This was some kind of dream-come-true moment, the kind of synchronicity that you hear about at writer’s conferences, a cue, if you will. McKibben’s book, Oil and Honey, sits squarely on my writing desk, and there I was, an emerging environmental writer still acclimating to my recent move to Vermont, now standing next to him in line at the Hannaford’s, with the chewing gum and Tic Tacs, staring opportunity in the face.

What I should have said was, “Excuse me, Mr. McKibben, but I am a huge supporter and fan of your work. I am also an environmental writer, and just recently moved here to Middlebury, so I just want to introduce myself.” I should’ve told him that in fact, I was also a contributor to Fracture: Essays, Poems, and Stories on Fracking in America, and that I thought his essay, “Why Not Frack,” was brilliant. I should have told him that I’m so honored to have my work published between the same book covers as his. We would’ve exchanged pleasantries and shaken hands, and I would have felt like a real writer, on cloud nine for the rest of the month.

But instead, I took notice of the little earpiece he was wearing —the kind you wear when you are a very busy, very important author and environmental activist who must talk on the phone all the time to senators and congressional leaders, to publishers and agents, to attorneys who help release you from jail for your civil disobedience— and I told myself: Who do you think you are? This poor man is probably never home because he’s so busy saving the world, and he just wants to buy his Cabot butter and cheese in peace, without being interrupted by some frizzy-haired mother with perspiration rings under her arms.

So I said nothing. Did nothing. And watched one of my heroes walk away.

I try to tell myself that it’s probably for the best. That, given the kind of harassment to which McKibben will be subjected by the Republican opposition research group, American Rising —harassment which will entail following the man around with video cameras and employing trolls to comb through his body of work, digging for hypocrisies and inconsistencies to fuel their political attacks— given the anticipated harassment, I tell myself, it’s better to leave Mr. McKibben alone.

But then, if I’m honest, I will admit that my paralysis had nothing to do with America Rising, except perhaps that it is grounded in exactly the same thing that motivates the donors behind their work, which is to say fear.

My pathology of literary ambition and social anxiety is a distinct hell, a condition from which I was certain I suffered alone, until I read Rick Bass’s “Shy” several years ago. Bass perfectly characterizes this unfortunate state of being, and while I can find camaraderie in his admissions and excuse myself for being a shy writer, the thing that fills me with self-loathing is calling myself an activist when my introversion and anxiety prevent me from being very active at all. Rick Bass may be a shy writer, but he is a badass environmental activist, with the arrest record to prove it. How can I expect to exert any change, I scold myself, if I cannot even find the courage to speak to my own tribe?

At home, I confess to my husband, who reassures me by admitting to his own star-struck awkwardness. “I saw Bill McKibben skiing up at Rikert,” he offers. “I couldn’t bring myself to say hello.”

Fine. But this is what I do, I say. Or at least am trying to do — but honestly, how much doing am I really doing when the thought of Twitter and self-promotion and direct-confrontational activism makes me nauseous, heart racing like I’m stuck on the high-dive, writhing like a worm?

Stop, my husband says. Breathe.

It’s finally springtime in Vermont, mud season, and the local Agway is setting out flowering trees and hearty perennials, the mulch and materials for maintaining your compost bin. I remember teaching my girls about compost back in Oregon, how they would deposit found earthworms from the yard into our bin, after letting the creatures blindly explore their outstretched, open hands.

It’s an ecosystem, I told them. The worms are doing the decomposition work to make the soil healthy for the plants — and it’s just now that I’m finally seeing where I might fit into this larger world. There is much quiet, underground work in sustaining the plants that bloom and inspire us with their tenacity, with their never-ending hope.

Bill McKibben says, “The real task for activists is to change the zeitgeist.”

Zeitgeist. Spirit of the age. Spirit of the time. Our culture, in other words: how we see the world, what we value, how we might defend the things we love. You find it in the art that we make, the stories we tell, in the lessons we teach our kids.

So maybe, for now, it’s okay to be a shy environmental writer, to express my activism through my art. Maybe today it’s enough to be the mother who still volunteers in her daughter’s classroom, who nurtures her classmates’ knowledge about, and wonder of the world. Maybe I can forgive myself for being so reserved around the big players, the ones with environmental arrest records. They have their roles in this activist ecosystem, and I am still figuring out my own.

Excuse me, Mr. McKibben. My name is Mary Heather. I am an environmental scientist, writer, and mother. I am a fellow Vermonter now, and a huge fan of your work. Thanks for everything you’re doing. And, hey, if you need me, I’ll be down here for now, making change from the forest floor.

Photo credit: Chesapeake Climate Action Network, from Wikimedia Commons

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Watching updates of Sandra’s arrest, along with all the other protests on social media and TV reminds me of how demanding this work can be.  Reminds me of the challenge of trudging uphill, of the stamina required to proceed forward despite the forces working against.  Rick Bass wrote a beautiful essay about activism fatigue several years ago: “Activism’s Paradox Mountain“ — a piece to which I find myself returning every now and then.  But there’s a reason they continue to climb, almost always a story behind the sacrifice.

A few weeks ago, I completed an application for a writing retreat, in which I was asked to provide a personal response to the following Virginia Woolf quote:

“I’m fundamentally, I think, an outsider.  I do my best work and feel most braced with my back to the wall. It’s an odd feeling, though, writing against the current: difficult entirely to disregard the current.  Yet of course I shall.”

As a writer whose work is often motivated by environmental issues, this quote speaks to me directly in terms of the margins from which I write — and from which others write, as well.  I know that my ideas and those of my literary heroes aren’t always popular, because they push back against traditionally held American ideals.  Things like capitalism and exceptionalism, the rights and responsibilities of individuals verses corporations, guns and “scientific proof.”  It’s hard to question our traditions — because these ideals have taken many of us far, have rewarded some of us well… well, except for those people and places whose needs are at odds with our traditional American beliefs.

But it seems to me that our greatest truths don’t begin as commonly held beliefs.  Rather, they come from stories — stories of pain, of injustice that we labor to deliver so that the truth may be revealed. That we are all created equal, for instance.  There is still much work to be done on that.

The work is difficult, unsupported.  It would be easier to fold into one’s self and float, bobbing and weaving through the rushing water, propelled by conformity and the sound of its applause, along the path of least resistance.  Easier still to allow your direction and destination to be determined by the urgency and velocity of someone else’s values, of other people’s rules.

And yet.  A salmon will leave the ocean and return to its natal stream, whose salt-free waters will assault its cells and strip the skin right from its flesh.  And fourth generation monarchs will ignore the impulse to mature and mate, saving their energy instead for the long flight from as far north as Canada to Mexico’s southern tail — a journey whose distance and hardship defies all logic, but without which would define the end of its kind.

The work that we do is hard.  We shed our skins and bare our vulnerable selves, and for some of us, this pilgrimage can feel like death.  Or maybe it’s our birth.  Either way, we must continue to write our stories.  The survival of our kind depends on it.

Cover image courtesy of Ecowatch.org

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