talking about the Disney variant of hope, but the real animal. It’s the light that filters down into our dark brains, sparking our neurons. The brightening after darkness, which energizes like the quickening of the world in spring. A thawing and movement into activity, an activity that then gains momentum. This is hope as a physical thing: The hope that spring inspires, after the long winter.
It is just this sort of hope that energizes me now as I pace this bank, hope spiced, of course, with a dash or two of vitriol. A fine cocktail. It occurs to me to write a manifesto, but one quite different from Nordhaus and Shellenberger’s. My agenda is simple: To describe the ways that my own life, and the lives of some people I admire, are connected to the natural world, and the benefits that come from that connection, benefits that are not always obvious. To provide a way for those of us who would blanch at calling ourselves environmentalists to begin to at least think of ourselves as fighters, in the way that citizens suddenly think of themselves as soldiers during times of war. Finally, by both argument and example, to provide a new language for those of us who care about nature.
II. A LIMITED WILD
ENVIRONMENTAL EXTREMISTS
Rags of mist drift above the river. Despite the usual hassle of breaking camp, and sore arms from the day before, I feel good this morning. Part of that is the simple pleasure of being on the river, and part is the “phew” element that accompanies any morning after a night of solo camping. As in, “Phew, I wasn’t killed by bears,” or, in this case, joggers or coyotes. I stuff my clothes and gear into their appropriate bags, pack the kayak, and I am back on the water. The sun greets me around the first bend, burning off the mist, and around the next I look back at the chalky outline of a nearly full moon.
Though my cell phone is dead, I trust Dan has figured that out, and I assume that we will meet, as planned, just a quarter mile downstream at Bridge Street in the town of Dover. I look forward to seeing Dan, and to turning this solo journey into a group adventure, but moreover I look forward to something that Dan’s wife Donna has promised to bring: coffee.
I met Donna, and the Driscolls’ son Dylan, in Wellfleet when I picked up the kayaks. Dylan was a delightfully rambunctious two-year-old who instantly made me homesick for my four-year-old daughter, Hadley. Donna I was less sure about at first.
“I’m here to make a hero of your husband!” I said to break the ice. I expected something either supportive or sardonic in return but instead she said simply, “Well, someone should do it.” She seemed similarly distant as Dan and I sat on his porch poring over maps to plan our trip. I guess I understood that while I was offering Dan adventure, all I was offering her was a couple of days as a single parent. The only moment she perked up was when I mentioned that I was enlisting a friend of mine, a kayak guide, to be our “Sherpa,” making sure the kayaks and cars were all in the right place, and helping supply us with food and drink along the way. It turned out that this was something that she would be interested in doing—for a price. Wanting to please Dan, and his family, I instantly said yes, not really thinking through the possible challenges of a wife serving as a husband’s gofer. When I handed her the “Sherpa list” with her duties on it, the word COFFEE had been printed neatly at the top in all capitals.
There are no signs of the Driscolls at the launch, but my cell phone was also my only clock, so I’m not sure if it’s yet close to the eight-thirty meeting time we agreed upon. I paddle a half-mile downstream between heavily wooded banks to the Broadmoor Wildlife Sanctuary, searching the branches for birds. I see a tanager blaze by, its chest the color of blood, and add it to an already impressive list of species I’ve noted over the previous twenty-four hours. This is no accident: The river is a magnet for both residential and migrating birds. As suburbs cover more and more previously undeveloped space, the few remaining islands of undisturbed land, like the Broadmoor with its lands patched together by Massachusetts Audubon from purchases of private land beginning in 1962, become even more vital—not just as year-round habitat but also as reliable pit stops during migrations.
After a while, I double back to the launch site but there is still no sign of Dan. I pull the kayak and listen to commuters bomb down the little road, kicking up dirt. After another half hour, an old station wagon with a canoe lashed to the top careens off the road and into the parking lot and the entire Driscoll family tumbles out. The family mood can best be described as frazzled, if not agitated. Something tense is passing between Dan and Donna. (It isn’t hard to imagine that waking the whole family at six so that Dad can go canoeing might not be the most popular idea.) They apologize for their tardiness and I excitedly describe the death of my cell phone. I am completely ignored as a minor marital skirmish ensues about whether or not Dylan should be allowed to wade in the water (which he is already doing). While that is going on, I peek, with dying hope, in the car’s windows to see if there are any cups in the cup-holders. Just then Donna walks up behind.
“I’m sorry we were running late,” she says flatly. “We didn’t have time to get coffee.”
“That’s fine,” I say with a big smile.
I want to kill her.
While I contemplate the gloomy prospect of a decaffeinated morning, Dan inspects the banged up bottom of the kayak, slowly shaking his head. But neither of us is in the mood to dwell on the negative, not when it’s morning and we have a day on the river in front of us. Soon the bustling momentum of preparation takes over: getting the canoe down off the car rack, throwing the kayak back up, packing the canoe, looking at the map to plan out our next meeting point with Donna. She rejects our first suggested rendezvous, which confirms what I already suspect: She will be a decidedly un-Sherpa-like Sherpa. I think of my friend Ian, who was my first choice for the job. He is a childhood pal, an outdoorsman, as devoted as a puppy, and, had nepotism not reared its ugly head, he would have embraced being part of the adventure with the sort of goofy enthusiasm the job requires.
Lack of caffeine, no doubt, is darkening my thoughts, and as we push out onto the river I wonder if an early beer might alleviate the inevitable headache.
It turns out that I don’t need the beer, or the coffee, at least not right away, since the river itself, and the exercise of paddling on it, will soon enough serve to lift my mood.
Dan has a different avenue toward transcendence: No sooner have we paddled around the first bend and, in Thoureauvian fashion, left family behind, when he announces that it’s “time for a little eye opener.” With that he whips out something that smells of skunk, and lights a bowl. This is where Dan parts ways with Thoreau, who preferred “the natural sky to an opium-eater’s heaven.”
“You can thank Ronald Reagan for this,” he says. “Thanks to his drug laws we started growing the best bud in the world right at home.”
He offers the bowl. I have plenty of friends like Dan—doctors, lawyers, stockbrokers, competent professionals all—who seem capable of using pot as mild relaxant. That’s great for them, I suppose, but my system is a little different. One puff for me and our idyllic paddle would transform into a Conrad-like journey into the heart of paranoia. I politely decline.
We paddle quietly for a while on the green shadowy river, and then, as if on cue, a young deer, tawny and hesitant, emerges from the woods, freezing when it sees us. It is a stunning sight there by the bank, and we lift our paddles and let the current carry us, trying to stay as still as the animal. Once we round the next bend we laugh and hoot at our good luck.
“You see, that wouldn’t have happened if we weren’t attuned with the river,” Dan says.
I
