We are not addicted to oil. We
are addicted to moving around and exploring what’s out there, be it
the top of the mountain or the climbing wall in the new recreation
center on the edge of town.
The words of that explorer of
the future, Captain Kirk, stay with us because he fed our fantasies
of what we all want to do: “Boldly go where no man has gone
before.” We want to find a trail where you won’t run into other
hikers, a campground that never fills up — and while we’re at
it — a town that’s got more affordable housing than our own.
I recently took my family out to the local train track
turned bike and pedestrian path in an effort to get away from the
crowds. We were passed on the right by a couple dressed in the
latest cycling wear on an expensive-looking tandem bike. He was
pedaling away up front, and she was sitting in the back, forgetting
to pedal as she chatted away on her cell phone. Theirs was a luxury
sports car compared to our family mini-van: a line of second-hand
bikes pedaled by kids in second-hand clothing, my panniers filled
with water bottles, cracker crumbs, half-eaten sandwiches and
discarded socks (no pairs).
Feelings of
déjà vu overcame me: Were we traveling
on a bike path or the interstate? Did covered wagons full of kids
look like the back seats of my mini-van or the interior of my
panniers? Will family star cruisers of the future look much the
same?
The whole of the West has been populated and shaped
by our desire to explore and to get away from whatever was plaguing
us back where we came from. Charles Ingalls of the Little
House on the Prairie books kept moving his family west
because he felt things were crowded if he couldn’t walk more than a
mile without running into a neighbor. If he lived now, he’d need
some tall fences.
We are open to any form of fuel —
gasoline, restaurant grease, kitchen waste — that will
transport us where we want to go on our own schedules and whims.
Wagons traveled in trains, but I doubt many wagon-pooled, and
individual pioneer families often stopped or changed direction
before the wagon train did, maybe from fatigue, or maybe because
they wanted to guarantee space between themselves and their
neighbors.
Forget about peak oil, we are talking peak
movement of the human population. Where will we go next, and how
will we get there?
Is climbing a mountain really such an
accomplishment when anyone with enough money to buy all the gear
and hire a guide has been up there and left their trash behind? How
many people really need to travel to the Arctic to bring back the
story of the ice melting? I think we get it. How much traffic are
we willing to wait behind to get to that once secluded spot in a
national park that has recently been equipped with wireless
internet?
Let’s return to the fantasy offered up by
Captain Kirk. If we do reach peak movement, if there is nowhere to
go to avoid the crowds and experience something new, we will
probably head up; West is no longer an option. We will even go back
to traveling in groups until someone finds a way to allow us to
travel solo through the stars. As always, we will insist on
comfort, having moved easily from horse and bumpy wagon to cars and
car-top totes, adding TV monitors for the kids in the backseat, and
a “way back” for our dogs plus recreational gear.
There
are companies already offering commercial space travel, and when
private enterprise gets hold of ideas, they take off, and we find
ourselves going where we believe no one has gone before. I believe
we’ll move easily to celestial travel, just so long as our family
ships come equipped with decent cup holders.
Suzanne Malakoff is a contributor to Writers on the
Range, a service of High Country News in Paonia,
Colorado (hcn.org). She writes in Olympia,
Washington.
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