There Has To Be A Better Way To Get To ELAW

By Josh Mahan

We were twenty miles east of bat country in Floyd’s pink, bio-diesel Cadillac when the wheatgrass kicked in. Floyd had purchased a hand-cranked juicer in Missoula and was furiously operating it in the back seat, throwing back shot after shot. Here we were: A founder, a funder, a folk musician, and an editor. Minus a good lawyer. First Amendment types should never leave home without a competent attorney.

We knew it wouldn’t be long before the lawyers piled high like snapping turtles at our elbows, squirming and writhing, shoving their tails in each other’s eyes. When they amass in frenzies like that you don’t know if they are breeding or feeding. These law dogs usually pose no threat to the ecologically minded, but I pity the hapless ranger that plots a timber sale in a patch of roadless old-growth. They’ll carve ‘em up in the courtroom and feed them to their children for Christmas dinner. That’s right folks we were going to ELAW, also known as the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference. It’s the only time, really, we dare drive Floyd’s Caddy through bat country.

Before we could resign ourselves to hours of policy discussion, we had some obligations to our folk musician Danny Dolinger. Lowbagger had agreed to take care of the environmental bard on a three-gig stint through West Yellowstone, Missoula, and Spokane, eventually depositing him somewhere near Sam Bonds tavern in Eugene for an ELAW kick-off concert. Roselle was the official road manager and presided over all artistic disputes. After hearing a dispute he often delegated the task of handling the problem to me. And Floyd usually footed the bill. Things got done this way.

We still didn’t know what to do about the damn bats that were now scuttling across the windshield of the Caddy. I flipped on the fog lights and switched to my low beams. It was obviously too dangerous to drive with this many bats out. We pulled off I-90 in Mullan, Idaho: Population 842. The town eatery was closed and looked like it had been for a good while. We pushed through the bats another six miles to Wallace.

I washed the windows of the Caddy while the boys filed into the 1313 Club. What a mess.

The bar was empty as most folks were still on the job in this hard-working little town. Once renowned for its brothel the town took a severe economic hit in the late 1980s when the feds closed the joint down. Now there’s a Brothel Museum, but the gross product is still down in Wallace.

Idaho’s not big on adhering to the rules we generally agree on as Americans. Money trumps morality every time in the wilderness of central Idaho and the northern panhandle. Civilized infrastructure is still struggling to take hold in many of the narrow mountain hallows. Not due to a lack of effort, mind you. This country is rugged and inhospitable to creatures unwilling to live within its terms. Not many have had success since the Nez Perce were driven out in the late 1870s.

These days if you want to traverse central Idaho outside one of these three corridors you’ll need some hiking boots, a boat, or a mule. This is why people from Idaho are self-reliant and tough.

This is also why they are resistant to change.

Wilderness is an American concept. One forged in the lap of luxury. Forests have traditionally been viewed in dollars and cents. Roosevelt set aside the first national reserves not as an ecologist, but as a conservationist. Decades later philosophy and science would intersect at the radical idea of extending the natural right of freedom, enjoyed by certain human societies, to all species, and the important life systems that sustain them: clean and functioning forests, oceans, air, and water. You can’t achieve these selfless ideas without excessive education and resources.  Or a lot of time spent in the wilderness. Then its necessity becomes self evident.

Deforestation is now a health issue. So is burning coal.

If a human can’t smoke a cigarette in a bar, why can the Texas-based TXU smoke-out the atmosphere with carbon emissions threatening billions of people’s inherent right to breathe? Not to mention the frogs developing fungus on their skin and dying, the polar bears that are losing their ice-flow hunting grounds and turn to cannibalism, or that the rock-pile dwelling pika simply overheats and dies at a temperature of 75 degrees.

It only makes sense that the polar bear will eventually enjoy the same right to exist that workers, women, and minorities have all had to strive for in this country. While it may seem a stretch for a polar bear to be endowed with natural rights, it was also once so for African Americans in Birmingham. And not that long ago. Forget not our dark history. America was built on vastly ignorant and destructive mistakes.

The bats had thinned out by the time we turned out of Wallace’s 1313 Club, complete with its, “Earth First! We’ll Mine The Others Later,” sticker. That’s sweet rhetoric, but it’s becoming harder to sell as the industry comes closer to fulfilling this goal. Too bad Floyd didn’t have on his, “The Treehuggers Were Right,” T-shirt.

We floated into Spokavegas and located the Empyrean, a new coffee shop where Dolinger would be playing. It was a big, vibrant joint and the sisters who ran it told me they wanted to provide a place that made you feel like you weren’t in Spokane. This appeared to be a good thing. You’ve got to love hometown pride. I’ve yet to meet a person from Spokane with any.

At this point, I was standing in as acting interim road manager and a problem developed. The Empyrean had simultaneously booked a punk-rock, battle-of-the-bands event on the same night our humble folk musician was due to strum his guitar. This news placed added consternation to our already troubled artist. The sisters assured me the venue would work. And it did. There was plenty of space for both shows, and I saw more than a couple young punks depart the building with a Significant Gains CD.

Floyd and Mike passed out after the show while Danny and I hit the street. A band down at Mootsy's was playing 15-inch chain. A strange, but vibrant act. That band tailed us most of the next day as we traveled past the government's toxic stashes of nuclear waste in eastern Washington, and then down the dammed waters of the Colubmia River corridor to Portland. We shook that strange and mysterious band when we veered south on the 205 exchange heading toward Eugene.

A haggard, bearded man with a backpack walked down the road. Construction had eaten up the shoulder and traffic zoomed inches from his shins.

“There has to be a better way to get to ELAW,” Mike said. We drove on.

The conference kicked off with Vandana Shiva and Robert Kennedy, Jr. revving up the home crowd. The organizers dropped the ball with the tickets and we, along with a bunch of other people, couldn’t get any. We ended up hearing about it from Karen Pickett, Roselle’s second wife. She was absolutely pissed off at Kennedy.

“He said that we weren’t saving the planet for the birds and fishes. Well bullshit,” she said. “I am.”

The general consensus was that Shiva knocked Kennedy’s socks off, stirring and empowering the crowd. But most people had already predicted that one.

Right: The Raging Grannies lay it down for the line of ELAW attendants waiting for Vandana Shiva tickets.

The days progressed, notes were scribbled in panels, strategy sessions went down in the hallways. Activists tabled. Lawyers achieved continuing education requirements. The funded and unfunded joined side-by-side in workshops. Thai food was consumed over Singha-fueled power lunches.

The old guard nervously speculated that the many young faces at the conference would not be able to live up to the heavy-hitting performances of the generation that preceded them. The young guard murmured that they were unsure that the title of Greatest Environmental Generation Ever belonged to the Boomers. But all generation gaps aside information disseminated through the ranks spawning vision for more projects and another year of accomplishments.

Time is running out for these projects, in case you were intent upon maybe doing something about global warming and the several dozen environmental disasters that contribute to it. Brace yourself for another fire-inferno summer in the West, now 78 days longer. If you live on the Gulf expect some more warm-water induced Class V hurricanes. If you live in Manhattan invest in a boat-taxi service.

After several interviews, we never did find the right lawyer. They were all way too uptight. And somewhere along the way we lost our folk musician. Something about $100. We put Floyd in the backseat with his wheatgrass machine and pointed the Caddy east. All roads lead to Missoula.

Josh Mahan edits the vagabond environmental journal Lowbagger.org.