I don’t have
that many friends. I’m not a bad guy; I call my mother, eat
my broccoli, and pay my taxes. But I’m a
country-music-listening, PBR-drinking, rusty-Jeep-driving good
ol’ boy — and I love the environment.
I grew
up rural in the Rocky Mountain West and Midwest, where farming and
ranching still reign. It was, and is, a culture that values hard
work, family, and the land itself. It’s where the land is a
tool, used to produce. Farming and ranching are about bottom-line
crop yields — pounds of meat and milk. Hunting and fishing
are discussed in production terms — herd, harvest, trophy
— and environmentalists are “city people.”
Back then, my friends and I were gearheads. The scent of
gasoline mingling with amber hues of gear oil and sickly sweet
antifreeze was exciting, intoxicating. We took our powerful ATVs
“boggin’,” leaving a wake of ruts, scarred tree
trunks and petroleum-slicked puddles. And it was fun. Yep, I said
it. The thrill of whipping through trees, the challenge of climbing
a sandy cutbank, the hazards of crossing a silty-bottomed oxbow and
churning its delicately balanced micro-ecosystem into frothy,
froggy goo — it was exhilarating. The gratification was
immediate and powerful; we bent nature to the will of our machines,
and it felt good. We’d return home happy, caked in mud, and
wash our machines — sending countless invasive plant seeds
down the street.
There was never a question about the
consequences of our casual destruction. Even my well-educated
parents rarely questioned our forays; at least we were outside,
they said.
But I left my all-terrain vehicles and all my
buddies behind when I went to college. There, between reading all
night and climbing Montana’s mountains all day, my
relationship with the outdoors changed. Instead of dominating the
natural world, I wanted to immerse myself in its nuances. I enjoyed
the physical work it takes to travel overland on foot or skis. I
liked how clearly I could think in the quiet, distraction-free
vacuum of wilderness. I loved looking at the world, and actually
seeing. But this realization — and my growing awareness of my
own environmental hate-crimes — left me estranged from my
hometown buddies. And my new friends, mostly environmentally
conscious outdoor types, found my confused ideals difficult to
understand and viewed me with suspicious tolerance.
I was
left with clashing values, a tragic love of both the mechanized
world and the natural world — as well as a certain contempt
from both sides of a passionate issue.
Now, I’m an
editor for a magazine dedicated to backcountry skiing, a sport
dominated by the green ideals of human-powered travel, quiet
wilderness and a healthy environment. At a fundamental level,
global warming threatens the future of my sport and my livelihood.
Yet I still crave the sound of a throbbing V-8, still find off-road
vehicles fascinating, and still sometimes find myself daydreaming
about a new ATV or snowmobile. I’m stuck somewhere between a
progressive redneck and a cynical environmentalist. It’s like
driving a Toyota Prius in a tractor-pull: I just can’t win.
The thing is that there’s far more overlap than
either side wants to admit. Many of my old redneck friends spend
far more time in the natural world than the self-proclaimed
environmentalists bent on protecting it. They farm, ranch, hunt and
fish, and intimately understand how natural resources relate and
interact. The conservation movement, on the other hand, often seems
to be tainted with hypocrisy. Many activists’ only activity
outside the air-conditioned comfort of their policy headquarters is
to take in nature at a manicured city park, or on the IMAX screen.
Does anyone really know what they’re talking about?
I believe this question is the source of my social problems. No one
wants to recognize the fallacy of their own thinking or the flaws
in their own actions; it’s always the opposing group, the
“greenies,” or the “rednecks,” causing the
problem. I’m a backcountry skier and quasi-environmentalist,
but I’m also a gearhead good-ol’-boy. I empathize with
both, and by both I’m almost magnetically repelled, if for no
other reason than my empathy with its rival.
That’s
how I came to be without friends. And for now, that’s OK. One
day, I believe, the people in my redneck past and my environmental
present will mingle harmoniously. I hope it’s at a wedding
and not at a funeral years from now. Until then, I guess I’m
destined to be stuck in the middle, between cultures, and between
friends.
Drew Pogge is a contributor to Writers
on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He is an
associate editor of Backcountry magazine and splits his time
between Fort Collins, Colorado, and Jeffersonville,
Vermont.
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