"A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature."
- Henry David Thoreau

Luke, Brook, her friend Leila and I drove the Prius 14 hours to Idaho while listening to Twilight on CD: a recipe for insanity for the adults, but pure ecstasy for the teenage girls. We all, but especially Luke, fell in love with Edward Cullen’s “liquid topaz eyes”, his “velvety voice” and his “hard, marble smooth body”. Finally in Idaho, we visited Luke’s friends Nathan and his wife Colleen. They are super cool people and a lot of fun to hang out with, but they are also huge polluters and I almost went mad trying to enjoy my stay and assuage my guilty conscience. Nathan is fun oriented: everything in his life is fun. He lives near a gorgeous lake that we went boating on. We took his wakeboarding boat out on the lake and camped on an island in the middle. We also had a jet ski, and it was a blast. Before we arrived, the water in the lake was clean and beautiful; I’m not sure it could still be said after we left. There were rocky crags, cliffs and huge colorful rocky canyons that were separated by the blue waters and had swallowtails and Elk, Canada Geese, Mergansers with twenty (yes 20) baby chicks. I saw hundreds of barn and cliff swallows that nested in the craggy volcanic sides of the canyons; they coughed through their tiny beaks and implored us to leave when we chugged by in the boat.
“You aren’t a very good environmentalist Suzie,” I thought I heard one bird say. And the bird was right. Try as I might, I always end up polluting against my will.

We guzzled fifty gallons of gas and emitted tons of dirty, smelly emissions in one weekend on that clean lake. It was awful because I enjoyed it all so much. I kept thinking, some Environmentalist I am. The Jet Ski was my favorite, and I drove it so fast and jumped wakes and absolutely had a blast which I rarely have. Then Brook (fourteen) and her friend Leila went on the inner tube behind the boat for hours and hours, their faces alternating between joy and horror as Nathan sadistically spun the boat and drove fast as hell and flipped, spun, and slung the girls, there little bodies flopping up and down on the inner tube, barely able to hold on, their knuckles clung like death to the handles in front of them. They flipped off several times, but were loathe to give it up. They reminded me of two penguins being dragged behind the Exxon Valdez.
Oh the ridiculous hypocrisies of trying to do live an eco-friendly life. What was I supposed to do? “Excuse me, but we can’t take the boat out because I am an environmentalist,” I could have said. What a freak.
Or:
“I’ll just sit on the beach in protest to your Arab enriching, oil-sucking tendencies.”
How effing rude, it would simply look fanatical anyway.
It made me think of W.C. Fields when he said, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a damn fool about it."

After the lake, Luke, Leila, Brook and I went camping in the lovely and secret Boise National Park, 2.1 million acres of pristine wilderness, home to eagles, bears, grey wolves, but very few campers. It was SO gorgeous and there were no people. We hiked, fished, ate. Then one afternoon in the hot part of the day, giant persistent flies stalked us and stared while rubbing their little straight hands together evilly; they landed on us then wouldn’t go away. Luke was killing them violently, knocking over tables and chairs, his hair askew, and looking like a madman. I wanted to write, but my battery was going dead on my laptop. What, now that I have a laptop I can’t write with a pen and paper? The trailer had a generator and only a few lights work with the battery. I swore I wouldn’t use the generator while there, but I was sweating and my mosquito bites were killing me, the fucking flies wouldn’t stop harassing me.
Then Brook walked by and said like a spoiled princess, “I wish we were back at Nathan’s house where it was cool.”
That pissed me off mostly because it was the thought I had been trying to fend off for an hour or so. “Not one negative word from you; do you hear me? Not one.” I retorted angrily.
She stomped off somewhere, and I sat swatting at the beetle size flies and sweated in my Hollister shirt while watching my battery life die slowly on my laptop.
Then, the thing that always happens when things get too rough happened. Against my will I gave in to the luxuries at my fingertips.
“Luke, screw it, hook up the generator and let’s go in and turn on the air conditioner so I can plug in my laptop and Brook will be happy dammit.”
Great: I was one of those people in the middle of nature, sitting in my motor home, using the a/c, a laptop and a stereo, and barely able to look out the small windows at the scenery: and I was happy.
It was so frustrating; I was having imaginary conversations with people I know (right then Nathan and Colleen) about keeping our air and water clean, about how Idaho will end up concreted in, all land grabbed up, traffic, people and stinky dirty water with dirty air like Southern California if things aren’t changed. I importantly explained to them in my mind how to go green; limit boating on the lake, maybe try sailing or canoeing, try organic food, put in water savers in the showers at the house, go to city planning meeting to staunch urban sprawl. I had elaborate speeches formed in my head with carefully chosen words. Then when a little fly landed on me and a bead of sweat a fraction of the size of a strawberry picker’s, appeared under my armpit, I caved and ran for the nearest gallon of gasoline.
What use is it to go ten miles out of the way to the (super awesome) Co Op Market in downtown Boise and buy the organic turkey slices, organic fruits and vegetables, local milk with no hormones, free range chicken, toilet paper from recycled paper, eucalyptus bug spray without deet, all costing 25% more than the junk at a regular store? What use is it to drive fourteen hours in the cramped Prius instead of taking the roomy, more practical truck or an airplane, if I sit in the trailer in the middle of the pristine forest with the air conditioner and laptop on and the generator outside sucking gallons of gas and spewing dirty, billowing clouds of smoke into the pure air?
I always wonder if I am doing enough at home. My house is too big, and I use too much water on my lawn and sometimes I let my compost in the kitchen go too long and throw it in the trash because I am too disgusted to open the container and put it in my compost container; I forget to pick my zucchini once in a while and they grow too big and gross and I throw them away. Some days I’m too lazy to recycle my water from washing dishes or warming up the water in the bathroom. In the amount of time it takes for the water to heat up in my bathroom I could birth a small fetus. Or I’ll decadently eat a piece of steak Luke brings home. But after spending a week with Luke’s friend Nathan, I realize that I am doing way more than some. He has motorcycles for each person in his family; there was not one CFL in their entire 4,000 square foot house in which they run the air conditioning all summer even when they are at work because it supposedly takes more energy to cool it down after a whole day of heat than it does to run it the entire day. Right. We drove that damn boat endlessly all weekend and I could see the slick colorful sheen of oil on the top of the water near their boat. The whole time there, in my mind I picked apart their entire lifestyle like some grotesque Green Police. They have a front loading energy efficient washer and dryer, and energy efficient dishwasher, and they have no lawn in back. Their yard is small which is good. But they gobble down pounds of high protein animal groceries on their Suzanne Somers: This is Not Your Mother’s Atkins Diet. Not one organic product graced their fridge, and in fact when their son David mentioned an organic apple he ate, Nathan said, “What the hell is an organic apple.” In that don’t talk to me about stupid eco enviro shit tone of voice. It was excruciating not to say a thing. Really the last thing I want to do is look like the Enviro-Freak that I have become. It did make me think of Bill Maher when he said on Real Time,
"But when it comes to bad for the environment, nothing--literally--compares with eating meat. The business of raising animals for food causes about 40 percent more global warming than cars, trucks, and planes combined. If you care about the planet, it's actually better to eat a salad in a Hummer than a cheeseburger in a Prius."


I have been feeding finches for years. But our house has huge picture windows that give me a gorgeous view. Problem is the birds keep running into the damn shiny windows. I found a gorgeous male Costas hummingbird on the concrete beneath the window. Costas hummingbirds are small even by hummingbird standards; about 3 inches. The male hummingbird’s head and gorget, the area at the throat, is iridescent purple. The poor little guy was in perfect shape aside from being dead. Not a scratch or drop of blood. His wings and tail looked as if they were still in motion. Then I found over a period of about three months, three dead American and Lesser Goldfinches. I feed them Niger Seed every day and attract twenty to a hundred a day; I swear to God. And the worse thing is that they are smacking into my windows. I spent a fortune on special stickers that has helped prevent much of the problem, but there is still that occasional thump I will hear as one hits my window, and for some reason reminds me of the song, “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor”. The Costas Hummingbird was in such perfect shape that I put it in a clear Starbucks cup and studied it as much as I could before it disintegrated. It lasted a long time, weeks, and any visitor would get a viewing. I would say open your eyes at your home and you will see this. And I would shove the poor sacrificial hummer in their face. It affected everyone who saw in a way that made them quit their jobs and join Eco Terrorists for Birds and kill anyone who had a window that birds flew into. Not really. They just thought I was nuts and rolled their eyes swearing to never pay attention to birds again. The little guy with his shiny green back lay in the Starbucks cup which was placed carefully in a 15x11x7 cardboard box. Albert, Brook, and Krista thought I was nuts, and so too did Luke and he accidentally threw my poor baby in the trash, not even the compost or the green yard waste recycling can, but the regular, cruel and impersonal dump trash can.
“Hey honey, have you seen my hummingbird?” I asked Luke one day when I couldn’t find the bird or the box in the garage.
“What hummingbird? Oh you mean the dead one? No, of course not.”
“I had it out in the garage in a small box on the work table and now I can’t find it,” I said.
For some ungodly reason, he thought this was terribly funny and laughed too much. I was not amused.
“I threw that box away; I don’t think it had your bird in it though. There was just an old Starbucks cup in there,” he said.

Brook told me, in the form of a funny story at a family gathering, that she found several dead goldfinches and threw them over the fence to spare my feelings. But I know her well enough to know she threw them over to spare herself the chore of watching me and my over reaction to the death of my little babies. Somehow, she thinks throwing things over the back fence is a good way to handle things, because she threw the cookies I made with applesauce instead of oil and agave sweetener instead of sugar, over the back fence much to Albert and Krista’s utmost delight. Apparently partially hydrogenated free cookies are as useless as are dead yellow birds.

The difficult thing about having close relationships with people, like marriage and children for instance, is that while you may be fanatically dedicated to non polluting endeavors, your children and/or spouse may not be. Sure they may be interested and try a little, but how can one expect them to be fanatics. It is unusual. Luke loves to watch the Animal Planet shows on nature and he understands and is concerned about climate change and animals. But not so much so that he is willing to sell everything, build a cob or straw bale house in the woods and grow all of our own food while becoming Eco Terrorists and chasing evil developers on our mopeds and suing them for building in our precious canyons and rare open spaces. He also isn’t into using a composting toilet, abstaining from all air travel, riding a bicycle to get our produce at the Farmers Market on a 105 degree day, or carrying the way too feminine re-usable grocery bags, much less give up dirt bikes, boats, jet skis and fishing with his brothers. My only consolation is that while I may not have married or raised Grizzly Adams or Rachel Carson, at least they do keep me balanced and prevent me from shaving my head bald, growing my unwashed leg hairs long enough to braid, and move to the woods to live in a teepee, and write bad nature poems. Oh and wear a deerskin Pocahontas dress with moccasins.