Cielo and Leaf Myczack travel the Tennessee, Tombigbee and Cumberland Rivers in the southeastern U.S. talking about the destruction of those waterways and of their potential for life. Their message has special appeal to me. My bias is that more bureaucracy and regulation are not solutions to our ever-increasing mess. If there is a solution, it is likely to be a change of mindset, a change of consciousness. Cielo and Leaf are workers for a change of consciousness.
Misty Mountain
The industries along the River all have their advocates, they say. So do the homeowners and the government agencies and the fisherman and all the others that use and benefit from the River. The RiverKeepers are the advocates for the River and the natural life it supports or might support. They have been doing this for six years now, sharing 89 square feet of living space on their 30 foot hand-crafted wood sailing ketch. Their efforts are aided and abetted by a network of friends and supporters along the River -- people who open their homes to them, give them a place to dock the boat, offer them a meal, a hot shower or a trip to the grocery store.
The Tennessee River system has undergone sixty years of abuse: nine hi-lift hydro dams and reservoirs, 11 nuclear generating plants (now in various stages of shutdown), numerous pulp-mills and chemical plants, and extensive development along the shores of the reservoirs and rivers. Additionally, in the past couple of years, major pulp sourcing operations have been moving from the Pacific Northwest into the Tennessee River Valley and clearcutting. The result has been a biological/chemical stew whose natural self-cleaning ability is slowed by the dams, and into which flows sewage and, increasingly, soil from the deforested banks. The algae and aquatic plant life that flourishes under these conditions is then treated with herbicides. A cycle of manmade poison floats down the River. Huge industrial interests and governmental agencies benefit from or have participated in the process. As Cielo says, "A lot of people don't know what is happening to their River, and a lot of people don't want to know."
Cielo came to this work through a gradual series of changes in her life. Fourteen years ago she left an unhappy marriage, "We were affluent, but I personally did not feel the abundance. I felt empty in spirit -- those around me wanted `more' while I craved the simple." Later she joined Leaf and for three years they were caretakers and subsistence farmers on 250 acres in Tennessee. They rebuilt a sixteen foot boat and lived for a while in the Gulf of Mexico. They found that the boat was a little small for both of them, and, through a fortuitous chain of events were able to sell it for $5,000. They spent three years building their second boat, the "Broadened Horizons" using mostly salvaged materials. As they were doing that, they became aware of the sick and deteriorating condition of the River. "We were living in a little trailer without airconditioning. Our only refuge from the heat was swimming, but often the River was so full of garbage, dead fish and oil slicks that swimming was out of the question. This Tennessee River is the drinking water source for over a million and a half people." When the "Broadened Horizons" was finished, instead of setting sail immediately for the Gulf of Mexico, as was their original plan, they decided to devote six months to making people aware of the condition of their River. That was six years ago. "I guess you could say the Rivers have adopted us. Marjory Stoneman Douglas claimed she began her efforts because she was in need of a job, and her beloved Everglades were in need of help. When we realized how much this River needed help, we couldn't turn our backs on it."
So they travel the 1,352 mile River, speaking at schools, universities, churches, civic and environmental groups. They meet with newspapers, mayors and town councils, and employees of government agencies. They monitor the environmental compliance and permitting process. Change and progress are slow but there have been some victories, however temporary. Plans for three major chip mills were shelved as a result of environmental questions raised about clearcutting. "It hasn't made much difference. The clearcuts continue, but now we watch and smell the beautiful hardwood forests being barged down River to already-established chip mills. And now the Republican `Contract on America' means we are loosing our basic, hard-earned laws meant to protect our waters, air and nonhuman species. These were laws meant to save us from ourselves and our lust for `more.'
"We're a hungry culture. We look to money and malls to fill the vacuum. Our emptiness is caused, however, not by a lack of things, but lack of meaning. We no longer listen to the stirring of our hearts, our God, our companions in the natural world for direction and meaning. We tune into the tube and get our direction from market-wise advertising. We follow."
I asked Cielo about losing battles and about the feeling that no matter how hard you work, things just keep getting worse: "We got involved initially because we were angry at the trash and the death that we saw coming down this River that we love. By becoming RiverKeepers, we turned our anger into a flow of creativity. It is something I have to practice everyday -- to let go into Love. Let go, let go, let go. It appears black, it appears violent, it appears tortured -- but I know there is a bigger picture that I, with my small eyes, can't see. Then comes the trust.
"When you come from ego, and are goal-orientated, you sabotage yourself. So many miracles happen at the level of paradox. When I start walking around thinking that I am making a difference out here -- thinking that I am going to heal the Earth -- then I am in for burnout. That is the wrong path. We are out here to create new paradigms, and it starts by recognizing that we don't make a difference. We have to get out of our own way. That is how I do it -- by realizing that I am not going to heal the planet, I am not going to save anyone. When I get off the grandstand, when I finally melt into the All, I look around and notice that stuff is ready happening. But I have to humble myself before those things that are greater than self will occur.
"We are preaching to the choir, but the choir is deepening. I really have hope, but I am not talking about goals. I am just talking about moment by moment. It is an incredibly beautiful process. Even though everything around us looks like despair, there is such beauty in the individuals who are working so hard -- on this project and on many different movements. Life, love, death. The whole circle. It is so full.
"Who am I to say how the Earth should look? I trust that there is a bigger picture, a larger or Greater Good that I may not be totally aware of. I don't have the answers, Something bigger has the answers. All I can go with is my personal truth, my integrity, and my intuition. Try to tap everyday into that higher voice that I hear and trust -- that is more than enough. I feel good when coming from that place, because if I don't I get lost in the darkness and the despair. You cannot know what the outcome is supposed to be. We cannot be goal-orientated. We have to believe that if we do the very best that we can do, and practice harmony with each other and with the Earth, that Something larger will be served, though we may not see it. We may not see it. "So we love to talk to church groups. With them we can get right to the heart of the matter, because we feel that this is a spiritual matter. Most churches, progressive churches understand that. We support a Large Interest, whereas many of us on planet Earth support special interests. Ours is a huge interest. We are trying to bring the message that the waters of the Earth are sacred, and it is incumbent upon each of us to treat them as such. It is an up-hill struggle with this culture, but nonetheless it is a worthy challenge.
"Of course, with fundamentalist churches, our approach is a little different. Terms like "The Earth is our Mother" don't go over very well. I don't have to do that -- I don't have to call the Earth our Mother -- I don't at all. Its just a concept. The truth is that there are no words for Creation or God. There can be no words for Something so awesome.
"So I am willing to be very, very careful with words -- not compromising, but careful not to offend. There are many, many people who are seeking the path and seeking the truth, but all of us have our buttons and all of us are vulnerable to early hurts, early pain. I try not to tread on hot buttons. If the buttons are there and somebody wants them to be pushed, I try to work with them from a very unconditionally loving place. If I am against a forester and it is either his way or the highway, I have to honor that and walk on....and let him stew. And they do stew.
"So when I go to churches, I talk about the awesomeness of Creation, and about Service with a capital "S." We say that it is incumbent upon every person who walks the face of the Earth to give something back. There is a circle of give and take -- if we give back something equal to what we take, we keep the process of life going. If we don't give back, the cycle starts breaking down and life starts to deteriorate.
"I try to focus a great deal of my energy with women and with children. Preaching to the choir is very important. You deal with the people that are ready to listen. I don't go toe-to-toe, especially as a woman. I don't chose to go toe-to-toe. I don't chose force. If someone challenges what I say, I state my truth as I continue to breathe deeply, and stay as balanced as I can. I try to state my truth, then let it be. If they need to act with anger and discourtesy, and they do quite often, that shows the truth. The truth is most apparent by the way you state your truth.
"And the truth is that the major problem is over-development and poor use of the land. More and more people are populating the Earth, and more and more people are wanting to live close to this body of water called River. We are stripping the Riparian corridor. An amazing number of large mansions are being situated along these Rivers. The trees are taken down, grasses are planted and herbicides and fertilizers are used. Septic tanks are put in and all of this finds its way into the River. Then the soils are washed into the River because the biomass has been taken. Walls and rip-rap are used to "manage" the River, and then we lose the interchange between the River and the land and the ecology that has developed between the two. As a result invertebrates -- the foundation of the web of life, are affected and go into decline."
I asked Cielo about the life-sized Great Blue Heron puppet she uses in her talks, which she calls "Walks With Care." One has to be careful when asking Cielo about The Bird -- I made the mistake of calling it the "that funny bird." Cielo was clearly offended, although she good-naturedly passed over my bad manners. She talks about "Walks With Care" in serious tones, and gives examples that illustrate that the bird is very real. "He is a living bird when I put him on. He is not a cutesy bird -- he is more of a Zen master....My arms go in through his body and his neck. My hands work his beak. He has gone into mayors' offices, city council meetings, public hearings and pre-schools, high schools, churches. Environmental groups. He has a story, and the story is loaded with metaphors -- the circle of give and take and give back. Another one is `Reaching but never over-reaching' which is about consuming but not over-consuming.
"He is an important tool of the RiverKeepers. I have fun with him, especially in mayors' offices. He says things that I might not get away with. I have to be careful with him because he is so alive. When I put him on, older people and young children are easily frightened. I have to be in a gentle, peaceful mindset."
I asked Cielo about the origins of the bird. "He is my totem. One day, a Great Blue Heron landed on our dingy -- about five feet away. We were in a cove. Leaf was down below, sick with the flu. I was writing a letter to my daughter and was in a real heart-space. I could almost touch the Heron. That is really unusual -- on the River you usually don't get within a hundred feet of them. I breathed very softly and carefully and did not turn my head much. He stayed maybe three minutes. I asked him in my heart: `What have you come for? What message do you have for me?' I felt that I heard him say `Tell my story.' It really shook me because it was the first year of the RiverKeeper, and I was very new to the issues. All I could see was the oil and the scum and the garbage that the birds had to dip their beaks into. I had trouble knowing what to do.
"So I thought about how I could take the Blue Heron story to the people and be really effective. It took nine months to think of the puppet. A puppet that would talk to kids of all ages. "Walks With Care" came out of that."
From the information Cielo sent me, I knew that the RiverKeeper Project operates on about $7,000 a year, mostly from small donations. I asked Cielo about money. "We have a powerful network, and that network is like a community. We travel the Tennessee River, the Cumberland River, the Tombigbee River. There are people all along these Rivers that are in cooperation with this project. Even though we live on very little money, and don't receive large grants, it works because of the diverse group of individuals that help us in many ways.
"We have learned to trust that if you serve Something greater than yourself that you are taken care of." Trust and breathing -- two words that kept coming up in our conversation. "If everything is black, everything is painful, empty -- that is when you have to hold on and trust -- breathe in moment by moment -- have that total trust that there is Something greater working. Your trust and breathing will be catalysts for something to happen. And it does happen. Its an abstract that really works. The trust allows for the deep breathing to happen. Trust allows for the availability of good to happen. Fear shuts down the flow, shuts down the breathing.
Egret Moon
"Life is about self-discovery. Culturally we don't have a whole lot of role models for the spiritual path. The only way that I know to do it is every day breathing, breathing deeply, meditating. Finding a quiet space. Even if you roll up in a corner, create that quiet place where you can get in touch with the Greater Good or the greater All that is. The source of All Being. God or whatever we call it.
"Now, before we go into a school or a TVa (Tennessee Valley Authority, which Cielo and Leaf spell with a small "a") meeting, we will take time alone, separately. We ask the River for direction. Some people call that prayer but its not asking for anything, other than the ability to let go and have the River or the Universe show us what to say or do. The RiverKeeper project has been totally run from that place. Directed by Something larger than ourselves.
"We humans, and maybe all species, are attempting to come home. We have a larger home and a larger family, and it is incumbent on us to reconnect and remember that we are a part of Something much larger than ourselves -- a much larger family. Contemporary society deals with nature from a place of isolation and insulation and separateness. We have lost our connection because we have become so mind-orientated. Only when we can come back to our heart, will we begin to experience our connection with the Earth. I am not just Earth-orientated -- I think the Earth is just a reflection of creation."
For a while Cielo worked in hospices with the dying. I asked Cielo what she thought of that experience. "I loved that work. Of course, some people in the dying process can't accept it. Some were coiled up and writhing with pain. But those who had pain and accepted their death were breathing, and I was breathing with them. They were glowing and I felt like I was in the presence of God. People who have accepted their death are so very alive.
"Until we can accept our death, surrender into the process of our dying, only then do we live. Only when you accept the very worst thing in your life, do you open up into a full life. You become attuned to the magnificence of the all. When you accept your death, face it, and let it be -- not okay -- but just let it be, a transformation begins. The same thing happens when you try to make a difference: The only way you can make a difference is by totally accepting that you don't make a difference. Accepting that you don't make a difference is getting out of ego-centric, moving away from the center, and accepting that there is Something much larger going on."
"We are just about to do our second "Blessing Of The River," which is a ceremony of appreciation and communication. We ask people, in the week before the ceremony to spend some time with the River, in a meditative or non-judgmental mindset. The River is neither right nor wrong, sick nor healthy, neither good nor bad. We ask people to open up to the River and ask the River what is happening. Ask the River what message it has. And then, you bring to the "Blessing Of The River" whatever message you hear, and share it with the group. Or bring your prayer, or bring your song, or you bring your flower petals, or your commitment.
"The River tells us that the Earth and the Universe are waiting to be co-partners in the healing, co-partners in the evolutionary stage that we are now at. Co-operators. There is an incredible welling up of potent potential out there, if we as humans could quiet ourselves and listen. That is what the "Blessing Of The River" is -- hush up! and listen -- and then act from that place.
Cielo and Leaf publish a newsletter every two months that consists, in part, of the daily log of their travels. They also sell Tennessee River T-shirts and welcome other forms of support. They can be reached at The Broadened Horizons RiverKeeper Project, PO Box 4826, Chattanooga, TN 37405. (423) 267-3977.
In the circle of give and take
And give back,
You have given your attention,
And I give back my squawk
Of thanks and gladness,
With hope that we may walk
With care together on the Earth,
In cooperation,
So that all may survive.
- Walks With Care
Cielo & Leaf Myczack: A Voice For A River, A Voice for the Forest
(from Heron Dance Issue 16)
I first wrote about Cielo and the RiverKeeper Project in the October 1995 issue of Heron Dance. Cielo's courage and will inspire me. Living simply and spiritually, she and her husband work to protect the natural life of the Tennessee River and its surrounding watershed. The industries along the river each have their advocates, they say. So do the homeowners and the government agencies and the fisherman and all the others that use and benefit from the River. The RiverKeepers are advocates for the River and the life it supports or might support.
A million and a half people depend on the Tennessee River for their drinking water, a river system that has undergone sixty years of abuse: five nuclear plants (of the original nine), numerous pulp mills and chemical plants and many cities and towns use the river to dispose of their waste. The river's ability to clean itself has been slowed by the nine hydro power dams that harness its current. The algae and aquatic plant life that flourishes under these stagnant conditions is then treated with herbicides. Huge industrial interests and governmental agencies benefit from and participate in these processes. As Cielo says, "A lot of people don't know what is happening to their river, and a lot of people don't want to know."
Additionally, in the past few years, the forests of the Southeast have experienced unprecedented destruction. Major pulp-sourcing operations have moved from the Pacific Northwest into the Tennessee River Valley. The newest development in high-tech forestry are giant, mechanized chip mills that consume trees of all sizes, including those that otherwise would not be harvested for twenty years. The chips are primarily used to make fine-grade paper, but also rayon and chipboard. Of the 140 chip mills in the Southeast, 108 were constructed in the last ten years. Each chip mill can consume 100 truckloads of logs a day, or ten thousand acres of trees a year, which are all turned into 2" square chips. More than 1.2 million acres were cleared last year alone to feed these mills.
In 1990, Cielo and Leaf learned that up to twenty-four chip mill sites were under consideration along the 625 mile Tennessee River. The RiverKeepers, joined by a small group, successfully organized a campaign to urge the Army Corps of Engineers and TVa (Tennessee Valley Authority, which Leaf and Cielo spell with a small "a") to undertake an environmental review. The US Fish & Wildlife Service joined this effort as a "cooperating agency", and the first two permits were denied. The industry then shelved its other chip mills plans.
Far from disappearing, however, the industry did an "end run" -- they constructed log loading facilities at river grain and sand and gravel ports to feed already existing chip mills. Perhaps because loading docks are smaller, quieter and less obnoxious than chip mills, the permitting agencies decided to grant permits for these facilities. Unfortunately the impact of these loading facilities on the surrounding forests and wildlife is highly destructive. Like chip mills, loading docks handle trees taken from a 75 mile radius. Armed with strongly worded letters from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service stating that the facilities may seriously impact forty to sixty endangered species, Cielo filed suit against the TVa and Corps to force the issue.
The anti-chip mill sentiment is shared by sawmill operators who are seeing their future raw material disappearing. The hardwood consumed by a chip mill in a month would supply an average saw mill for an entire year. A chip mill that employs 10 people uses logs that would otherwise supply a furniture factory employing 200 people. Chip mills are having a serious impact on local and regional economies. Chambers of Commerce, tourism bureaus, and many businesses, including a large alliance of Tennessee Valley hardwood manufacturers publicly called for environmental reviews.
Cielo and Leaf's work for the river began eleven years ago. While they were building a sailboat along the banks of the Tennessee River, they noticed a large number of dead fish, oil slicks and trash floating by, and decided to spend six months telling others of its condition. They now feel that they are just beginning. As time has gone on, their methods have become more and more innovative. Cielo employs "Walks With Care" a "Zen Master" Great Blue Heron puppet that accompanies her to town and school meetings. Leaf has formed an enforcement agency, the Global RiverKeeper (`we surpass Federal boundaries -- we're Global'), otherwise known as Earth Cop. With the press in attendance, and Leaf dressed in a blue uniform with shoulder patches and trouser stripes, he issues citations to the heads of government agencies for not following or enforcing environmental laws. Included in their repertoire is a "Citizen Self-Arrest Form," which they send to the management of life-destroying industries, complete with instructions on how to fill it out and where to mail it (FBI Arrest-by-Mail program, FBI Headquarters, Langely VA).
During our recent interview, Leaf said something else to me that had been on my mind: "Culturally we don't have a whole lot of role models for the spiritual path. You just have to step out there and do bold things. If your heart is in it, amazing things happen. Go out and try to do something beautiful. The support will follow....
"We didn't set out saying let's lead an interesting life. We just said, `Let's not lead a stupid life. An unconscious life. Let's do a lifestyle that has meaning, both to ourselves and to a larger purpose.' That choice has led us to live simply, close to the elements. Its been very rewarding. It has helped us distinguish between what is important and what is frivolous. As you get closer, you discover that most human activity is pretty frivolous."
Their sailboat is 30 feet long and has 89 square feet of living space. "When people," Leaf says, "first hear that we have this homemade boat, built out of recycled materials, they are expecting to see some really funky- looking, dogpatch style piece of crap tied up to the river bank with a couple of barrels holding it up. Instead there is this exquisite little yacht that looks like a Coast Guard boat -- very official looking.
"Here we are living on a minuscule budget and yet we have fifty year old rainforest lumber lining the bilges. We don't have cash, but we have materials and useful stuff that we found floating by in the river. We've looked at what most people call junk and seen resources. This is an amazing country for finding things."
The RiverKeeper Project operates on about $7,000 a year, mostly from small donations. I asked Cielo how they are able to do the work they do, and live, on such a small budget. "We have a network, a community on the rivers we travel -- the Tennessee, the Cumberland and the Tombigbee Rivers. People all along these Rivers are in cooperation with this project. Even though we live on very little money, and don't receive large grants, it works because of that network.
"Partnering is the most powerful thing happening on the planet today. We are learning how much more powerful and better able we are to influence events when we work together. Maybe that is what we have been lacking all this time -- from the beginning of man until now -- a knowledge of the importance of resolving conflict and coming together. Physics and religion have taught us that we are all one, but now we are beginning to see on a practical level what happens when we get together."
Cielo helped organize the Dogwood Alliance -- 33 grassroots groups concentrated in the Southeastern US and extending from Pennsylvania to the Gulf of Mexico and from the Atlantic Coast to Tulsa Oklahoma. After the first chip mills withdrew their applications, the public became complacent over the loading docks that were serving the chip mills. The TVA and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers refused to require environmental reviews. Cielo describes what happened next. "I was watching and smelling these beautiful hardwood forests being barged down River to already-established chip mills. I did a lot of introspection and thinking. The only recourse that seemed open was to sue, to require that the regulatory agencies enforce the laws. Not being a lawyer, and operating on a budget of a few thousand dollars a year, that seemed overwhelming. But I couldn't let the issue go. I couldn't watch millions of acres of forest go to the chipper without doing something. So we pulled into a dock at Jackson, Tennessee and stayed there for a month. Every morning at 8:30 I would be at the doors of the Supreme Court Law Library, and leave when they closed at 4:30.
"It was obvious that we needed a lawyer's help and so I sent the 60 day notice of intent to sue to lawyers around the country. In March of 1996 I got a call from someone who had heard about the suit and he offered some money to get us started. Incredibly, within an hour of that call, a lawyer experienced in environmental court work called, and I put him in touch with the donor. A short while later we began crafting the lawsuit. The lawsuit has been helped by letters that one government agency, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, has sent to the agencies in charge of permitting, the Corps and TVa, strongly urging that they investigate the impact on threatened and endangered species near the log loading facilities.
"The permitting agencies still refuse to require the review. We filed the lawsuit in September of 1996 at the federal courthouse in Chattanooga. Since we filed, at least five log loading facilities have pulled out or are on hold. Two permit requests for whole log loading facilities on the Tennessee River are in suspension. Willamette has also pulled back permit requests at a dock and three chip mills in other states to feed the dock. If this lawsuit fails, then all hell will break out on the rivers. The Ten Tom has seven chip mills, the Arkansas River has three, the Mississippi has several and more coming. Missouri, North Carolina, the Ohio River -- all have chip mills under consideration or construction. They call the Southeast a `lush hardwood woodbasket.' They are not going to ease up until the trees are gone. We have to do what we can. A win would create a precedent that would allow other groups on other rivers to insist on proper environmental reviews....
"Two or three weeks ago, Champion, International Paper and the American Forests and Paper Association and the Tennessee Forestry Association, filed an application with the court to join the lawsuit. There is a huge amount at stake here -- the future of the forests of the Southeast -- and the industry doesn't feel that the Corps and TVa can properly represent them.
"The lawyers are giving us a deal -- about half of what they normally would charge -- but it still will cost $100,000. So I have been fundraising. The money will come. It has to. But we don't know from where. So far, we've raised $13,000, mostly from an individual, but also from the Alabama and Tennessee Sierra Clubs. That money is gone now and the lawyers are working because they believe in the case and believe that I will be able to raise the money. I keep doing presentations. I feel strongly that there is somebody out there. Sometimes I am overwhelmed by this, but mostly I have faith."
Next I talked to Leaf about Earth Cop. He told me that the idea, the uniform, etc. grew out of the frustration of doing things the way the government agencies wanted: "We'll have some public meetings and take what you've got to say under consideration....We'll get back to you after the forest is clearcut."
"At these public hearings, the Suits stand up and they have all of these reasons why some Earth-destroying activity has to go on. No one stands up for the river. The few people who do stand up are a little afraid because they are not scientists and they just speak from the heart. Its the Suits against them. The Suits are up higher on the stage looking down on the people. We wanted to get up there with the Suits and talk with enough authority to give people courage. And I think our uniform does that."
I asked Leaf how he decides who to give tickets to. "You give your NOV to whoever claims jurisdiction. If its a municipality, you hold the highest official in the municipality responsible. If its a federal agency like the TVa, you hold the chairman responsible. He is fun to cite. He's real passive. He relies on bodyguards.
"They have board meetings once a month and any member of the public can get up and talk for five minutes. The politicians get up and do a lot of ass-kissing. It's the ho-hum dog and pony show. Then I get up in my blue uniform and read the riot act to him. He sits there and looks at me. I'm in my blue uniform with the dark blue stripe down the pants. The press cameras are running, so I say `As per the authority vested in me by the Office of the Global RiverKeeper, I am requesting you tender your resignation to the President of the United States.' That sounds awfully official. And the press loves it because these things are usually so boring. They are looking for something different. They finish their story with `The Chairman didn't indicate if he would comply with the request.' The chairman must think that the press is on our side, but mostly I think that they are just grateful for the diversion."
Earth Cop is great theater, but it is more than that. The word is getting out that ignoring a Notice of Violation can make life complicated. "The first time we handed out a Notice of Violation, the response was, `So what. Who cares?' That was for sewage discharge in Chattanooga. We had gone through all of the hoops and nothing happened. At first the idea of a Notice of Violation was a joke, but Cielo encouraged me to go through with it.
"I didn't have the nerve to walk in and give a ticket to the mayor, so I sent it through the mail. Unfortunately, I spelled `cite' wrong. `We hereby site you'. The next day I had to send a letter saying, `Someone in our office inadvertently sent you a draft copy... Here's the real copy.' Luckily, the press didn't pick up on it. Maybe they don't know `cite' from `site' either.
"Cielo and I got dressed in our blues and laid the challenge down before the City Council. `We want you to come and see the sewage flowing into the river.' They said that they had already been there. Then we really went ballistic. `You mean you know the situation exists and you haven't done anything about it?' The press were in attendance and things developed momentum. I went on a number of local TV shows and got some speaking engagements.
"The head of Water Pollution Control and the district manager for Chattanooga called us and we sat down together. The meeting wasn't going too well for the first couple of hours. But then the head of Water Pollution Control said, `By the way, how did the mayor respond to your NOV.' I didn't know what the hell an NOV was. And he said, `The Notice of Violation.' I said, `He basically just blew it off.' I wasn't sure what he was expecting me to say. Maybe, `Well, the mayor fell over dead and they used him to plug the sewer pipe.' Anyway, he turned to his regional manager and said, `Damn, that is pretty well what he does to us.' We had found common ground. Now we were on the same side. We had been dissed by the same mayor. That made us colleagues. Our whole relationship changed, and has been much better. Now the state sees us as an unofficial party, but we definitely have clout....
"Its a fine line I skirt. When you live outside the mainstream you are pretty much on your own. You basically live a fantasy -- there are few guides or role models. You have to just step out there and do bold things. If your heart is in it, amazing things happen. And I turn out to be just the right person for this. All my strange Catholic dysfunctional background -- this screwed up parochial school, authoritarian, black and white and right and wrong, blame the infidels background -- has been channeled into Earth Cop. It enables me to find some humor in it without becoming weird.
"Earth Cop depends on command presence. If you think you've got the authority, they think you've got the authority and if they think you've got it, you've got it. Our authority comes from moral authority -- a code of ethics --that allows us to defend life that can't defend itself. When you have the moral high ground you can go out and be totally outrageous, based on your sense of outrage. The community will rally behind you. But you have to pick real issues. You can't grandstand for the sake of grandstanding.
"When you are on television in your uniform, and you are describing a discharge into a river, it is very credible. You look like somebody who has the full authority and responsibility to be doing this very thing that you are doing. My uniform happens to look a lot like what the federal marshals wear in the courthouses. So as opposed to going in with a tie-died tee shirt and a pony tail and a nose ring, I look just like the government guys. And it's amazing -- I get treated like one of them. I have a cordless phone hanging from my belt. It doesn't work, but whenever things get a little dicey, I pick up the phone and pretend I'm talking to headquarters about measures to proceed with.
"Sometimes, I work with just an identification badge. It says `Office of the RiverKeeper. Clean Water Taskforce.' It has a picture of me and it says, `RiverKeeper - 1' and my ID number which is my birthdate....I just busted this guy with undersize fish. I saw him fishing every Sunday off a wharf so I clipped my ID to the front zipper of my jacket and put a little stainless steel tape measure in my pocket. As I walked down to the dock the guy pulled a fish out of the water and dropped it in the bucket. He opened up the conversation, `Yea, they ain't but little, bitty fish.'"
"I said, `Yea, you know you're right about that." I leaned over the bucket. `Well, you know, there is a size limit on those. And you're right, they are little bitty.' And so I pulled out my tape measure and I measured across the top of the bucket and said, `Now the size limit is ten inches, and this bucket is ten and a half. So you see that little fish down there -- the one that still has four inches before his nose hits the other side of the bucket. He's too small.' I could see him reading my ID. His voice changed. It became `Yes, sir, no sir.'
"So the guy reaches down and pulls the fish out and throws it in the water. I said, `Nope, nope. We are not going to throw them back in. We are going to place them in the water.' So he began to place the fish back in the water. When I said to him that all I probably had to give him this time was a warning, he became very cooperative.
"Well, he didn't show up for two weeks. When he came back, he had a twenty-five foot tape measure strapped to his belt, and went up and down the dock telling everybody that ten inch crappie was the size limit. So, if you handle it right, and don't blow the guy away....
"The other thing that you can do is start rumors. Once, while I was buying something in a bakeshop, the cashier noticed my ID and asked, `RiverKeeper? What's the RiverKeeper?' I said, `We've got a task force down here. We're going to be in the river for a while looking for poachers. People catching undersize fish and all.' Before long, word was all over town.
"In Florence Alabama, last year, we were tipped off that a manhole had been opened so that excess sewer flow could bleed off through the woods into a creek and from there into the Tennessee River. The manholes at the country club were being blown off whenever there was a big rain. All these condoms and turds and stuff were floating up over the greens. Couldn't have that. So they went down and opened this other one to relieve the pressure. This had been going on for years but the Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM) were pretending that they knew nothing about it.
"Without knowing where it was, it was damn near impossible to find, but you could smell it and the locals knew all about it. We called the press and they took pictures of us putting up skull and crossbone signs. Then we issued a NOV. People were saying, `These people are actually going to do something. They are not like ADEM. They gave the mayor five days. They are going to kick his ass.' The issue gripped the community and it became a tremendous win. People felt there was someone on their side. They mistook us for a powerful agency and that was enough for them to wade into battle. That made us a powerful agency."
As the interview was closing, Leaf talked a little of the spirituality that underlies his work. "I have this `Earth Cop' in your face thing. Then I have the river, which is who I want to eventually be.
"Even with this close, long connection to the river, I have to go to the well every day, and drink from it. No matter how tired I am, or hungry, in the evening, I get in the kayak. Out on the water, I'm in another world. Water is just so amazing. I love to go out in rain. I love to go out in fog -- fog is just water floating around. Tricky water. Drizzle. There are so many forms of water, but they all are connected. Where does the fog end and the river begin? On some level, we all relate to water. When we can, we live on shorelines and go out to the ocean.
"The river has a life itself. One of the reasons I like to paddle is that when the paddle comes out of the water, the water drips back off, and it constantly reminds you that the river is just zillions of little drops, living together, working together. It is not just this big thing immune to my minor abuses, but these little individual drops. I often feel that the boundary between me and the river is pretty slight. I have little individual drops in me, whether it's the tear out of my eye, my saliva, urine, semen -- we all have these little drippings. We are all microcosms. I am a watermaker. My tears can mingle with the waters of the river, and then, to replenish myself, I drink of the river. So I can make more tears, saliva, etc. There is no end of the cycle -- life, the river.
"We are spokespersons for the river itself, a living entity. The river provides the habitat that the creatures that keep the river clean need. Mussels filter water. Certain fish eat scum and scrape the rocks. Snails eat the slime. All these little things that are cleaning need clean water. The last thing we need to be doing is amusing ourselves out on the water with motor boats and spewing our shit into this living entity. Without that entity, we wouldn't be here....
"I realize through my mate that I am not a saint. But that doesn't matter. Even sinners can go to the river and get the juice. I trust that I am using my time wisely to offset some of the not-so-aware things that I've done in my life. In attempting to live an aware life, in time, I will leave those other things behind that are less than uplifting to my being. Then I will be able to speak with the wisdom and feeling I need inspire people to re-examine the wondrousness of water. I want to stir something inside of people. Take them where they can explore their connection with the river. The river can lead us to something greater than ourselves."
The RiverKeeper Project offers an Earth Cop seminar and a video of one of a seminars for $15. They need and welcome support of all kinds. Write or call The Broadened Horizons RiverKeeper Project, PO Box 4826, Chattanooga, TN 37405. (423) 267-3977.
I first wrote about Cielo and the RiverKeeper Project in the October 1995 issue of Heron Dance. Her courage and will inspire me. Living simply and spiritually, she and her husband work to protect the natural life of the Tennessee River and its surrounding watershed. The industries along the river each have their advocates, they say. So do the homeowners and the government agencies and the fisherman and all the others that use and benefit from the River. The RiverKeepers are advocates for the River and the life it supports or might support.
“In the early RiverKeeper days, though we were not scientists, there was a sense of authenticity about us, because we had dedicated ourselves to a river, to a beautiful medium. Living with that beauty and wanting to talk about it, made us authentic, and made the TVa (Tennessee Valley authority, which Leaf and Cielo insist is properly spelled with a small “a”) and Army Corps notice us.
“While Leaf is away on the sailboat, I live in a marina parking lot. It is white gravel, and hot, hot in the summer. My little home is a 6 x 16 foot room that Leaf built on an old farm trailer. I have a computer, printer, fax and bed. We back up into a nice wooded area, with a hillside, which gives me a little shade in the morning. We use the marina bathroom -- about three minutes away.
“So I was walking back from the bathroom in mid-afternoon one day -- hot, maybe 95 degrees -- and I came up to my little trailer, and right on the corner, in a patch of shade, in the gravel, was this awesome indigo blue morning glory. I had spread some morning glory seeds in different areas of the garden, but as an experiment I had put a couple in the gravel and forgotten about them. And doggone, if this little morning glory, the first one, didn't wind itself around this string, and work its way up, and blossom. And it struck me like a sledgehammer. The beauty. It just knocked me over.
“I had a heavy responsibility day. A lot of work. I've come to do, I've come to produce, to translate. And I dig it. I like it. I like producing. So that day, my pace was fast, as it usually is. But I stopped. I stood there and peered into that tiny, incredibly blue morning glory. I started crying it was so magnificent. The blueness and, right in the center, an incredible hot pink. The audacity to come up in a hot gravel parking lot with those colors -- indigo blue and hot pink! And the roots, the tendrils, were passionately, sensually twisting around this little string. So I took some time out of my day and parted time. It was outside of time. My schedule was so tight that day that there was no time for beauty, but I could have been there for ten hours for all I know. Or ten minutes. But I was there. And I became, almost, that morning glory. I took it inside of myself.
“What I felt was that I got bigger. It broadened and it deepened me. And it broadened my capacity to feel. My morning-glory-blue moment. It was a peak experience. Time parted.
“When the time comes, when it knocks at my door, or smacks me over the head, like this fragile morning glory blue, when that happens, I’ve learned to avail myself to it. What I’ve found is that you don't lose time, you don't miss your appointment. You opened a space between time. It happens despite our pace, if we avail ourselves. It is a trusting thing. When you hear that call, like the trumpet, the horn, avail yourself to it. Maybe that is what the Earth asks of us: that we avail ourselves, and it will speak to us and bring us messages.
“We heal by allowing one of the spaces between time to transform our lives. Little by little. I might not notice that that morning glory transformed my life, but it did. It evolved me another notch. I know it did. Beauty never takes away. It expands and deepens our lives. It allows me to be more authentic. And the work we do, no matter what it is, whether as an accountant or as a mother, raising children, as an Earth worker, or as a timber magnate, will be transformed. If we listen to Its story.”
Cielo, Leaf and the RiverKeepers can be reached at: PO Box 4826, Chattanooga, TN, 37405. (423) 332 0748
