Friday Quote: “My 1,700 mile hike across the Keystone XL pipeline”
I’d felt strangely drawn to the Keystone XL.
In the fall of 2011, when I fantasized about walking the length of the 1,700-mile proposed pipeline — that, if approved, will carry oil from the Tar Sands of Alberta to the Gulf Coast of Texas — I was a lowly dishwasher at an oilman’s camp in Deadhorse, Alaska.
At the time, I was broke, just out of grad school, and demoralized with my situation. I had a miserable job that didn’t require a high school diploma, let alone the liberal arts degree that had nearly bankrupted me, and I was living in quite possibly the coldest, darkest, dreariest place on earth. I was an adventurer at heart, burdened with the duties of making a living.
I can say, from experience, that when you find yourself washing spoon after spoon, in the middle of the night, in a silent kitchen, at a working camp 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle, you will begin to question the direction of your life. But I can say this also: The soul must first be caged before it can be freed. And when Liam, the cook I worked with, suggested we go on an adventure the next summer and hike the XL, I knew his idea was both crazy and brilliant. I looked at him and said, with what must have been an almost frightening excitement, “We must!”
More than just another pipeline, the XL, to me, is a historic battleground: the first-ever fight — led by Bill McKibben and his organization 350.org — over a project because of climate change. Even if its path would lead me through the “middle of nowhere,” with the fate of a warming world at stake, I thought of the XL as the center of the universe. And I wanted to be there and learn everything I could about it.
If President Obama approves the XL — which he may or may not do in the next few months — the Tar Sands of northern Alberta will continue to be developed (perhaps to the size of Florida), a prospect that one climate scientist has called “game over” for climate change. Obama has the final say, and while experts predict that he will grant his approval, environmentalists hope that a rejection of the XL might mark a turning point, one where we will begin to wean ourselves off fossil fuels and head toward a more sustainable future.
After I left Deadhorse later that autumn, I began preparing for the hike. I bought a software program so I could map out my route, as well as a new ultralight tent, a quality sleeping bag to endure shivering nights, and about $1,000 worth of food. I packaged the food — mostly energy bars, granola and powdered potatoes — in Priority Mail boxes, which a friend in Denver would mail to post offices along my path. I jogged five miles nearly every day to get myself in shape. Everything was coming together.
And then, in a flash, everything fell apart.
This is an excerpt by Ken Ilgunas that appeated in Salon - be sure to read the rest of this amazing story. Do you think President Obama will clear the Keystone XL Pipeline?
