GTFO
How to deal
One thing helps: Go outside. Move around. Sure it might be 12 degrees out there but the Finns would do it. Get out the door, break a sweat. Breathe clean air (while we have it). Remind yourself that not everything you care about is an idea. No one on earth hates all trees. No one is indifferent to sunshine and fresh air. No one looks at a meadow of alpine wildflowers and says burn it down, tear it up. People do say that, of course. But when they say those things, they aren’t seeing things — they’re seeing headlines, stances, dollar signs. Show me one person who doesn’t think a pika is fucking adorable. The meanest person out there is still going to have a hard time looking directly at a chirping little pika and saying, We should smash it and destroy its home — no more of those!
At least, I have to think so. Otherwise we’re living with monsters, and as tempting as that thought can be and has been throughout history, it’s not true. Not monsters, just people. Lots of us are monstrous, though, when we’re angry. You know what turns us back into people? Going the fuck outside. Looking at a tree. Sitting by a creek. Have any of the angry people currently trying to ravage this country ever walked around in it? I bet not. Picture the apricot president on a backpacking trip — unlikely.
I submit that if they walked around a little bit in this place they are now duty-bound to care for, they would take better care. Are you mad at America? Go on a hike. This place is not just a bunch of ideas. It’s a place. It’s our only one. Get out there and see how great it is.
Most people, I bet, would like to keep being able to play outside. Some of my neighbors are hard-right zealots, but I bet none of them wants to breathe smog or drink chemical waste every day. They might think conservation is dumb but they probably don’t want their kids eating pollution. And they like to go hunting, a thing that happens outside. It’s a question of making those connections. Or being willing to see them.
Even if you never spend time outdoors (you should, though), I bet you don’t actually want to replace the pikas and marmots and mountain streams and wildflower meadows with a bunch of oil wells forever. We don’t need more oil, but we need outside.
I mean for sanity, but also, outside is where I do most of my work. I’m a little worried about it. Most of what I do happens in or around national parks. The book I’m working on now is all about the hiking trails throughout Olympic National Park. I did some of the work last year, traveling entirely in the path of an atmospheric river — it was damp. Nothing like rolling up a wet tent early in the morning, shoving it into the back of a wet car, driving to the next wet trailhead for a rainy hike. At least if you’re being heavily rained on, you can pretend you’ve showered.
I hear they fired the only plumber in Mt Rainier National Park. This seems like a great idea and highly efficient. The plumber might be one of the folks who has also been tentatively unfired, but then again, maybe not — it’s a little hard to tell (on purpose). If we’re justifiably skeptical that the guys now running the country have ever been outside, this news about the plumber tells us for certain that no one in this administration has ever taken their family on a road trip to a national park and, at some point during that trip, had to pee.
(^ not a national park — but indisputably outside)
If they had, believe me, their priorities would change. Maybe having visited (and peed in) at least four or five national parks should be mandatory for anyone running for office?
Anyway. I’ll be roaming around this spring and summer, as I do, gathering info to help people find the best trails and campsites to adventure on/in. Watch this space for updates on what it’s like out there!
One more thing…
RIYL: Things that are good
If you scrolled this far down, you get a reward! Just a little recommendation for something I’ve recently read/seen/heard/eaten/whatever that I loved. Today, it’s a book published in 2016 that I somehow found myself reading lo these nine years later: To the Bright Edge of the World, by Eowyn Ivey. Wild adventure, Alaskan wilderness, semi-enlightened explorer types, a photography angle, excellent sentences, a bit of romance, a bit of magic. Great cover, almost as pretty as the one for her previous book, The Snow Child, which I have almost bought many times based on the cover alone. (And now I will.)
Here’s the book trailer. Enjoy: