My father bought me a cell phone last night. He said that I need "to get with the rest of America, instead of being in no-man's land," which means I am unreachable.
"You need to be able to call Brooke or me if you get into trouble. It's about safety."
We've come a long way, my father and I. When Refuge was published in 1991, he gave me a Lady Wesson, a .38 Special, so I could defend myself on the road. So you could say we have evolved from violence to communication which is a hopeful sign.
I had a cell phone once before which lasted about three weeks and then I happily lost it after attending a reading of a friend when the phone started playing a John Phillip Sousa song in my pocket. I was too embarrassed to admit it was me. Unable to turn it off, I think I left it behind some book at Elliott Bay in Seattle.
I am in Salt Lake because my brother Steve is very sick, lymphoma, diagnosed last October. These are difficult days. These are tender days. He awaits a stem cell transplant.
Disease.
What is the disease we are facing in this nation of ours? The disease of fear. Fear creates an atmosphere where craven acts occur, even in our institutions of higher education. When we can no longer count on our colleges and universities to champion and protect free speech, no voice in America is safe.
Voice.
It is easy to become depressed, complacent, wondering what to believe and whom. I have to trust what my body knows. There is no greater disappointment than the diagnosis of a lie. Listening to the body, the body politic.
The phone rings. Wangari Maathai has won the Nobel Peace Prize. I burst into tears. The first African woman, the first environmentalist, to be recognized by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee. It had been their intention to widen the scope of the prize. The Committee's statement reads: "Peace on Earth depends on our ability to secure our living environment."
Wangari Maathai and the Green Belt Movement of Kenya has planted 30 million trees since its inception in 1977 -- 30 million trees that have helped to prevent erosion and provide firewood for cooking fires. For decades, Wangari has said over and over to anyone who would listen, "The women of Africa are carrying the environmental crisis on their backs as they spend 8 to 10 hours a day in search of firewood to be able to cook dinner for their children."
Together, the women of the Green Belt Movement literally gathered seeds in the folds of their skirts and planted them in their villages. They watered them, nurtured them, and when they were tall enough to transplant, they took them to the elementary schools where the children became the caretakers of trees. Thousands of schools have responded.Millions of children have participated. Green Belt forests were planted, while educating the next generation about the perils of deforestation.
She is a beacon of passionate engagement in the name of environmental justice. Throughout President Moi's presidency, Wangari Maathai participated in respectful dissent and was an outspoken critic of his policies. She was arrested in 1991, freed, and arrested again in 1999 after sustaining injuries to her head when attacked by police while planting trees in the Karura Public Forest, part of a protest against deforestation. This was another response to Moi's backing the development of a high-end housing project that resulted in the clearing of hundreds of acres of forest.
In 2002, at the end of Moi's reign, Wangari Maathai ran for the Parliament and won. She was named the Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources, And Wildlife.
Wangari has literally sought peace for the planet through the collecting of seeds. Kenyan women have planted these seeds in the soils of their own communities.
I met Wangari Maathai in July, 1985, during the U.N. Decade for Women Conference and Forum held in Nairobi. She changed my life. I had never seen such a passionate, intelligent, relentless voice for the Earth. She spoke in stories, she held seeds in hand, and she invited anyone who was interested to visit one of the children's forests to come with her. I followed her into the villages. She showed me the seedlings, the nurseries, the women who were leading the Green Belt Movement. I was so inspired that when I returned home, a small group of us who had attended the conference started the Green Belt Movement of Utah. For $10.00, you could plant a tree in Kenya. We made up little certificates, we gave talks in women's groups and literary clubs, Mormon relief societies, schools, and churches, and along the way, we not only educated ourselves, but educated our community about deforestation, not just in Africa, but Utah, as well. We sent modest amounts of money to the Green Belt Movement. It was our own gesture of solidarity with the Kenyan women.
When I met her, she was 44 years old. I was 29. Today she is 64 years old. I am 49. You could see deep changes, not so much in her face, but her eyes, sobered by all she has witnessed, the full end of the spectrum, violence as well as regeneration.
Twenty years later, I had the privilege of welcoming Wangari and her son into our home in Castle Valley. Brooke was away which saddened me. I had talked about her for years. When I saw her step out of the car and stand against the redrock cliffs, her beautiful African self -- I wept. We held each other close. I heard her low, calm voice once again and was reassured that goodness and greatness, does exist in the world. For twenty years, her photograph has stood on my desk as a reminder of what is possible, as a reminder of the sacrifices necessary to do good work, But also the joy. Wangari has the widest, brightest smile of any human being I know.
At dinner, I asked her what she had learned in these twenty years. She did not hesitate. "Patience. Patience." And then she talked about how often those working on the margins to create the open space of justice and democracy are not the ones who end up inhabiting that space.
"We have to step inside that space we have created for political engagement and claim it for ourselves." she said.
This is what she has done. "Deputy Minister," she said smiling. "Not the Minister. Not yet."
She spoke of her regrets of being away from her children while she was in jail. Her son spoke of what that was like for him and when he realized who is mother was not just for him but for millions of Kenyans. He has his own ethical vision in place and it is evolving through the lens of science. He just graduated from the University of Pennsylvania.
I dedicated "The Open Space of Democracy" to my teachers. Professor Wangari Maathai is one of them.
8 October 2004, Golden, Colorado
Brenda Porter, the education director of the Colorado Mountain Club, picks me up at the Denver Airport. She is a vibrant presence, a naturalist who loves the Front Range. As we drive to Boulder, she tells me about her work as an educator. They have programs for all ages that range from "The Science of Mountains," a class that allows children to understand how mountains are created, what they made from, and geologic principles like uplift and erosion. The children not only learn about mountains intellectually, but they experience it in their own bodies as they learn to climb. She speaks of a local program called "Mesas 2 Mountains" that introduces children and adults to their own landscape in Golden, taking advantage of local trails along Clear Creek. We talk about the importance of biological literacy.
The Colorado Mountain Club has such a distinguished history. It was established in 1912 by Enos Mills, along with artists, scientists, explorers, and climbers passionate about wild Colorado. They have been champions of the Citizen's Wilderness Proposal that has now been incorporated into legislation by Diana DeGette, one of America's great wilderness advocates. It is known as the Colorado Wilderness Act and would protect 1.6 million acres.
Later, I meet Vera Smith, the conservation director, she is stealth, so smart and savvy about Colorado environmental politics. She talks about her fears for Colorado given the spotlight it is under by the Bush administration. In May, the Bureau of Land Management sold 27 leases in three proposed wilderness areas (Cow Ridge and Hunter Canyon near Grand Junction). In August, the BLM sold 12 leases in 3 proposed wilderness areas (Dolores River Canyons, Maverick Canyon, and Sagebrush Pillows). And in November, the BLM is slated to offer for sale lease in at least five more proposed wilderness areas and in a wild herd area.
The BLM leased in May and August over 200,000 acres. They are slated to lease an additional 63,400 acres in November.
Ninety percent of Colorado's BLM lands are open for oil and gas development. Thirty eight million acres of public lands in America are now open up for business. Our public lands are our public commons.
"The more land they lock up, the less land a subsequent administration can propose for protection," Vera says.
I tell her this is similar to the story we are telling in Utah. On September 8, 2004, the state of Utah auctioned off 360,000 acres of public lands to the oil and gas industry. A quick $28 million dollars was made. The nearly 40,000 acres sold were wildlands proposed for protection in America's Redrock Wilderness Act.
I spoke with Suzanne Jones of The Wilderness Society. She said, "Places like Desolation Canyon are national treasures and should be protected for our children, not handed over to the oil and gas industry... It simply doesn't make sense for the Bush administration to target our last top-notch natural areas, places that are important for recreation, wildlife, and clean water."
Eighty-three members of Congress recently asked the BLM not to offer leases to the oil and gas companies in areas that are proposed for wilderness in Utah and Colorado. No one in the White House seems to be listening, nor for that matter, in the Department of Interior.
On Sunday, September 19, 2004, there was a celebration of the 40th Anniversary of the 1964 Wilderness Act in Washington, D.C. It was a wonderful gathering of spirited people working within their communities on the conversation between culture and wildness and how both inform the other.
Howard Zahnhiser, one of the architects of the Act, and its author, wrote, "For the wilderness is essential to us, as human beings, for a true understanding of ourselves, our culture, our own natures, our place in all nature."
Forty years later, the National Wilderness Protections System is eleven times the size it originally was. Congress has designated wilderness in 44 states -- from 13 million acres in Alaska to a 5 acre wilderness island in Florida -- totaling some 106 million acres in all, with 9 million acres awaiting protection in Utah and 1.6 million acres in Colorado. State wilderness bills are pending in Nevada and Washington. Montana is working on their own bill as well.
Former Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, now 84 years old, served under both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations spoke that day.
We like to think -- and politicians too often think -- that all leadership comes from the top down. But the leadership and the passing of laws like civil rights (and the Wilderness Act) came from the streets. It came from the people.
He said that what people of his generation knew within public service was that you had to mindful of three things: 1) the capacity to grow; 2) the ability to change; and 3) the importance of facing your adversary with mutual respect.
I realized in that moment how we have all been diminished by the nastiness of the debates within public policy and politics, in general. We have lost our civility and respect. Do we have the capacity to grow and heaven forbid, change?
We can only attain harmony and stability by consulting ensemble, writes Walt Whitman in his essay, "Democratic Vistas."
My cell phone rings. I am in Brenda's car, driving from Boulder to Golden, past the Rocky Mountain Arsenal. I think about my brother Steve, how their next door neighbor, Stuart Clark died from lymphoma in 2002. Their neighbor a few doors down, also with lymphoma, passed away a few years before that. And another neighbor had lymphoma and is disease-free. There are others. As we pass another military installation in the Atomic West, I have to believe this epidemic of cancers, particularly in Utah, is environmental. What do we do?
It is a reporter from the Naples paper in Florida, "The students are organizing. The Young Republicans have just joined with the New Democrats and are standing with the Model United Nations Club shoulder to shoulder with nine other student organizations to protest the president's decision to postpone your visit to Florida Gulf Coast University. Do you have a comment you would like to make?"
I am absolutely thrilled. This has been the story of students all along. They are embodying the open space of democracy and showing us what is possible.
We gather at the Colorado Mountain Club in Golden at 7:30 p.m. I am aware that the second presidential debates are underway. Some friends are taping it. I am amazed and grateful for those who chose to come to the reading. This is the first stop on our "Open Space of Democracy Tour."
I am emotionally weary because of the day, the week, this intense convergence of family and work, but look into the eyes of friends. I stop to gather my center and breathe.
The dialogue that followed was heartening. Never have I seen or felt such engagement in this country. Citizens are informed, active. Of course, there are those who are not. But that has always been the case. 62 million Americans watched the first presidential debate on September 30. There is so much at stake. We are at war in Iraq. We are fighting for public process on public lands. I am not one to use these kinds of words, but it is true. These are contentious times, confusing times, all the more reason and need for deep listening and the creation of open dialogue. One gentleman wanted to know why not "The Democracy of Open Space" instead of "The Open Space of Democracy." Many questions and discussion about how we bring this open space to our neighbors, how we bring this spirit of listening to the conflicts within our neighborhoods. This is not about answers, but inquiry, honest, soulful discussion. I remember my grandmother Mimi Saying that first you must identify the question and then it begins to solve itself through your awareness.
A gentleman who has been a diplomat for more than 50 years said, "There are no solutions to problems, you just keep working on them because the problem keeps changing."
The evening ends with a book signing and I have the privilege of listening to people's stories. Many young people in the audience. The full spectrum. After it is over, Jacob Smith, head of the Center for Native Ecosystems, Vera Smith, and Josh (whose last name I cannot retrieve) go over to his house and watch the presidential debates.
We eat pizza and toast each other with wine, water, whatever, every time George W. Bush says, in that presidential drawl, "We're working hard... it's hard work... freedom will prevail."
