Environmentalism

Tears of pride well up in the corners of my Dad’s eyes when he recounts how he shook Richard Nixon’s hand in the year 19-something-something. My Dad was there when “that great man” stepped off his plane at LAX. My father was the head of the Young Republicans at Santa Monica Junior High. He’s a man who has always believed that economic development should take precedence over environmental concerns. He would later vote for Reagan, who conceived the “economic man," a man who marries patriotism to contribution to the GDP.
 

He voted for the Bushes, both of them, every time.  He’ll occasionally make subtle snips at environmentalists:
 

“I think tree-huggers have the wrong idea. They don’t realize that if we don’t make sacrifices, people are going to be out of work, starving. Some of them care more about trees than people. And a lot of them--especially in a Liberal place like eugene--actually worship the trees and grass instead of the God that made them!"
 

But you should have seen the look in his eyes when dozers and hardhat contractors made a grocery store of our favorite field, or how his cheeks dampened when a housing development replaced the Frisbee-Golf-Sunday meadow.
 

I think back and I’m three again. It’s early in the morning and my Dad straps me to the back seat of his rust-ridden Bianchi to do the paper route he had until Fall Term at the university starts up. After the route we ride and ride. We take river trails. He stops every so often and breathes air intentionally, silently taking in the scene, looking up at the old oak trees in the morning glow. He unbuckles me and we take our shoes off, sit on the bank, and dip our feet in the cool rushing water of the Willamette.
 

We ride.
 

Every so often my Dad points at something, saying “Look Stevie, a blimp!”
 

“A Dragonfly!”
 

“A Dalmatian!”
 

An anything!

On some evenings my dad holds me in his arms; the sky is streaked all purple and pink and wispy yellow clouds hang by string from the ceiling.
 

“Look at that Stevie,” my dad whispers. He walks inside and grabs his old Nikon camera, adjusts the exposure, and marries the image to film.

As his views became less vague and more defined, he lost that wonder and respect and naturalistic impulse. Years later, he’s full of excuses and shoddy justifications for across the board clear-cutting and deregulating pollution.
 

When I find myself at odds with him, patience waning, I close my eyes and carefully unwrap this antique memory:
 

A young college boy, scared shitless in the world, who took solace in your shade and on your banks, who once knew that the most important things in the world happen in early morning hours before men rise.