to the barn to see the

sows with their litters of plump piglets and seeing how high the corn

had grown. Farms were the source of life. And they were being gobbled

up by the sprawl of Indianapolis at a rate that alarmed me.

My father’s mother lived a simple and frugal life. She had no

bathtub or shower but bathed in a galvanized tub set in the middle of

the kitchen floor. She had a coal-burning stove in the dining room

that was the sole heat source for her tiny two-bedroom house. She

grew vegetables in the backyard and canned them for later use. Waste

not, want not were the watchwords of her household.

Summers in Indiana were unbearably hot and humid. My parents

offered to get my Grandma Wilson an air conditioner, but she refused

because it would waste electricity. She said that by the time I was

old, I’d be freezing in the dark because all the electricity had been

“used up.” Conservation was important to her.

In my formative years, I read a magazine article that warned of

impending disaster with the nation’s water supply. There were too

many people and only a finite supply of water, especially in dry

desert areas. The problem was too many people, the article said. I

was only 15, but I decided that I would have only two children.

By the mid 1970s, I was a divorced mom with two children and no

plans to have more. Then I met Vic. As the oldest of nine children,

he didn’t want to contribute to the growing population that was

devouring farms and forests with housing developments. Vic and I

shared a love of nature and a sense of stewardship of the land. As

biologists, we recognized the need for preservation of natural

habitat and species diversity. We were perfectly matched.

We fear for today’s young people. They’re growing up in a world

with toxic air that damages their lungs and causes many of them to

develop asthma. They’re growing up in a world with a finite water

supply and ever-increasing demands upon it. They’re growing up in a

world with far fewer wild areas, much more heavily impacted parklands

and lowered species diversity. The oceans are being fished out and in

many parts of the country the land languishes through severe droughts

brought on by global warming.

And yet in this bleak atmosphere of apparent disregard for the

land that sustains us, there is hope. Here in Huntington Beach, there

are hundreds, no, thousands of people who have dedicated decades to

saving the last remnants of coastal wetlands. The city is filled with

people who have poured their lives and resources into saving and

restoring our local wild areas for the benefit and enjoyment of

future generations.

We hope that somewhere in this town, seeds are being sown that

will sprout into the environmentalists of the future. We hope that

today’s parents and grandparents are talking to their children and

grandchildren. We hope they are helping to mold the people we will

need to carry the environmental banner into the future and save this

planet from human ignorance, indifference and selfishness.