TP & Eco-tage

[Steelhead]

As some of you out there know, I make what passes for a living as an
investigative journalist exposing environmental criminals, such as
Weyerhaeuser (the tree killing people) and Shell Oil (the modern masters of
genocide).

In a previous life, I was something of a radical environmentalist myself,
hanging in redwoods threatened with chainsaws or on bungy cord from bridges
trying to block the entry of aircraft carriers bearing nuclear-tipped
cruise missiles into the mouth of the Columbia River.

I've got something of a rap sheet you might say (and, Ms. Blaine, just try
and use it to get me deported--I'll go willingly. New Zealand, perhaps, or
the upper reaches of the Orinoco--the Yanomamo have mighty powerful drugs,
shotgun that Ebene right up your nose! Then howl like a jaguar, while your
nose runs green and red). Not surprisingly one of my heros is the late Ed
Abbey. We used to pop a few awful beers (in cans--yuck--so he could toss
them on some damn logging road in the Manti-LaSal) down in Moab from time
to time.

No one has written better or more comically about the need to take radical
and direct action to protect wilderness than Abbey. (My favorite Abbey
essay--for those two or three who might be interested--is Down the River
with Henry Thoreau, wherein Abbey contemplates--while tasting the bite of
the white water of the Colorado--the marraige of HDT and that secluded
nihilist of Amherst, Emily D (I always thought she was the perfect match
for Freddie NZ, myself). Yes, Cactus Ed was the best. Well, the best except
for one writer: Trip. As evidence, here's an incredibly instructive
passage from GR:

"Trees, now--Slothrop's intensely alert to trees, finally. When he comes in
among trees he will spend time touching them, studying them, sitting very
quietly near them and understanding that each tree is a creature, carrying
on its individual life, aware of what's happening around it, not just some
hunk of wood to be cut down. Slothrop's family actually made its money
killilng trees, amputating them from their roots, chopping them up,
grinding them to pulp, bleaching that to paper and getting paid for this
with more paper. "That's really insane." He shakes his head. "There's
insanity in my family." He looks up. The trees are still. They know he's
there. They probably also know what he's thinking. "I'm sorry," he tells
them. "I can't do anything about those people, they're all out of my reach.
What can I do?" A medium-sized pine nearby nods its top and suggests, "Next
time you come across a logging operation out here, find one of their
tractors that isn't being guarded, and take its oil filter with you. That's
what you can do."
                                        --GR, pg. 553

Live and learn, as Connie Chatterly sez.

Steely