Okay, I'm still in amazement after watching the movie "
What A Way To Go: Life At the End of Empire," which was written and directed by Tim Bennett. In the outstanding documentary film, Tim simply tells his personal "story," and it turns out that his story is similar to mine.
So, I want to share my story, but before I start I'll say one thing: The amazing thing about life is that you can read one book or have one chance encounter with a person, or have something happen to you, and it puts your life on a different course forever ... really weird.
And there I was ...
Age 10 was when I first got an awareness of the environment. My family lived in the suburbs of Miami, FL, right on the edge of the Everglades. There was a lot of greenspace, and I spent much of my time playing in the brush and tall grass fields near my house. I always had a fort growing up, and we rode bikes on dirt trails, played "Army" in the woods, and just had a blast being a part of nature. But the good times were changing quickly because the new home construction was vast and relentless, and soon my play area was getting gobbled up. At age 11 I began organizing resistance to the new home construction — yeah, we pulled the surveyor stakes. I've probably pulled a 100 in my life. One day at school I was taking a shortcut through an empty classroom and noticed a brochure on a table. It was a piece of literature from a newly formed organization called Zero Population Growth Inc. On the cover it had an ecology flag and a picture of a couple with children. Little did I know that picking up and reading that brochure would completely change my life.
A couple of years later my family moved to rural central Florida, to a sleepy town called Leesburg. In the community where I lived, there were forests, orange groves, pastures, and lots of dead orange trees that were killed by past frosts. This open space became my play area as a kid. From ages 12-17 I practically lived outdoors. My friends and I camped nearly every weekend, first in my friend's backyard and later in an elaborate tree fort we built.
But the constant rumble of development followed me. From my bedroom window I had a beautiful view of a lake, but that was blocked by a new HOUSE. The orange grove across my street was bulldozed for a SUBDIVISION, and the woods behind my house — where the tree fort was — began filling up with HOUSES. I resisted, with the help of my friends. I pulled up more and more surveyor stakes. Eventually, the surveyors had to put ribbons on spikes and then bury then under leaves. I found them and pulled those up too. My friends and I tried to stop the developers with a little sabotage, vandalism, and even a few pranks (for the record, most of my sabotage was nondestructive — we stole spark plug wires and let the air out of tires).
On one occasion, a neighborhood kid told my dad that I let the air out of some tractor tires. It was one of several times when he told me to drop my pants and eagle-spread against the bed. He then proceeded to zebra stripe me. As a 15-year-old, I thought it was pretty cool to be persecuted for protecting the woods. I did not cry or flinch, I just proudly took the beating.
Nevertheless, all my efforts did NOT SLOW THE DEVELOPMENT DOWN ONE BIT.
Now, here is the previously untold story of how my eco-terrorism career ended. With all the development going on, we knew our tree fort would be discovered, and we felt it was necessary to build a better fort deeper in the woods. On paper, my friend and I designed an underground fort, complete with air ducts and a generator. We actually dug the hole for the thing, but the one thing we needed was building supplies. So, during our weekend camp outs we would go on little raids and grab some lumber from one house project or the other. We kept our stash of lumber well hidden. One day we decided to go on a daylight raid to get some metal duct work and insulation from a nearby construction project. As we were returning to hide our stash we ran into two hunters, and one happened to be an off duty police officer. Well, I got arrested and that was the end of my six years as a radical environmentalist.
The Unenvironmental YearsAfter that incident I was well into my teen years, and my interests began to focus more on school activities, girls, jobs, etc... Then I went to college and got married the next year. I did the career thing, house thing, kid thing, and religious thing. I tried to play the role that was given to me, to be a good little white, suburban yuppie. During most of the 1980s the environment wasn't on my mind at all. In fact, I once even made fun of some environmentalists and called them "Earth People."
In my career I was a newspaper reporter and then an editor. In the late 1980s I was editor of teen newspaper that was written "for and by teens." One of our advertisers at the time was a public TV station that asked me to help promote an environmental TV series that they were producing for young people. That sort of peaked my interest. In 1989 there was a young girl on my staff who was an environmentalist. She introduced me to the idea of recycling, and for the past 20 years I have faithfully recycled. But that's all I did as an "environmentalist."
The 1990s arrived with the birth of my second child, and I was completely engrossed in my career and family. In response to the pressure of my religiously fanatical parents, I stayed involved with church, but never really liked it.
In 1993 my cousin called me from seminary in Ft. Worth, TX. Ugghh, this was going to be another one of those life-changing events. He told me his next door neighbor was coming to my hometown to start a church. I figured that such a coincidence had to be divine intervention, a concept I still sort of believed in. So, for the next four and a half years I worked my rear off building a new church. I was doing church work sometimes six days a week, everything from grounds work, to construction, to leading various ministries. AND I WAS ABSOLUTELY MISERABLE EVERY SECOND OF IT.
By 1996 I had completed a series of classes and was ordained as a lay leader. For the final part of the course, I had to learn tactics for "saving" people. If I was going to SAVE someone, I at least wanted to ensure that they would have a supernatural experience or hear a voice or SOMETHING, but instead there was NOTHING. I had been lied too, big time. This whole religion thing was a ruse and I asked my pastor more and more difficult questions. Once, he gave me a book to read on "doubt."
In 1997, I continued to become more disgruntled with the church, and more interested in environmental issues, especially overpopulation. I started poking around the Internet and joined a discussion group called KZPG. There I met some individuals that greatly influenced my life, including Richard M. Bowers, the founder of ZPG, and Dr. Alan Kuper, who just passed away a couple of weeks ago. Alan, a lifetime Sierra Club member, told me that the Sierra Club worked on population, and he encouraged me to join my local group. Much to my delight, I immediately met several population activists in my local and state Sierra Club groups. I immediately fell in love with the Sierra Club and began doing volunteer work with an incredible passion. In fact, for years I was typically putting in 20 hours a week of volunteer time on top of my day job.
The following year, I got a vasectomy, I read the Daniel Quinn books, I went to Washington, D.C. to lobby for family planning aid, and I co-founded a statewide population group. The year 1998 was extremely exciting and put my life on a completely new course.
And my involvement continued. I joined more environmental groups, I got onto the Sierra Club's national population committee, I participated in demonstrations, I hosted forums, I tabled at events, I got involved in political campaigns, and my energy and passion
went unbridled for six years. But at the same time, I was so busy as an activist that I neglected my family. During this time I also rose to various leadership positions in the Sierra Club, including chair of my local group, chair of my population coalition, and vice chair of the state Sierra Club. In fact, I have won
10 awards with the Sierra Club.
By 2003 I was starting to feel burnout, but I continued on in my work. I went door-to-door to promote environmental causes, I drove around the county delivering yard signs, and I traveled to Ecuador to study population issues in the field. By the end of that year I was really feeling the crash, and I continued to cut back more on my enviornmental volunteer work. But I was increasing my research and reading on "the big problem." I began to study the work of
Acharya S., a scholar and author, who specializes in the mythical origins of religion. I had known something was foul about Christianity ever since I was a kid, and Archarya's research finally helped me complete the puzzle. I can now say with 100% certainty that ALL religion is completely made up by people.
The following year, in 2004, I was invited by a Sierra Club leader to a meeting of the local Ishmael group. These are people who study the visionary writings of Daniel Quinn, plus related authors. I immediately got involved in this group, called the
Atlanta Leavers, and met some amazing individuals who have had a major influence on my life.
So, what have I been doing for the past five years? I've mostly been in a holding pattern, and sort of waiting for my next calling. I've been doing a tremendous amount of reading, just trying to figure everything out. I've also watched a lot of great documentaries, including
Zeitgeist and
What A Way To Go.
Now, it's the start of 2009 and I'm considering my next step. I'm split between either writing a book or learning how to produce environmental movies.
I am a member of several
Sierra Club discussion lists and the
Atlanta Leavers discussion list. These lists have helped me to make friends and stay connected with like minded individuals around the world. And through these lists and my network of friends, I have met yet other friends via email and ListServs. I am grateful for meeting some very remarkable and interesting people who share my world view.
What I learned is that there are small but passionate activist communities around the world. These are people who are driven to be an activists. While I have ups and downs and suffer from burnout, these individuals just keep going and going. They amaze me. One of my callings, I think, is to encourage and mentor young activists. I'm simply too bipolar and get too depressed to be steadfast in my work, but there are special individuals who can weather all storms, and these are the folks who need support. Well, at least this is where my thinking is today. It may change a little tomorrow.
To all my environmental friends and fellow activists, I want to say "THANK YOU" for giving me clarity, perspective, and inspiration. I am honored to have known each of you. And to my two dear friends who died last year — Ed Arnold and Alan Kuper — I want to thank both of you for the great example you set for me, and for your inspiration. I will continue on, in your memory and honor.
Sincerely,
The Goose
