I’ve walked thirty miles across Maryland the past three days in the middle of the worst heat wave of the year. The heat index has soared well above 100 each day, causing the corn fields and forests to shimmer in the distance. My feet, meanwhile, are so tender I’ve literally begun applying duct tape to the balls of my feet to ward off blisters.
And I couldn’t be in higher spirits. Why? Because today I get to do it all over again with 60-70 inspiring climate activists from across the country as part of the “2013 Walk for Our Grandchildren.” For eight days, from July 19-27th, we are walking 100 miles from the gates of Camp David — the presidential retreat in western Maryland — all the way to the White House. Our goal: Tell President Obama to stop the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline and accelerate solutions to global warming.
Already, we’ve walked through the “green tunnels” of the Catoctin Mountains. We’ve marched across soybean farms and into towns with one stoplight. We camped one night on a Civil War battlefield. What keeps us going with bandaged feet and evaporating pounds are the stories we hear along the way. We met farmer Shelly Wolf who says the weather in rural Frederick County Maryland is unrecognizable compared to when she and her husband bought their farm 58 years ago. The snow back then would shut down their country road for a week at a time. Now it barely snows. And today it’s not just the heat waves but the summer humidity! Insufferable, she says. There was nothing like it during her childhood.
Teenagers and grandparents: No KXL!
Humidity? Tell me about it. Our band of marchers has rung out more than a few t-shirts on this trip. We guzzle more water and grab our umbrellas and soldier on. It’s a “March for Our Grandchildren” so yes there are young grandkids and elder grandparents making the walk. Marchers range in age from 78 to 11, including Steve Norris and Kendall Hale of Asheville, North Carolina who are walking for their five grandchildren. By the end of this week, as our numbers grow, two families will have representatives on foot from three generations within their clans. I’m making the march, at age 51, to ensure that my 16-year-old son Sasha even has a chance to have a child on a planet that’s not rapidly warming and falling apart.
I’ve been inspired most by the youth on this trip. Fourteen-year-old Anna Yost is walking with her dad Greg. Nineteen-year-old Lili Marotta (pictured center-right, carrying the banner), from Lockport, New York, is walking for her 11-year-old brother James. Lili studies at Niagara County Community College and plans to start a sustainable farm with her parents, located partly on land her grandfather has donated. But first she has to nurse those three giant blisters on her left foot and power through this walk for little James.
Jerry Stewart, 26, is from Aldie, Virginia. He’s making this walk for his 17-day-old nephew Mason Walker Stewart. Jerry has also hung 42 white ribbons from the top of his backpack, each bearing the hand-written names of friends and loved ones whom Jerry wants to save from dirty pipelines and a crashing climate. When he’s not on summer break, Jerry works as a substitute teacher in the Loudoun County public school system.
David Smith, also 19, goes to St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY. “I know something is wrong with the planet,” David says, “and I know I can do something about it. What’s happening in Alberta with the tar sands just sickens me.” David also walks the walk, so to speak. He’s carrying a miniature solar panel to help power walkers’ cell phones. I called my son from a corn field thanks to David!
“Summer Heat” campaign: Actions nationwide
The walk from Camp David to the White House is part of creative actions nationwide taking place during the last ten days of July, statistically the hottest stretch of the year in North America. There’s been a tar sands boat flotilla protest in Maine. And activists are rallying around a dirty oil refinery in Richmond, CA. The group 350.org is coordinating the actions across the country, and will organize a powerful nonviolent action in DC on July 26th and a big final rally with the Camp David marchers at the White House on July 27th. Please join us.
Right now, I need to put some more duct tape on my feet and start walking again. Yesterday we moved from farm roads onto an 8-mile stretch of the Appalachian Trail. The cool forest beauty reminded us of the kind of world we want to leave all grandchildren. We chose Camp David as our starting point because the presidential retreat, established in the 1950s, was envisioned as a place where Dwight D. Eisenhower could honor and spend time with his grandchildren. The camp is actually named after grandson David Eisenhower. In 2013, we’re marching to the White House to ask President Obama to globalize the Camp David spirit and protect ALL grandchildren with a safe world of clean energy.
That means no Keystone XL pipeline. It also means no more fracking. On Saturday we passed through the small Maryland town of Myersville where mega-corporation Dominion Transmission wants to build a “compressor station” for an intrusive new gas pipeline. Proposed less than a mile from an elementary school, the line will be a huge health and economic threat to the town. A similar compressor station blew sky high in West Virginia. Worse, the Dominion line is meant to transport harmful “fracked” gas from Pennsylvania to the Chesapeake Bay shore, most likely for export to India and Japan.
On Saturday, our group of marchers gathered outside the Myersville school to chant, “Fracking no! Wind power yes!” Neighborhood kids rode their bikes to the event. Other townspeople joined us, bringing water and Power Bars.
Back on the trail again
One of the grandparents on this walk is Mike Bagdes-Canning, who has three little ones back home. Mike, almost 60, is here because several of his neighbors in rural Butler County Pennsylvania now have contaminated drinking wells linked to nearby fracking operations. Mike just retired from a career teaching reading to juvenile delinquents.
And Mike brought the duct tape that I’m now applying to my feet. Too bad we can’t just duct tape our broken planet, now surpassing 400 parts per million carbon pollution in the atmosphere. But with enough people like those on this historic walk, we’ll get the healing done one way or another. For our feet and the planet.
Onward.
