Half-Hatched Environmentalists
Old Joe Grady never could figure out why somebody would want to dam up a river. There was something about paddling between rugged mountain walls and slipping through willful rapids that had gotten into his system. In a gentle current, Old Joe would often stretch back on a duffel, legs splayed across the gunwales, his gaze drifting past sycamores arching overhead. Nothing, he had observed, destroyed a good day on the river quicker than flat water jammed against concrete. Of course, you could always portage around a dam. But Old Joe Grady could imagine no greater absurdity than a human carrying a canoe, especially in a place where a river was supposed to be.
But the people who irritated Old Joe Grady the most weren't the dam builders. They were the half-hatched environmentalists. Half-hatched environmentalists were usually college graduates with well paying jobs, who spoke out against dams, pollution, nuclear power, clear cutting, and other practices which harmed the planet. All that notwithstanding, they measured their own living standard by how well they were keeping up with the very people who polluted. They stood up for endangered wildlife but rarely at any danger to their own jobs or salary scales. At every public meeting related to a proposal for a dam, there were a bunch of half-hatched environmentalists.
Raymond Fitzpatrick was an example of the breed. Raymond was a partner in a large Richmond law firm and an avid fisherman. He and some friends had bought a cabin in Grayson County on the banks of the New River. As a prominent citizen of the Commonwealth, Raymond volunteered to help rally support against any proposed dams on the New. The power from these dams was not needed, Raymond argued, even as he urged his partners to raise their fees so that he could build a larger house in the suburbs, probably all electric. Over a Vodka tonic, Raymond had explained this to Old Joe Grady without the slightest awareness of incongruity. Old Joe watched dame status massaging Raymond's back and shoulders even as ecological wisdom flowed from his mouth.
Looking out at Raymond's well traveled Jeep Cherokee, Old Joe remarked, ŅI suppose you are against drilling for oil in Alaska.
Hell yes, Raymond roared, rocking back so suddenly he knocked the breath out of status, we can't keep on using oil like maniacs, spoiling what natural wilderness we've got left. We've got to cut back. Any fool can see that.
As much as Raymond Fitzpatrick got under Old Joe Grady's skin, what irritated him the most about half-hatched environmentalists was that he realized he was one too. It just seemed impossible to completely hatch out and still live in the world. You could live by yourself in a cabin back in the woods, drink spring water, grow vegetables, and do everything to detract as little as possible from the earth. But the moment you set foot on pavement to try to stop others from detracting, you inevitably began detracting yourself. To influence the system, you had to get caught up in it. You had to use the roads, walk into the buildings, call on the telephone, and if you intended to keep all the appointments you needed to make, at least occasionally eat fast food. You needed clean if not fashionable clothes and several changes. And before you knew it, there you were like everybody else, using gas and electricity and sending solid waste to the landfill.
Old Joe thought about all this one day on the river, as a great blue heron surfed the air just ahead of him. That was the hardest portage of all, in Joe's mind, the one around the dams he himself had helped build.