Wandering through Time and Place

Exploring the world with Curtis and Peggy Mekemson
  • About This Blog
  • Bios
  • Chapter from The Bush Devil Ate Sam
  • Five Reasons to Travel
  • Meet Bone: World Traveler, Fearless Adventurer, and Sex Symbol
  • Tag: Earth Day 1 changed my life

    • Earth Day 1: 50 Years Ago… It Changed My Life

      Posted at 4:00 am by Curt Mekemson
      Apr 22nd
      Sand dunes in Death Valley. Photo by Curtis Mekemson.
      The world is full of incredible beauty that is worthy of our love and protection. These are sand dunes in Death Valley National Park.

      I was recruiting for Peace Corps on the Davis Campus of the University of California on April 22, 1970, 50 years ago. For those of you not familiar with the date, it was Earth Day I. At the time, I was running the Peace Corps’ Public Affairs office for Northern California and Nevada out of Sacramento. Curiosity pulled me away from my recruiting duties to check out the event.

      UC Davis puts on great fairs. It probably has to do with an event it calls Picnic Day, a rite of spring with roots as deep as humankind. The birds are singing, flowers are blooming, and the snow is melting in the mountains; let’s have a party! All of the departments become involved, put on shows, put up displays, and do silly things.

      The flowers were blooming.

      Earth Day at Davis was similar, but it incorporated a vitally important message.

      Somehow we had forgotten where we had come from in our rush toward progress and the good life— and in the desire to maximize profits. As a result, we were chopping down our forests, polluting our streams, poisoning our air, destroying our last remaining wilderness areas, and saying goodbye forever to innumerable species whose only evolutionary mistake was to get in our way.

      We had forgotten that birds can make music as beautifully as any symphony, that peace and balance can be found in the wilderness, and that somehow, in some yet unfathomable way, our fate might be tied to that of the pup fish. It seemed okay that the last brown pelican was about to fly off into the sunset forever so we could squeeze one more bushel of wheat from our crops, and that it was appropriate for the great redwoods, silent sentinels who had maintained their vigilance for over 4000 years, to die for our patio with a lifespan of 20-30 years.

      Brown pelicans, once near extinction because of DDT used on crops, have made a dramatic comeback since the use of DDT was banned. I took this photo south of Santa Barbara, California.

      Rachel Carson, in her landmark book Silent Spring, had sounded a clarion call to a Holy Crusade: saving the earth. Others, too, were raising the alarm. Earth Day I was an expression of growing concern. Its message struck a deep chord with me. The years I had spent wandering in the woods while growing up, my exploration of the rainforest around Gbarnga, Liberia during my Peace Corps assignment, and my hiking in the wilderness as a backpacker, all came together in a desire to join the environmental movement and help protect the wilderness I had come to love.

      Some of my happiest moments as a Peace Corps Volunteer in West Africa were spent exploring the rain forest surrounding where I lived.

      I wandered between booths on campus, talking to the representatives of various organizations and picking up materials. There was information about the redwoods, over-population, water and air pollution, land-use planning, mass transit and the protection of valuable farm lands. I learned about all the species that had become extinct because of our activities— and that many more were threatened.

      Giant redwood tree at Redwoods National Park. Photo by Curtis Mekemson.
      How could one not feel awe when confronted by giant redwoods in their cathedral like setting at Redwood National Park. It seemed terribly wrong to me that the life of a 2000 plus year old giant should be ended with a chainsaw to meet our short-termed demand for wood products.

      I went home that night inspired, concerned, and more than a little frightened about what we were doing to our planet— the only home we have. Three weeks later, I had left the Peace Corps and become Executive Director of Sacramento’s first Ecology Education/Environmental Action Center, working 50-60 hours a week for one hundred dollars a month. I would continue to devote a significant amount of my time to supporting environmental causes for the next 20 years of my life, working beside some of the most dedicated, selfless and talented individuals I have ever known.

      Our efforts, and those of hundreds, even thousands of others, made a difference. The majority of people in the US as well as in numerous other countries around the world became convinced that protecting the environment was a worthwhile endeavor. Air pollution was reduced, waterways were cleaned up, wilderness areas were saved, and a number of endangered species were brought back from near extinction. Once again, eagles soared, buffalos roamed and wolves howled.

      But the progress has never been easy and the war is far from won. Nothing represents this better than our present battle against global warming, a reality that was dramatically brought home to me two years ago as I hiked down the Pacific Crest Trail dodging huge fires in Oregon and California. A drought created by climate change had killed millions of trees and those trees were burning.

      The massive Carr Fire near Redding sent fire tornadoes shooting into the air, reduced visibility to close to zero, and filled the air with choking smoke for hundreds of square miles. This was the view I faced on the PCT near Chester, California.

      The 50th Anniversary of Earth Day 1 is an excellent time to take stock of where we are in our efforts to protect the environment. The news is not good. Over the past three years we have seen our national government withdraw from international efforts to combat global warming, eliminate many of the protections that we have fought so hard to put in place over the last 50 years, back away from using science designed to measure the impact of pollution, and systematically dismantle the EPA. Continuing down this path will once again lead to air filled with pollution, waterways poisoned, wilderness areas eliminated, and species exterminated. This isn’t an exaggeration; it is reality.

      But it doesn’t have to be. The time to renew our commitment to the environment is today. Each of us can take action on the personal level to reduce our negative impact on the environment, support positive efforts on the local, state, national and world level, and insist that our political leaders do the same. The future of our children, grandchildren and future generations depend on it.

      Grand Tetons National Park photo by Curtis Mekemson.
      A final reminder of the beauty that exists in our world. This are the Grand Tetons. Happy Earth Day. May we have 50 more!
      Posted in Essays, Miscellaneous, National Parks | Tagged digital learning, Earth Day 1, Earth Day 1 changed my life, homeschoolong, the 50th anniversary of Earth Day
    • Bush Devil Ate Sam

      The Bush Devil Ate Sam is an important record and a serious story, yet told easily, and with delightful humor. This is one of the most satisfying books I have ever read, because it entertained me thoroughly AND made me feel better informed. —Hilary Custance Green: British Author... Click on the image to learn more about my book, the Bush Devil Ate Sam, and find out where it can be ordered.

    • Special Thanks to Word Press for featuring my blog and to my readers and followers. You are all appreciated.

    • Top Posts & Pages

      • 16 Miles without Water, a Huge Rattlesnake, and a Lost Trekker... The Sierra Trek
      • How in the Heck Do You Pronounce Kirkcudbright?
      • Can Sunsets Get Any More Dramatic?
      • The Delicate Art of Chainsaw Wood Carving: Part 2... North to Alaska
      • Sixty Thousand Bikes… Burning Man 2012
      • Is the World's Best Basic Hamburger to Be Found at Hudson's Hamburgers in Coeur d'Alene Idaho?
      • A Jurassic Playground… Dinosaur National Monument
      • Five Reasons to Travel
      • About This Blog
      • Mendocino, California… A North Coast Treasure
    • RSS Feed

      • RSS - Posts
      • RSS - Comments
    • Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

      Join 8,423 other followers

    • Thanks for stopping by.

      • 608,369 Visitors
    • Categories

      • At Home in Oregon
      • Burning Man
      • Essays
      • Genealogy
      • Memoirs
      • MisAdventures
      • Miscellaneous
      • National Parks
      • On the Road US
      • Outdoor Adventures
      • Peace Corps
      • Uncategorized
      • Wandering The World

Blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel