Under the Sun
Economic desires battle
nature in age-old fightLATE summer along the Tennessee-North Carolina border, the sun warmed a flat of boulder that spread wide just beneath the cool surface of a stream. The soothing contrast of temperatures against my back, the buzz of insects, the calls of unfamiliar birds and the nose-tickling scent of grasses ripple together in the memory of a lazy day long ago in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
At the time, the pollution levels weren't so dense as to color the sunsets in the present pallet of vivid reds and oranges, a beauteous symptom of the foul air there. I was lucky to have seen the mountains and deep valleys before all that, before million of tons of pollution from urban and industrial areas upwind hazed the sky, before acid rain began to damage the forests and other vegetation.
My travels across America have taken me through regions of awesome beauty. Some have remained so wild that I could fool myself into believing I was one of the first humans to pass that way. Others were peppered with intrusions recent and ancient, but with the essence of a natural world still lingering.
At South Dakota's Wind Cave, prairies spool toward the horizon, disguising distance in undulating shades of green and umber. Fast-moving herds of pronghorn appear and vanish in the folds of earth; buffalo, reintroduced after their near extinction, mark out circular wallows of dusty depressions. There, too, air pollution smudges the sky.
In Yellowstone, the serenity of winter is ruptured by the thunder of snowmobiles that contaminate the air with their gaseous emissions. Attempts to ban the obnoxious vehicles have been overruled by the federal government despite years of studies that concluded their use is incompatible with wildlife, air quality and enjoyment of the natural area. Across the state line from Wyoming, the Gallatin forests of Montana, one of the few refuges for grizzly bears and wolves, stand as fair game for the logging industry under a proposed revision of rules for protection of 155 national forests.
For the millions of people who find rejuvenation and peace in the few remaining wilderness areas in America, the recent assaults on laws and regulations that have shielded them is alarming. For me, it is difficult to understand.
Wandering through a meadow of wildflowers surrounded by stands of spruce, pine and larches, hiking across sandstone mesas in the high desert, rock-hopping over a glacier-chilled brook delivers astonishing pleasure, a sense of freedom unmatched by thrill-rides at a theme park or a race down a freeway. It may be that the people who hold the power to continue safeguards or unleash ruin on these places haven't had similar experiences or if they have, have forgotten the joy, lost it among the desires for the heaps of goods and substances that can be extracted from nature.
The American economy demands oil and gas to power our cars, computers, schools, heaters, air conditioners, hospitals, TVs and manufacturing plants. It requires that trees be cut down for lumber to build houses and make toothpicks, for paper towels and toilet tissue.
So we will send heavy trucks to track over the nesting grounds of endangered sea turtles 20 times a day in the Padre Island National Seashore to drill test wells in hopes that there will be enough gas to warrant further exploitation. We will set aside forest management regulations put in place to protect fish and other wildlife because they cost logging companies too much time and too much money to comply.
The current drift in Washington toward relaxing environmental protection isn't unexpected. The extraction industries, major supporters of the current administration, are important for jobs, for economic expansion, to keep the country going. But there ought to be a balance of interests. There ought to be places left untamed, where we can reset the hurried cadence of our lives and where the hues of a sunset are not stained by taint.
Cynthia Oi has been on the staff of the Star-Bulletin for 25 years.
She can be reached at: coi@starbulletin.com.