Earth Day 2010

So today was Earth Day. I could not help but think back to the early 1970’s when all this was brand new.

My brother and I were going to school up in the Adirondacks. We and our friends all wanted to get into the environmental sciences and that meant Forestry. We really did not give much though to careers. We wanted to help; we wanted to make a real difference. We were also very interested in being out in the environment experiencing new things and trying not to get ourselves killed in the process, like rock climbing, and I guess what could be called extreme winter camping today. Just doing crazy stuff outdoors. We read the Whole Earth Catalog and came up with various back to the land schemes. We talked about Bucky Fuller’s ideas and read the work of Gary Snyder because he once was a forest fire lookout on the West Coast. We did science in the field, we made maps, we even learned to log with horses. To finish College in Resource Management we moved on to Idaho to get our degrees and to work for the Forest Service. That was our deal. We worked in the woods, we weren't just visitors, and we had a vested interest in making the forest sustainable. The now mainstream phrase Green Movement came later from European political activism. We take much of the Environment Movement now for granted. Bucky said it took about 40 to 50 years for an idea to really catch on so I guess we are right on schedule. It’s all good. Things are getting better but there is a lot more stuff that needs to be done. Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.