garbage. The trail itself is then marked every twenty metres or so with yet more tape. I’m forever removing scads of tape while on my own trips.
At a recent ceremony hosted by my Ojibway friend, Alex Mathias, Mr. Flagging Tape was there and boasting of his travels and trail marking. Of course, we got into a fray about the flagging tape of which he maintained was necessary so that the city canoeists wouldn’t lose their way. I turned to Alex and asked how his people ever found their way without the advent of flagging tape. Alex just laughed. “We just knew where to go, we didn’t need no signs,” he said. “But white man needs all the help he can get.”
The green terrorist.
FIVE
CONFESSIONS OF AN
ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST
Moderation? It’s mediocrity, fear, and confusion in disguise. It’s the devil’s dilemma. It’s neither doing nor not doing. It’s the wobbling compromise that makes no one happy. Moderation is for the bland, the apologetic, for the fence-sitters of the world afraid to take a stand. It’s for those afraid to laugh or cry, for those afraid to live or die. Moderation … is lukewarm tea, the devil’s own brew.
— Dan Millman, The Way of the Peaceful Warrior
There is something deliciously alluring about defying the general order of things. Rebelling against the system is a little like outdoor adventure — it adheres to all the fundamental criteria that combine risk with pleasure and a grab-bag of unknowns. There is an obvious or prescribed goal, the journey in getting there (with an element of risk), and a reward at the end. The reward is not a tangible entity; it’s the sheer elation in having participated. Dissention has a further purpose and compensation — there is an uplifting of the spirit — the fight for a cause.
Writing this chapter was difficult for me as there were possible implications that I could be involved in subversive actions against logging companies whose method of tree “harvesting” is to clear-cut every living species in a given area. And I say “given” figuratively because government forestry offices are only too generous in gifting companies with huge tracts of timber — the “harvesting” of wood fibre that often does not reflect local jobs. There are, however, some acts of defiance that I can write about with a certain amount of selective detachment.
Ecotage is a portmanteau of the eco prefix and sabotage. It is used to describe (usually) illegal acts of vandalism and violence, committed in the name of environmental protection. As a term, it goes back to 1972 and predates the more recent neologism, “eco-terrorism.” Ecotage is also referred to as “ecodefence” or “monkeywrenching.” Nineteen seventy-two was a hallmark year for a lot of things. A band of counterculture hippies from the Don’t Make a Wave Committee, from Vancouver, British Columbia, founded a new environmental group called Greenpeace; in Ontario, a troupe of wily canoe-heads assembled to form the Save Maple Mountain Committee, in turn giving confidence to the local Native band to slap a ten-thousand-square-kilometre land claim in the face of the provincial government.
I had been canoeing in Temagami for three years and Maple Mountain was a pivotal icon in the heart of the ancient pinelands. The ensuing fight to protect the mountain from being developed into a world-class ski resort became a national issue. The Native land claim effectively put a block on specific development within the district (mining, prospecting, and cottaging), but it was still business-as-usual for the logging companies who were penetrating the wilderness with intrusive roads. By 1978 — the year I was conscripted by the government to maintain the district portage trails — Maple Mountain became the vital focal point for a broader protectionist stand to save the surrounding wilderness from clear-cut logging operations. One of my duties included a guiding trek up the mountain with an assemblage of environmentalists, media personalities, local government officials, and representatives from the Teme-Augama Anishnabe reserve.
It was one of those dog days in mid-summer when you sweated profusely even while sitting motionless in the shade. Everyone collected at the old ranger’s cabin at the base of the mountain, four kilometres from the summit. My trail crew had already cleared the old fire tower trail and built boardwalk and bridges across the bog holes; still, the climb was legend amongst canoeists — steep, precipitous inclines and a steady one-thousand vertical foot ascent to the apex.
The newly formed Preservation of the Lady Evelyn Wilderness Committee organized the event and had invited one of Ontario’s most reputable environmental groups, represented by a thick-bearded executive director. It was a tough walk for many. Hot, constant uphill, rock-strewn slopes, biting flies; water bottles were empty by the time we reached the top of the mountain. Luckily, there was a water spring at the top, once used by the fire tower rangers. I was with a handful of dehydrated hikers, first to get to the summit, and we headed straight for the spring, located a couple hundred metres past the tower. It was covered with a piece of plywood to keep animals out of it and birds from shitting in it as they perched in the trees above. To keep the silt on the bottom from getting stirred up, you had to dip your cup carefully in the still water. But before anyone could fill their cups with clear, clean water, the environmentalist broke through the bevy of parched trekkers, fell to his knees, and stuck his hairy, sweaty, bearded head deep into the cool spring. He retreated quickly after filling his cup, still catching his breath and waving at the flies, moaning about how hard the climb was. Nobody said anything. We all waited for the water in the spring to settle; someone skimmed the hair out of the disturbed pool while others preferred to go thirsty. Quick speeches were made, some left tobacco as an offering, and the bearded eco-warrior had already headed back down the mountain.
Why I’m relating this story is critical to how I personally envisioned life as a green crusader. Champions of the wilderness, I thought, would be gallant, self-sacrificing and noble individuals. The social revolution already had its heroes deeply wedged into the psyche of North Americans. Canada had Greenpeace — spearheaded by writer Bob Hunter and activist Paul Watson; and in the States, Edward Abbey’s book, “The Monkey Wrench Gang” — a how-to book for would-be saboteurs — spawned the formation of the direct action environmental group, Earth First!, under the tutelage of Dave Foreman and Mike Roselle. But the egoistic antics of the bearded enviro guy — the jerk — confounded my perception of green guardians; in fact, over the years I was to come to the realization that there were more zealots, monomaniacs, fanatics, and hedonists within the green movement than I would encounter either within the industrial or the bureaucratic authority. Plunderers of the green Earth know exactly what they want and the means to which they will go to obtain it. Their motives are clear-cut and money-driven. Environmentalists, on the other hand, whose intentions are more cryptic and symbolic, are motivated by passion, often to the point where they lose sight of reality.
Not to completely trash the green movement, but it functions primarily as a consciousness monitor — to prompt us to keep taking our blue box to the curb for pickup. I have lost my faith in the mainstream movement as they tend to compromise away the very wild lands the in-your-face environmentalists work so hard to protect. And this happens because the green leaders want to remain affable and polite in the eyes of the wolves — they don’t want to be eaten up in the process. Process bogs them down in boardroom parley until they give in. Drawn out negotiations are simply industrial stall tactics, but … we need the mainstreamers to lend credibility to the movement, chiefly because Canadians are polite, obliging people and they’d sooner open their wallets to respectful, non-confrontational canvassers.
But, what about the other part of the movement … the “direct-action” advocates, front-liners, and monkey-wrenchers?
