Beware of the flower children

“We should build a giant electric fence,” my nine-year-old told me, “and put all the people inside it, and leave the rest of the world for all the other species.”  Then she folded her arms and glared at me.  For a 55-pound person, Lizzy has an intimidating glare.

This wasn’t the first Earth-First-style argument sprung upon me by my kids, and it wouldn’t prove to be the last, either.  Indeed, for a die-hard life-long environmentalist such as myself, it’s kind of ironic how often I’ve found myself trying to carve out a moderate position in my own household.  About a week prior to the above announcement, Lizzy declared that, “No one should be allowed to have any more children.” It was about then that I began to wonder, with some discomfort, what I might be doing wrong.

I do worry about conservation, of course.  A lot.  I mean, what do you expect, from a climate change researcher and former staffer for a greenie non-profit?  Heck, I was once a teaching assistant for an undergraduate course entitled, “Problems of Global Population Growth” But, regardless of what my reputation as a commune-dwelling Peace-Corps-veteran quarter-century-vegetarian may suggest, the annihilation of humanity really isn’t part of my game plan.  So why are my kids such nut-job zealots?

Lizzy’s twin, Molly, is less prone to baleful glares and extreme pronouncements than her sister is.  Nonetheless, her environmental fanaticism seems to be at least as well-developed, albeit with her own special empathetic twist.  She has been a vegetarian since she was six.  As far as I know, she has never strayed from the decision she made in first grade, no matter how many people ply her with crispy bacon or deep-fried bird-nuggets.  At first, I thought she was just doing it to please me; Molly is the kind of kid who likes to make Mommy happy.  But these days, her own notions seem a lot more well-formed and clearly articulated.  She is anxious about cow-farts contributing to the greenhouse effect.  She is horrified about the treatment of animals on factory-farms.  And, like Lizzy, she thinks there are too many people in the world, although she doesn’t seem to agree with the idea of caging or spaying them.  “Maybe it would be better if humans had never even evolved,” she told me sadly, one night at bedtime. 

Cripes.  I have a hard time handling this kind of nihilism from people who still sleep under Thomas the Tank Engine blankets amid a welter of cuddly bears, otters, bunnies, and owls.   What messages have I been offering to my fourth graders that would make them wish to annihilate their own species?  What have I screwed up?

Yes, it's a total parenting stereotype to blame myself, but I feel like I have cause for taking the mom-guilt on this one.  I am a professor of planetary doom.  Moreover, there’s often some kind of save-the-planet mini-lecture lurking behind many of our daily activities.  “Mommy, why do we have a wood pellet stove?”  Oooh, a chance to discuss carbon-neutral fuels from local sources!  I carefully flatten out every cardboard box and shove it away until the mass of recyclables threatens to overwhelm the cupboard door, at which point I finally get around to hauling it all off to the university recycling bins. It’s hard to find an opportunity, because I’m usually traveling by bike rather than car. “Mommy, how come we bike so much?”  Well, sweetie, that’s because your mother is psychotic…

If over-exposure to my sensibilities weren’t enough, the kids are also bombarded by grown-up conversations at the dinner table every night.  While many children dine with two adults, mine eat with nine – plus two older, savvier kids.  Between us, we have a ludicrous number of degrees, and an even more ludicrous number of loudly expressed opinions.  When we aren’t inadvertently over-educating the kids via risqué humor, we’re turning them into freaks in other ways.  Last week, when a local election was hanging in the balance, we ranted endlessly about various appalling candidates for Borough Mayor and Borough Assembly.  If there had been any appalling candidates for the at-large seats on the Interior Gas Utilities Board, we would have ranted about them, too.  We also went to town on the horrifying nature of Proposition 1, which aimed to reduce controls on air quality.  If your use of the word “freedom” includes exacerbating your neighbor’s asthma or endangering kids at a nearby school by burning tires as fuel, I do not think it means what you think it means.

The offshoot of all this was that at 10:20 p.m., when I had been anxiously hitting “refresh” on the election results webpage for an hour or so, I heard a plaintive cry from my insomniac kid.  “Mama?” 

I went in and gave Lizzy a kiss, and asked why she was awake.  She told me she was worried that we’d end up with terrible leaders and unhealthy air.  I assured her that the election outcome was promising to be better than expected. 

“Now I can go to sleep,” she sighed with relief.

I’m pretty sure no one else’s elementary school student lies awake contemplating the potentially dire ramifications of a mayoral candidate funded by the Koch brothers or a poorly worded anti-environmental referendum.

I might be proud of my daughters’ precocity as conservationists, if they weren’t taking everything to such ludicrous extremes.  “We’re ruining everything,” each of them has told me, more than once.  “We’re destroying the habitats of all the other species.”

Ah, habitats.  In addition to all the environmentalism that the twins wallow in at home, I’ve been sending them off to summer activities at Camp Habitat.  And Wild Rose.   And Calypso Farm and Ecology Center.  At these delightful camps, they get to be “earth children”, become friends with tadpoles, make mysterious objects our of mud, sing songs about habitats, and pretend that hiding in the tall grass will prevent me from insisting that they have to go home at the end of the day.  It all seems carefree, educational, and innocent.  I’m pretty sure that none of the sweetly smiling and infinitely energetic young counselors and teachers has been whispering to my pigtailed darlings, “Kill the humans!  KILL THE HUMANS!” 

And yet… there I was, having yet another preposterous bedtime conversation.  Why the passionate extremism from the freckle-nosed loose-toothed crowd?

“Humans use up everything, and they are just one species!” Lizzy declared, eyes blazing.  “It’s not FAIR!”

It’s not fair.  Lizzy says that a lot.  She says it about her half of the slice of pound cake, and her teacher’s propensity to not let anyone out for recess until the whole class has settled down, even though Lizzy is not one of the loud kids.  “It’s not fair!” reminded me of a larger truth that had been eluding me, within the radical environmental debate at hand: little people – and even not-so-little but still oh-so-young people – don’t merely feel passionate about habitats and ballot propositions.  They feel passionate about everything. 

Children are fervent about sock choices.  They seriously give a damn about who has the better flashlight, and who threw the first snowball at whom.  They have no filters and no sense of prioritization.  And, perhaps most importantly, they struggle with nuances, gray areas, and objective viewpoints.  If you tell a little kid that smoking is bad, she will stare in abject horror at the next person she sees lighting up outside a convenience store.  Mommy!  That man is BAD!

When I was between four and eight years old.  Jimmy Carter was in office.  In response to the energy crisis, he urged all Americans to conserve.  I can recall telling my parents, with great earnestness, that they needed to turn off the lights, because the President said so. I’m sure I was annoying as hell -- because, like all kids, I was kind of a nut-job zealot.

I like to imagine that by the time I reached my college years, my viewpoints had become more nuanced.  But I recall thinking that middle-aged people were boringly complacent.  I also recall doing a lot more marching and chanting than I’ve found myself doing in recent years.  Sign the petition!  Wear the T-shirt!  I have a couple of nostalgically confrontational twenty-plus-year-old T-shirts on my shelves that I don’t wear any more.  My current boring 43-year-old shifts in her seat uncomfortably. 

Okay, so my fourth graders want to eradicate humanity – or, at the very least, un-wish our differentiation from our great ape brethren -- so that the Lorax can flourish.  But maybe that’s normal.  Maybe it’s even positive.  They may be a little wacked, but only because their ideas are still so rough-hewn.  When the granite of their ideology weathers, the artistry of their environmental leanings will be, perhaps, more well-rounded, but still sturdy and stalwart: a worthy foundation.  And that might not be a bad outcome at all – if I do say so myself.

“I’m glad to be human,” I tell my kids as I tuck them in, and it’s the truth.  “I’m glad human beings evolved.  And I’m especially glad you two particular humans evolved.  I think you will do a pretty good job taking care of the planet.  I trust you with that.  I love you.  Good night.”  And I turn off the super-low-energy LED –cluster light.

Everything to Scale

“… and we’re here at this dot, in Machynlleth…” 

Oh.  So that’s how you pronounce it. 

The affable young man smiled down at my daughters, who were stomping across his gigantic floor-map of the United Kingdom in their small red and yellow rubber boots.  Sorry, their “Wellingtons”.

“This is where we started biking,” I told Molly and Lizzy, pointing.  “In Chepstow.”  After several days of being lulled by Welsh accents, my own sharp American vowels sounded grating. “And this,” I pointed again, “is where we’ll finish this bike route, in Holyhead.” 

Molly, brow furrowed, examined the dots on the map.  Chepstow.  Machynlleth.  Holyhead.  Then, looking delighted, she grinned up at the helpful employee of the Centre for Alternative Technology.  “Wales really isn’t very big!” she told him. 

Awkward, kid.  Awkward.  Really, there’s nothing a man likes more than having a nine-year-old guilelessly insult the size of his eensy-weensy little… nation.

“We’re from Alaska,” I mumbled, by way of explanation.  “It’s, um, large...”  Right.  And Americans are known for their tact and cultural astuteness.

The young man, however, did not appear to be offended – merely completely nonplussed.  “You’re from… Alaska?  And you’re… bicycling?  Across  Wales?”  The fact that two tiny little people with blonde plaits had arrived in Machynlleth (population 2,147) by bicycle was clearly unfathomable.  That all four of us were residents of Fairbanks was, quite literally, not on his map.  “Um… What brought you here?”

He was not the first Welshman to show a distinct lack of ego about his Bonsai-sized homeland. As one cheerful rural farmer put it, why would a family from Alaska want to visit “little old Wales”? 

All along our route, we were met with a similarly humble, perplexed, startled-but-welcoming attitude.  And I, in return, was humbled, startled, and perplexed.  Because… castles!  Expansive views across stolen-from-time picturesque farmland!  Ancient ruins! Unspoiled stone-built villages! An amazingly cool display on Alternative Technology! Tea and scones with heaps of jam and fresh clotted cream! Why WOULDN’T American tourists – including that peculiar breed, the Alaskan -- want to come to such an idyllic place?

When I say that the Welsh seemed modest about their nation, I don’t mean that they didn’t appear to be socially distinctive and culturally proud.  Red dragons fluttered from flagstaffs.  Jay crammed startling numbers of Welsh cakes into his handlebar bag.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that in many cozy cafés and pubs, the four of us were the only English-speakers amidst a boisterous barrage of words that my ears did not seem to be able to parse at all.   Indeed, the difficulty that English-speakers experience with the Welsh language seems to be, in itself, a source of pride.  Way back in the 1860s, residents of one small town decided to rename their home, “Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch”*. Why?  Well, the official answer is “for promotional purposes”, but quite possibly the real reason may be that the national sport of Wales involves gentle torment of those who cannot wrap their tonsils around Welsh consonants. 

This was brought home to me in the tiny Rhayader Information Centre. “Llanidloes”, said the grinning clerk. 

I stood there, bike helmet still fastened beneath my chin, trying to weasel my way out of attempting that “Ll” (let alone the “dl” that followed) while asking about camping options in the next town.  I pointed at its name on a map. 

The clerk’s eyes twinkled.  “Llanidloes,” he repeated. 

I tried.  I failed.  I tried again, laughing.  One of my small side-kicks, with the effortless linguistic flexibility of childhood, smiled back conspiratorially at the clerk.  “Llanidloes”, she said.  And then they both laughed at me -- but in the nicest possible way.

This mischievous whimsy, I discovered, wasn’t limited to place names.  At the Centre for Alternative Technology we didn’t just get to examine that excellent floor-map and ride a way-cool water-powered tram; we also learned, from the neatly bilingual signs labeling various electrical appliances, that the Welsh neologism for a microwave oven is a “popty ping”. 

Popty ping!  Could any small nation be more delightfully lacking in a Napoleon complex?  A country that is willing to show the whole world its popty ping obviously feels it has nothing to prove. 

And yet, strangely, the whole world didn’t seem to be there to appreciate all that Machynlleth had to offer.  When planning our bike trip, I imagined that we’d cross paths with lots of like-minded foreigners on similar ventures -- but we didn’t. True, we found English tourists somewhat ironically cluttering up the castles that were once sacked and besieged in bold defiance of unwanted dominion from the east.  Atop the delightfully precipitous turrets of Caernarfan, the small children ignoring warnings to “be careful” were chided in accents of London, Birmingham, Liverpool, or Leeds. The Welsh were invariably kind to these interlopers, yet seemed to have no expectation that the allure of their green hills might extend past the edge of the English Channel or the coast of the North Sea.

But… why not?  Not only were the nearby attractions appealing (did I mention castles?), but I was heartily impressed by the availability of numerous well-planned and well-marked bicycle routes.  These routes kept riders almost entirely on superbly bikeable byways, using not only mile upon mile of dedicated bike paths and greenways, but also Britain’s incredible tangle of miniscule B-roads.

From my memories of childhood vacations to visit family in the United Kingdom, I recall B-roads with a mixture of fondness and horror.  They are utterly perfect for biking precisely because they are almost impossible to drive.  My adventuresome and inquisitive mother, always eager to find the most interesting corners of everywhere, would sit in the passenger’s seat eagerly reading directions from a guidebook, while my father struggled to shift gears with the wrong hand, to “keep left” in a space too narrow to even have a “left”, and to restrict his swearing to a minimum. We were looking for stone circles left by ancient Celts, or six-thousand-year-old burial mounds in sheep paddocks.  Occasionally, we eventually found these things.  Always, we eventually found a creaking farm vehicle attempting to navigate the same B-road in the opposite direction.  The laws of physics have trouble with the B-roads of Britain. 

B-roads don’t really go anywhere – and therein lies their perfection.  On our over-laden bikes, with the kids gamely sweating behind us on tagalongs, we pedaled up hills -- only to immediately plunge down the other sides.  We meandered past field after field of placid neatly-shorn sheep and outsized late-summer lambs still optimistically attempting to nurse on mothers barely larger than themselves.  Ripe raspberries and maddeningly not-quite-ripe blackberries dangled within reach along the hedgerows.  In small pubs jostling with hungry farmers, an enormous baked potato – a “jacket potato” -- with baked beans and cheese and a fresh salad cost £2.75.  The kids told us that the local milk tasted happy, and I knew what they meant.  

One farmer shifted a dozen sheep to the next field to make room for our tent, and the beasts spent the evening spurning the perfectly good grass in their new spot in order to stare at us accusingly.  At another “campsite” – again, at which we were the only campers – our host noticed the twins admiring two squealing litters of little porkers.  He asked the kids if they’d like to help dole out the daily ration of stale bread, after he picked it up from his friend at the local bakery.  Yes, yes!  They would!

He was gone for a while, and the kids were wracked with fear that bedtime would arrive before pig-feeding time.  When the truck finally pulled back into the driveway, both girls went tearing across the grass in their nightwear. 

“Sorry I took so long,” the farmer said, before I could apologize for the over-familiarity of my offspring.  He told me about the lumber deal he’d been trying to work out with his brother, about the difficulties of local ordinances, and about his hopes for rebuilding some outbuildings.  The kids hurled crusts.  The piglets gobbled.  The sun set.  The world was small.

Alaska – and, indeed, much of America – is impressive on a grand scale.  Denali, recently reaffirmed in its proper and rightful Native name, is so imposing that it often commands our horizon from a hundred miles away.  The majesty of our vast landscape inspires me - but I am not always looking for majesty.

I thought I understood where Molly was coming from, when she told the nice young man with the map that his country was diminutive.  She wasn’t merely proud and pleased to see how far we’d come, in the four and a half days of our journey thus far, and how relatively small a distance we still had left to cover, in the remaining two-and-a-half days in this Welsh leg of it.  Her joy was also intrinsic to the smallness of Wales.  It was akin to her pleasure (and her sister’s) in building intricate little dioramas, racing Hot Wheels along miniature tracks, and sewing realistic snowpants for dolls.  There is something deeply pleasing about being able to experience the adventure and excitement of a whole new world on a scale that feels Lilliputian.

Yeah, it sounds appallingly patronizing to imply that an entire nation, language, and culture is “twee”.  I wouldn’t blame every single incredibly kindly Welsh person who offered help, advice, directions, or a cheerful wave to the family of stupidly lost and confused Americans for wanting to whack me with a partially dried cow-pat for sounding like such an arrogant bastard.  But “twee” is not really what I mean.  What I realized – and what the kids discovered too, I think – is that Wales was a complex, personal, immersive adventure perfectly proportioned for bicycles.  It was letting a calf suck on your fingers, admiring the enormous slugs, noticing that every single sheep says “baaa” in a distinctly different voice, and wondering why someone had carefully built an old microwave into a stone wall.  Popty ping! 

On our bicycles, we found that B-roads don’t really go anywhere – and in going nowhere, they go everywhere that matters. 

* The name means “Saint Mary’s Church in the Hollow of the White Hazel Near the Rapid Whirlpool of Llantysilio of the Red Cave”.  To hear it pronounced, go here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Cy-Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch_%28Welsh_pronunciation%2C_recorded_17-05-2012%29.ogg