The Sun appeared diffused over the Blue Mountains today, but it still does what only the sun can do. Welcome, dear friend!
Happiest day, beloved Joy Train Rider! I love you! Bless you! I affirm we are doing well.
I got the most encouraging news yesterday from our colleagues the Pattiz brothers of More Than Just Parks in the article “The Fourth Wave of American Conservationism is Washing Ashore Now: Through the destruction a ripple of hope rings out.”
“We’ve heard the cry of people looking around now and asking ‘where are our champions?’ Our Carsons and Muirs and Roosevelts to pull us out of these new depths? It’s us. It’s all of us. We are the fourth wave and we are not alone. A realization is happening and a coalition is building across ideologies. The enviros are thinking the same thoughts as the hook & bullet folks. . .Count what you’ve already done. ..”
The list they supply is encouraging, and I’m even happier to learn from Earthjustice that “the latest sale of oil and gases leases in the Arctic Refuge was mostly a bust. The Trump administration opened 700K acres for bidding, but only one small company and a state sponsored corporation bid on 70K acres. Every major oil company stayed away from this deeply risky and unpopular project.
“Still, any amount of oil development in the Arctic Refuge is too much. We cannot let them turn a globally significant habitat into a polluted industrial zone.
“We’re already fighting back in court. The leases issued for the bids announced today are subject to our ongoing lawsuit. . .”
Yess!! Thank you! This report dates back to June, and as it says, they’re not out of our woods yet. It’s important that we keep speaking out and supporting the Gwich’in Nation and other advocates for the protections that were granted to these sacred places 45 years ago through the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) It’s an unending source of pride and inspiration that we have friends who worked assiduously in the leadership to pass that bill.
Thinking about the destruction being wreaked upon Big Bend National Park in this moment makes me feel ill, but I’m glad there are hundreds (if not thousands) of people from both political parties onsite voicing tremendous opposition.
I saw this great image on Substack yesterday, and thought it so brilliant I made it the cover on my socials.
This leads us to our tour today, beloved Rider, when we visit the birthplace of one of the foremost educators in our country, a man born into enslavement who had to teach himself to read yet seeded the way for untold numbers of young people to become highly credentialed. Booker T. Washington became an advisor to US presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Taft, and even has a giant sequoia tree in Sequoia National Park named for him.
This is another gift from the treasure trove of our Pickup & GO! hardcopy newsletters that I recently recovered. The serendipity of those older stories being relevant and applicable at exactly the time they’re rediscovered is boggling my mind.
Education is central to Dr. Washington’s story. (He received an honorary M.A. from Harvard University and an honorary LL.D. Doctor of Laws, from Dartmouth College.) In his autobiography “Up From Slavery,” he wrote:
“There was never a time in my youth, no matter how dark and discouraging the days might be, when one resolve did not continually remain with me, and that was a determination to secure an education at any cost.”
So here we are at the Booker T. Washington National Monument in Hardy, Virginia, on the very spot where he was born into enslavement and spent the first nine years of his life. Listen closely and you might hear his young voice calling; look with slightly unfocused gaze and you might glimpse his slight figure running with water to quench the thirst of the enslaved men and women toiling in the tobacco fields.
According to the National Park Service,
“Booker T. Washington National Monument (BOWA) is located in Franklin County, Virginia. It comprises 223.92 acres located in the rolling hills of the Virginia Piedmont, 22 miles south of Roanoke. The park contains a visitor center, administrative offices located within a former school building, a 1890s tobacco barn, reconstructed plantation outbuildings, two marked archeological sites, three small cemeteries, and two walking trails that loop through the cabin area, meadows, and woodlands.
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