The sharp tang of ash made my nostrils flare as I walked on the powdery dirt of the trail in the mountains above Malibu. Apocalypse came to more than one California paradise in recent weeks. Blackened branches of scrubby sumac reached vainly into the air. Green blankets of chaparral were reduced to grey dust. Oaks on steep slopes were scorched, sycamores in the arroyos were singed. 96,949 acres of stunning wilderness went up in smoke, obliterating the plant and animal life along many of the trails most loved by Angelenos, including myself.
I was not supposed to be hiking on the Backbone Trail. Only later did I learn that the whole National Recreation Area was closed. When I got to the trailhead, there were no signs to that effect, so up the steep path I climbed. Some of the vegetation on the trail was intact, some was stained red with fire retardant dropped from planes, and some was blackened. As I hiked higher, I could see that the Castro trail on the ridge was burned over. Same with the trail to the site where the M.A.S.H. shows were filmed. Same with the trails in upper Las Virgenes Canyon and on Simi Mountain.
When I was in high school in Santa Cruz, CA, our biology teacher, Ed Borovatz, taught us about the "greenhouse effect" - an early term for what we now call "human-caused climate change" resulting from CO2 emissions. Through Ed's intervention, I was appointed, at the age of 16, to the Student Council on Pollution and the Environment. It was an advisory group set up by the Nixon administration to monitor and co-opt student environmental activists. I was by far the youngest student on the Council. Most of the others were leftist graduate students. We traveled on federal vouchers, meeting with government officials. The grad students were wise to Nixon's machinations. They arranged for us to visit universities on each of our trips and radicalize students into the ecology movement, at government expense!
On one of our trips, we had a private meeting with the Secretary of the Interior, Wally Hickel, an affable fellow who had served as the governor of Alaska. It violated my innocent assumptions that, for a big shot, he was so short in stature. I asked him a question based on my new-found knowledge about CO2 in the atmosphere. "Mr. Hickel, shouldn't the government tax gasoline at a very high rate, in order to reduce consumption and lower emissions?"
Wally Hickel looked me right in the eye and said "Young man, you're absolutely right. That is exactly what should happen. But it is politically impossible." I was upset at the answer, but had to respect the forthright manner in which he delivered it.
The year: 1970.
Forty-eight years later, the current Secretary of the Interior is on a mission, head-bent and hell-bound, to pump more oil and blast more coal out of the ground. The President maintains his denial of the reality of human-caused global warming even as he tours the devastation left by the worst fires in California history. This week in Paris, where the French government fully recognizes the climate threat, people are storming the streets to protest a gasoline tax increase imposed to mitigate the effects of CO2 emissions.
Gazing at mile after mile of denuded peaks and scorched hills, I felt despondent that half a century later, Wally Hickel's answer could still be true.
"Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience." (St. Paul in Romans 8: 24-25) From the Backbone Trail, hope definitely was not seen. What hope remains within me for rectifying our collective damage to the planet lies buried by thick layers of ash. Yet like the seeds of California chaparral plants that lie dormant until cracked open by wildfire, germinating to green the mountains once again, I must wait with patience for hope to spring up.
My hike was preceded by weekends spent knocking on doors in northern Los Angeles County for Katie Hill, a young Democrat. Gazing at the massive turnout of other volunteers on the last day of canvassing, my eyes filled with tears, sensing that the impossible might be possible after all. She - and we - eked out a victory. But that was just the beginning. There are so many more doors to knock, and so little time.
So may holy hope rise out of the ashes, grow big, and move us to action.....
JIM BURKLO
Website: MINDFULCHRISTIANITY.ORG Weblog: MUSINGS Follow me on twitter: @jtburklo
See the GUIDE to my articles and books
Sr Associate Dean of Religious Life, University of Southern California
Website: MINDFULCHRISTIANITY.ORG Weblog: MUSINGS Follow me on twitter: @jtburklo
See the GUIDE to my articles and books
Sr Associate Dean of Religious Life, University of Southern California