My Green Manifesto

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

 

ALSO BY DAVID GESSNER:

A man does best when he is most himself.

It's not that easy being green.

 

I'm gonna tell you a big fat story, baby
Aww, it's all about my town

 

Yeah, down by the river
Down by the banks of the river Charles
Aw, that's what's happenin' baby
That's where you'll find me
Along with lovers, buggers and thieves
Aw, but they're cool people

 

Well I love that dirty water
Oh, Boston you're my home

 

'Cause I love that dirty water
Oh, Boston you're my home (oh, yeah)
¹

We are paddling our rock-battered canoe down a particularly stunning section of the river, twisting between steep granite walls and overhanging trees, as we travel toward the hidden city at river's end. Over the past hours we have heard coyotes howl and watched deer wade, observed a sharp-shinned hawk swoop into the canopy, swallows cut above the water in front of us, kingfishers ratchet past, and toasted with beers to congratulate ourselves after an exhilarating ride through rapids. If I squint I can imagine myself on a great and wild river, the Amazon or Congo or, at least, the Colorado, and can imagine the man steering the canoe behind me as an epic adventurer, Teddy Roosevelt, say, hurtling down the River of Doubt.

The truth is slightly less glamorous. The truth is this isn't the Amazon but the Charles—a name that conjures up images less adventurous and wild than fancy and effete, not to mention domesticated and decidedly
British—
and that the hidden city ahead is known, in the native tongue, as
Bawh
ston. What's more, the dwellings we will soon pass will not be primitive huts but Super Stop & Shops, and the
Homo sapiens
we'll encounter downriver will not be headhunters but Harvard students, and, if I am perfectly honest, the fearless leader in the stern isn't Teddy R. but a state worker named Dan Driscoll, who I once played some Ultimate Frisbee with, and who we referred to, in those days, as “Danimal.”

We like to strip down myths, we modern folk, and it's easy enough to quickly strip our journey of all its mythic
qualities: to see it as a pretty modest trip on a pretty modest river with a modest enough guy. But if our adventure has not been a life-or-death journey into a vast, untamed wilderness, the truth is I have been consistently astonished over the last couple of days, not just by the hidden wildness of the river but by Driscoll himself. The man's own considerable energy, which I had only previously witnessed when he chased down Frisbees like a border collie, is equally apparent when he talks about his efforts to revitalize the river we travel down.

“It started back around 1990 when I was working as a planner for the state,” he tells me as we paddle. “Someone in the office said ‘Why don't you take a look at the Charles?' I think they were just trying to give the new kid something to do. Little did they know. I looked over the maps and saw possibilities. I began to plan and scheme. When I first started talking about connecting the river paths, everyone looked at me like I was crazy. I said, ‘Let's have these green paths that run through the urban areas. Let's re-plant native plants to bring animals back. Let's reconnect people to nature.' Pretty soon I was known as this raging ecological planner.... Next thing I knew I was ‘The River Man.'”

Dan Driscoll is a man of average height and proportions, fit and compact, thanks in part to his daily bike commute in and out of Boston. Since our Frisbee days his hair has gone white, but his intense eyes still shine out a cracked blue. There is something of the true believer to Dan, as there has to be in anyone who will take on the sort of fight he has; but that intensity is leavened by a certain regular guy-ness and sense of humor.

As he paddles, he describes what he calls his “radical idea” that being environmental isn't about education or politics. It's about what Thoreau called “contact.” Falling in love with something—a place, an animal—and then fighting for it.

“When I grew up in Newton we always had our butts dragged out to Lincoln to learn about ‘nature.' The way I look at it, if one kid walks out into his
own
backyard and has contact with nature, then maybe that will do something. Maybe he'll be inspired to fight for the place. Maybe he'll be the next John Muir.”

He pauses to correct his exaggeration.

“Or at least maybe he'll just be less of a dick.”

Environmentalism is officially hot the summer we paddle down the river. Not long ago Arnold Schwarzenegger posed as a green warrior on the cover of
Newsweek
, while a couple of spots down the magazine rack
Vanity Fair
featured Leo DiCaprio standing next to a young polar bear on what I assume was meant to be a melting iceberg. In a few months Al Gore will win a shiny new Oscar for showing us his slide show. In the meantime, celebrities everywhere are tripping over themselves trying to show off their small carbon footprints.

Many of us understand that the things environmentalists have long told us are right. Though we don't actually do it, we know that we should eat and drive less. And, on a deeper level, we know that we should conserve. We the people need to move away from our obsession with growth at all costs toward a dependence on local economies, and
obviously away from slurping down oil and gobbling resources like a bunch of drunken gluttons. Yes, we
know;
we
understand.
But all these
shoulds
and
needs.
What about
wants
and what about
fun
? We are Americans for God's sake!

Why does environmentalism, much of which is just common sense, so often sound like nagging? Particularly deadening is the endless repetition of the phrase “global warming.” We have all seen Uncle Al's slideshow and are appropriately horrified. But what to do? Certainly the answer doesn't lie only in screwing in those twisty little light bulbs. Whatever the answer is, it isn't singing the same songs to the same choir. Maybe it's overstatement to say that environmentalism, for all the recent media coverage, has lost its soul, but it's not an overstatement to say that it has lost its power to excite the masses, or, at least, to excite me. And if it can't excite me, the card-carrying nature guy among my friends, then environmentalism is in trouble.

For my part, while I have spent a lot of time in the natural world and can talk almost unblushingly about my love for it, I've always been uncomfortable with the “environmentalist” label. Then again, all my hair splitting might just be a case of playing Hamlet when what the world needs is action. Whatever we call ourselves, it is time to
do something.
But what to do when there are so damned many catastrophes, and how to do it without playing out the same old environmentalist Chicken Little act?

I will not insult you, dear reader, and pretend, for the sake of narrative, that Dan Driscoll is a folksy sage who holds the answers to all these questions. But I will say that, even before I put my paddle in the water, I am starting to think that Dan may hold hints of what I am rooting around for. It occurs to me that Dan might just be the
right eco-hero for these times. Not an oversized Arnold Schwarzenegger or a Vulcan-like Al Gore, or even a Teddy Roosevelt in the Amazon, but a regular guy fighting a local fight for a limited wilderness—the only sort of wilderness available to most of us. Maybe what is needed isn't a raging prophet of doom, a stern-faced administrator, or an action hero, but a slightly goofy, stubborn, joyful, ex-Frisbee playing stoner of modest proportions—a stubborn guy who fell in love with a place and then fought like hell for it.