EPILOGUE
Charleston, South Carolina // November 2015
I’m wearing an Operational Dress Uniform and standing in Boeing’s parking lot in Charleston, South Carolina. It’s the airplane giant’s “Family Day,” and spouses and children are buzzing to enter the restricted warehouses and see full-sized wings and tails strewn with the organized chaos of Santa’s workshop. Out here, the makeshift canopy provides little relief from the scorching sun. (I’ll wager the radiant heat off this asphalt puts my micro-climate at nearly 100°F.) Military boots, thick trousers, a shirt, jacket, and cap are way too warm for this urban heat island.
“Flotilla 12-8 is a great group. It includes people of all ages. You should think about joining.” I say to a visitor, a retired soldier. I’m talking about the benefits of membership in the US Coast Guard Auxiliary.
“Maybe I will,” she says. Her eyes scan the handouts smothering the table.
“You can teach boater-safety classes, be a vessel examiner, or—what I like—volunteer as a radio watch-stander to monitor Coast Guard patrols and listen for recreational and commercial vessels in distress. You know—Maydays?” She nods, but I know the woman can’t imagine my history, what drives me to help US Coast Guard rescue operations, how determined I am to pay forward the kindnesses extended to me. She shifts her weight as her two friends stand patiently, sucking the straws of super-sized sodas. I wipe a bead of sweat from my temple, catching it before it reaches my jaw.
“Auxiliarists train as crew on Coast Guard vessels, too, so we can ride in those awesome boats, help out on patrols, contain toxic spills in the ocean, and whatnot. Some Auxiliarists even train for service in helicopters.”
“Man, I gotta do something. Just getting back into a uniform would be a relief. Then I could stop having to worry about what to wear!”
I laugh. “We meet monthly. This brochure has the details. Come check us out.” The woman agrees and disappears with her friends into the crowd. I look past the table at Dave, who is handing out coloring books and talking with parents about life jacket requirements and the flotilla’s next safety course. He’s aged from blonde to silver, but somehow looks even more adorable in a uniform.
We sold Wild Hair during a North American cold snap that was so severe people named it the first “Polar Vortex.” After spending six winters in the islands, Wisconsin’s record low temperatures shocked my system. Snow that fell in November didn’t melt until June. I found myself house-bound, depressed, sedentary, and fat. I positively ached for the company of the ocean and the sun’s warmth. So within a year of Wild Hair’s sale, Dave, Dinghy, and I (along with our new Pomeranian puppy named Dharma) packed up and left Madison—our home of thirty years.
We settled outside Charleston, South Carolina, in a house with a big front porch and a classic porch swing. Loblolly pine, magnolias, camellias, and live oaks cluttered with Spanish moss grace my yard. Eastern tiger swallowtail butterflies flit around flowers. Carolina wrens, chickadees, house finches, American goldfinches, brown thrashers, ground doves, northern mockingbirds, cardinals, brown-headed cowbirds, eastern bluebirds, red-breasted nuthatches, and tufted titmouses come to my feeders. Killdeer skip through the yard, and pileated woodpeckers hammer softly on the bark of my palm tree. Ruby-throated hummingbirds circle sugar-water troughs just outside the window where I write. American robins stop by too, but mum’s the word these days. I love their company nonetheless.
Dinghy passes her time stretched on the windowsill, chattering at the particularly plump cardinals who come near to dine on sunflower seeds. Every chance she gets, she darts past our legs through open doors hoping to go for a walk-about. (She doesn’t appreciate her demotion to house cat). My parents bought a home three blocks away from us, and made the big move from Arizona. Eland and his wife, Khaliun, also picked up and left Mongolia to live in a nearby flat, start careers in the US, and grow a family. The pair is in publishing: Khaliun was editor in chief for Cosmopolitan Magazine in Mongolia and now manages from afar the only online lifestyle magazine in her native land; Eland (after stints at National Geographic Traveler and Mongolian Economy) became editorial manager for a local publishing house in Charleston. Maggie, the outlier in the bunch, lives in Kansas City with her boyfriend. Our animal-loving girl grew up to be a penguin and polar bear zookeeper.
I am a northerner transplanted to the Deep South, so I continue to feel like a traveler, a newcomer in a strange land rich with a history I barely understand. A little research revealed that in 1630, the soil on which I dwell was a rice plantation. The landowner, in 1730, switched to growing cotton. Only a month after Dave and I moved in, a violent crime of racial hatred at Mother Emanuel AME Church killed nine worshippers in the midst of prayer. Humanity’s long struggle for justice is in the air and sometimes, when I’m meditating in my garden next to Egyptian papyrus and under climbing roses, wisteria, and confederate jasmine, cries from generations who suffered and died then and now echo in my body. I breathe in pain and breathe out compassion.
Water is a constant presence. Local rivers, harbors, and the ocean can’t seem to decide if the territory is solid or liquid. I love the formlessness of Nature’s indecision here, but the water teases and tantalizes me and not having a boat makes me restless. Going to the beach doesn’t help—my eyes leap to the horizon and my body feels pulled to go out. Again and again I grow mindful of my craving to be other than land bound and let the sensation pass. Dave and I are casually sniffing about for our next boat. (And Dinghy is all for the idea.) But Wild Hair is a nearly impossible act to follow and we have yet to meet the right one.
And then, of course, there’s Charleston. According to legend, I’ve moved to the birthplace of the Atlantic. The ocean was born in Charleston Harbor at the confluence of the Ashley and Cooper Rivers. Charleston is nicknamed the “Holy City” because its skyline zigzags with church steeples. There are more than 400 places of worship serving a population of just over 100,000. And believe it or not, Charleston was founded on the ideals of religious tolerance. A whole host of Europeans, each experiencing a different brand of religious persecution in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, took up residence in the historic city and decided to get along.
Charleston is the unofficial capital of America’s Lowcountry—the Atlantic Coastal Plain that was at various times in geological history part of the ocean floor (the soil of my garden is 100 percent sand). Already I’ve experienced the effects of climate change here when Hurricane Joaquin delivered a rain bomb (a term new to meteorology) and twenty-four inches of water fell from the sky within a day or two. My house sits sixty-three feet above sea level so it did OK. But most of the Lowcountry is, well, low. Rain quickly overwhelmed older infrastructure, transformed neighborhoods into lakes, washed away roadbeds, shut down traffic and cost lives. People boated down the centerline of Charleston’s streets.
As beautiful and charming as Charleston is, it is also a city in grave danger. The coastal town is already committed or “locked into” irreversible flooding due to sea level rise (according to a National Academy of Sciences study released in November, 201552). Twenty-five percent of Charleston’s land mass will be underwater when the full effects of the CO2 emissions already released into the atmosphere swell ocean waters by more than five feet. Even if civilization were to completely stop all greenhouse gas emissions today, a quarter of Charleston would get swamped (there is a lag time between the release of greenhouse gases and their effects). Given the fact that society isn’t abruptly halting emissions, researchers speculate that the best case scenario for Charleston is perhaps only half of the city will be lost. But, should the nations around the world who signed onto the COP 21 Paris agreement exceed the 1.5°C temperature limit, should the global community end up closer to +2°C warming, then Charleston’s future is likely lost. The most recent interactive online tools wipe Charleston off the map at 2°C global temperature rise.53
The South Carolina Department of Natural Resources predicts the coming shift in the climate will be grave and intense for my new state. In its 2013 report, the agency describes a future wherein beachfront properties and coastal wetland ecosystems erode, aquatic species die, and algae blooms poison shellfish, making the human and wildlife food chain toxic.54 Dead zones along the coast, they say, will wipe out coral reefs and fisheries. The department laments South Carolina’s inability to plan for and implement effective adaptation measures; the report blames a void in governmental leadership and a lack of political will.
Still, I remind myself that there may be possibilities to reduce the impacts of sea level rise, protect life, and maintain the area’s viability. Charleston, at least, doesn’t have Miami’s porous limestone base.
I chose to come to Charleston to engage on the frontline of climate opportunity. So far, I’ve discovered a community in desperate need of honest, open, and inclusive dialogue. The good news is there are compassionate leaders here who are working hard to transform timeworn knots of political and social dysfunction. The Charleston Strong campaign that percolated out of Hurricane Hugo’s aftermath and gelled in the horror of the AME church shooting speaks to the locals’ resiliency and grace. I am actively hopeful, regardless of the outcome, that we can bring transformation and healing to this place and to Earth.
When I came to town, I needed a spiritual community, so I started the Charleston Community of Mindful Living—a meditation group in the Thich Nhat Hanh tradition. I also started blogging about the human mind-heart-environment connection. People heard about what I was up to and invited me to help lead Buddhist retreats on the topic of Ecological Mindfulness in California, Chicago, and North Carolina. But for a time I struggled over how I might engage in advocacy again, how to directly incorporate the lessons I gleaned from the Great Atlantic Teacher in the often contentious work of creating ecological and social justice. Every time I thought I ought to do something, I slammed headlong into a thing I was no longer willing to do. I kept coming up short and getting confused. So, to sort out my thinking, I made a list. After my experience with the Great Atlantic Teacher, I was no longer willing to:
Make enemies
Be angry
Be ambitious
Blame others
Rush
Exaggerate or spin my message
Work long hours
Argue my case
I had become more attuned to my own bodily reactions in the last few years. Whenever I was going to argue a point, my body, in a split second, would inhale sharply and lean forward. That body-clue became a signal for me to stop, take a breath, and listen for at least twice as long as I thought I might speak. When I stopped and listened, a funny thing happened: I often ended up not saying anything at all.
On the flip side, I made a list of everything I was willing to do. That list included:
Make friends
Cultivate happiness and share my joy with others
Work in small and simple ways Look deeply into the roots of conflicts (cultivate insight)
Proceed peacefully (being mindful of what’s happening in here and out there)
Speak plainly and accurately
Play with loved ones and in community
Listen and share
I thought about returning to environmental work at a not-for-profit on the climate challenge. But my new mindful advocacy legs felt wobbly, untested. If I surrounded myself with ambitious people working to change the world without first changing themselves, I feared I’d grow forgetful and slip into old habits of pushing and doing. What’s more, I couldn’t think of a nonprofit organization or government agency that would be willing to hire someone who refused to get excited, separate foes from allies, or meet (arbitrary) deadlines.
Colleagues, family members, and friends encouraged me to finish the book I’d been tinkering with as I sailed, and I thought writing could be a skillful form of advocacy in its own right. And then there was the work I did with the Earth Holder Project of SnowFlower Sangha. I felt comfortable turning to people who were already working on the battlefield of human hearts and minds; the mining petition I worked on felt right. So I started to think about a kind of engagement with the world I called Mindful Advocacy—it was a way of being, reflecting, and acting that was one hundred percent supported by the teachings of my spiritual practice. Suddenly, rather than feeling depleted by my life as a change agent, I felt energized. Rather than being worried about outcomes, I was free to do my best and let it go.
My mind couldn’t help but leap to Thay’s global practice community. Plum Village is an international community, founded by Thay in the mid-1970s, that today includes more than 800 monastics and 1,300 local practice centers worldwide. Every year, Thay and the Plum Village community train tens of thousands of people in applied mindfulness. It occurred to me that the Plum Village community was uniquely prepared to address the climate challenge because it was a global network of mindfulness practitioners aspiring to ease suffering in the world.
Early in 2015, a group of Thay’s students and I began to discuss ways we could continue Thay’s teaching on Earth holding and protecting, and bring attention to the spiritual path of inner and outer sustainability. The community already had a handful of beautiful but independent initiatives popping up—blogs, the Earth Holding Weekend at Deer Park Monastery, brilliant talks that went viral, a Yahoo! group discussing climate change, and the publication of a quarterly newsletter I helped edit called Touching the Earth. We asked ourselves what would happen if we combined our energies. Personally, I was looking for friends curious to explore ecomindfulness who would support me in furthering my commitment to a plant-based diet and who wanted to join together in Earth-healing acts of mindful advocacy. In just a few short months, we drafted a statement of purpose and vision, found ways of communicating and making decisions as a dispersed group across the continent, assembled committees, and publically launched the Earth Holder Sangha as a Plum Village affinity group. I was honored to become the first facilitator of the group’s central Care-Taking Council.
Things really got going when a delegation of Plum Village monastics was invited to attend the COP 21 talks in Paris on behalf of Thay. (You can watch a video about their experience and learn more about Earth Holder Sangha by visiting EarthHolder.org). In December 2015, the monastics of Plum Village announced that the North American Earth Holder Sangha would expand internationally, and they encouraged mindfulness practitioners around the world to organize as we had done. This is how—in less than a year—an international Earth Holder movement was born.
I don’t think you have to be Buddhist to be an Earth Holder. People of all stripes can wake up to their relationship with Earth and behave in ways that love, protect, and transform suffering in whatever corner of this precious planet they live. Anyone can become aware of ecological suffering, see its causes, figure out how to stop harm, and act in ways that bring happiness and healing. Every person knows that actions that lead to suffering—now or in the future—are wrong and actions that bring peace and well-being are right. So, every last one of us is welcome and needed on this path, and I trust each of us is capable of acting skillfully from a place of insight and love.
I see Earth Holders at work everywhere and they are already making a difference. I see the couple in Wisconsin who grow their own food and put in a geothermal system to heat their home. I think about the people I know who bike to work. I find inspiration in those who take time off work to participate in rallies and demonstrations. I appreciate the man and wife who built a “green” home—one that incorporated recycled materials and a solar energy array (they sell their excess wattage back to the power company). And of course, I admire A.H. Errol Harris and his wife, Marcella.
It was January 2012 when I met with the Harrises under the trees of the Dominica Botanical Gardens’ Café (Wild Hair sat off the coast). I wanted to talk to them because the Harrises were instrumental in launching the Dominica Sea Turtle Conservation Organization (DomSeTCo)—an island initiative that simultaneously researched and protected the local turtle populations and enhanced the quality of life and economic well-being of Dominica’s beach-front communities.
Three sea turtle species nested on Dominica: Leatherbacks, Greens, and Hawksbills. The government addressed the island’s joblessness and hunger with policies encouraging citizens to hunt and eat the turtles. The United Nations put a halt to the policies when it listed Green Turtles as a “threatened” species and Leatherbacks and Hawksbills as “endangered.” But poaching continued.
The Harrises came up with a simple idea: teach poachers and other coastal residents how to organize, market, and lead turtle hatch expeditions for tourists; aid research by tagging turtles; and patrol beaches to keep the creatures safe during nesting season. It was a great idea except for one thing: the Harrises (and their partners at the Wider Caribbean Sea Turtle Conservation Network) worried there might be a mass slaughter when poachers realized turtles were not dangerous, as they assumed, but were in fact gentle giants. In the end, DomSeTCo leaders decided to trust poachers because the program—to be successful—required across-the-board understanding and integrity.
Trust worked. Today, people have new livelihoods on Dominica and poaching has dropped from twenty-five annual slaughters to only one loss in two years. The initiative, which realized economic, social, and ecological goals, is a model of sustainability. The program protects the biodiversity of the marine ecology and helps people thrive as they live within planetary boundaries.55 To my mind, Marcella and Errol are Earth Holders. What’s really remarkable to me is the Harris’s insight that the present didn’t have to be like the past, that those who created the most harm could transform and become fellow Earth Holders.
Today I am a pilgrim in a Holy City on the frontline of the climate crisis, with a strong aspiration to join up with fellow Earth Holders so that together we can cultivate inner and outer sustainability. I return to this life on land not as an expert with answers, but as a beginner curious about the possibilities climate change holds. Truth be told, the frontline isn’t just in Charleston, it’s everywhere “out there” and “in here” in the battlefield of my mind. Climate change is me and I am it. And because the future won’t look like the past, I do my best to become a little more mindful each day about what is happening in me and in the world. I try to make friends as I go.
I can hardly wait to see what happens.