Country Folk

I will never forget the trips I've taken with my father, traveling across the Southeast. My brother and I went everywhere with him as children and even later as traveling tradesmen with his employer, Stebbins, in paper mills and plants. One of the last journeys we took together was a trip to Pensacola, FL with family to see the Blue Angels.

My father had cancer and not much time left, but he was making everything he could out of it. It was spring and the countryside was cacophonous with clicks and whirs and whoops and peeps of the bottomland life. We traveled together in his truck, as my brother and I had done so many times before. Except now, he was remarried, another son, a new life. The story was repeating, except this time with too much urgency, a tragic finality. It was all still beautiful: the rest stops, the gas stations, the changing scenery, the ice chest full of snacks, sandwiches. I was never happier than when going somewhere with Dad.

The arrival was nothing short of heaven: warm winds, distant seascape, light that enveloped everything it touched, and the family all there, together. Grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, even me, down from Ohio. In a way, I must have been the most exotic addition. Everyone else had been spending much more time with Dad in those days than I ever could have living in Ohio.

There was a moment after the Blue Angels finished that we all stood around, talking. Scott, fisherman, mason and old friend of Dad's, spoke of the islands out on the water, fishing the sloughs and the channels between the mainland and small islands just beyond where the angels flew. He generously offered to take us out on his boat, but we ended up not going. But the two fisherman had made me aware of the unique topography underneath the waves near the barrier islands. I had a realization then of the quiet cartographer my father must have always been, surveying the underworld from his aluminum boat. Above the submerged valleys and plains of land beneath the bays and estuaries of Southern Louisiana, the boat was a kind of airplane. A fisherman must see himself this way, I thought. Flying high. The clouds reflected underneath as glow above. He drops his silvery, invisible line to the land below and enjoys the sense of weightlessness. Not many fisherman would ever articulate their experience in this kind of way, but I always felt this way going fishing with my father. This calm, must be at the core of most country folk's love of the out of doors. Serenity, my dad once said.

This was just one more of the many moments I felt deeply connected to my father but felt I could or should not say anything. He wasn't much on vocalizing every damn thought or feeling. As Freeman Tilden once suggested, he let the scenery speak for itself. And so his silence taught me what words never could. And I held back, as I've done most of my life, keeping in this poetry of place, this desire to celebrate the land in words. My brother, Joey, felt the land as well as I did, I think, though he never was so inclined to be a writer. We've shared many great experiences together in the country, swimming, fishing, drinking, telling stories and cutting up. And so too, I think we share many of the same values about family and place.

The political rhetoric these days seems to pin environmentalists against country folk. This is a terribly unfair abuse of language and power, in my opinion. Many "environmentalist" are just people that want to keep the country a rural place. I was a country boy before I ever thought of calling myself an environmentalist. I enjoyed chopping down small trees, making forts, starting fires, catching bugs and shooting guns. Of course, I didn't make much of a hunter. When Dad went duck hunting, I much preferred staying at base camp, tramping the woods with machete in hand, making lean-tos with palmetto and discovering interesting wildlife. (I'll never forget discovering wild onion!) When Dad brought ducks back to be strung up on a rope near the fire, I was sad to see the ducks still twitching. Though, or perhaps, because their dark eyes did not reveal any pain, despite their undoubted suffering, I was drawn to them. Such stoicism, as a later found, was a great theme in my fathers life. For some reason I had this sensitivity, despite my other destructive, boyish behaviors. I didn't like to see trash in the river or anywhere. My bare feet were cut one too many times by broken bottles and pieces of tile discarded in the river. I didn't like to see forests cut down, because that's where I learned to play and dream.

In years leading up to his passing, my father and I seemed to continually butt heads on certain issues. He told our snorkel guide in Key West that I was a "liberal" once, because of my job in Ohio. He called me a "tree hugger" frequently, too. He made fun of me for using the ceramic plates instead of paper plates and going through the trouble of washing dishes. Perhaps it was a misunderstanding and miscommunication on both our parts, because we agreed that we loved our home. I confronted him once on how I didn't like being called "tree hugger" and he responded by saying, "What do you mean? You don't like being called tree hugger? That's not a negative word. Hell, I'm a tree hugger."

And so I hope that we can all begin to agree to call ourselves something we can all be proud of. The word "environmental" has been sullied and manipulated for purely political reasons, as a means of social polarization.  It is not a word of pride as it might have been in the 70s. But if you love the outdoors, then you're loving the environment. (And if you want to have "outdoors" for your grandchildren's grandchildren, you would do well to try to an understand how it works. But that's environmental literacy and I'll save that for a separate post.) With my generation finally coming out of the woodwork, exploring ideas of leadership, education and community, we certainly need a new term. I say just keep it honest and simple. Let's call ourselves, as we truly are: country folk.