An Offering of Thanks
A special Thanksgiving message from Eleanor Huffines, Regional Director of The Wilderness Society, Anchorage, Alaska
Every offering of thanks is a statement of hope. I am full of both in this Thanksgiving season.
I've been in Washington for most of the last month while the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge faced its direst threat yet. With hundreds of other Arctic activists, I celebrated on November 9 when a committee of the House of Representatives was forced to remove Arctic drilling provisions from its budget bill.
I have been privileged to visit the Refuge for each of the last 15 years and to introduce others to its grandeur and richness. I have walked its vastness, floated its rivers, camped in its pristine beauty and watched its astonishing wildlife watch me, more in curiosity than in fear. I have worked shoulder to shoulder with the Native people for whom the Refuge is not mere place but is life itself. The Arctic has worked its magic on me and I have seen it work its magic on others who have been there.
That I understand.
Yet, though by now I should know better, I continue to be amazed at how far that Arctic magic reaches, even to millions of Americans who have never been there.
It has touched Savanna Rose Walters, a Florida 13-year-old. She reasoned, with a wisdom the rest of us might envy, that if it is our insatiable thirst for oil that threatens the Arctic, perhaps we should use oil more carefully. So she launched a campaign to encourage motorists to keep their tires properly inflated and maximize gas mileage.
It has touched the heart of a young mother from Wisconsin I met at the September "Arctic Refuge Action Day" rally. She pulled her two children out of school and boarded a bus with them for an all-night ride to Washington, there to be part of the thousand-strong crowd on the step of the Capitol. Hundreds of you made similar treks to make your voices heard.
And it has touched the hearts of tens of thousands of WildAlert subscribers who rose to the challenge magnificently. Again. I wish you could have been with me in Washington as the debate came to a head. Then you might have seen the power of your voices and of your advocacy through e-mails and phone calls.
On November 9, I visited 16 congressional offices to confirm commitments to protect the Arctic. In every one, the appeal was the same: "Turn off the telephone calls, please! Our phones are clogged with calls about the Arctic Refuge. We can't get any other work done! Please! We get it!"
Dozens of other Arctic advocates visited other offices that very long day and when we gathered at the end of it to compare notes, the story was everywhere the same.
On my way home to Alaska, I stopped in New York for a pre-Thanksgiving visit with my family. I took my nieces to Central Park where we sat on a bench watching ducks and geese. I explained to them the likelihood that some of these very birds hatched and fledged in the Arctic, like countless generations before them, then migrated to all 50 states ahead of advancing winter.
It occurred to me, somewhat fancifully, that what we saw in Washington earlier this month, the results of a fierce and inexhaustible advocacy by millions of Americans who will never see the Refuge, might have to do with these birds. Maybe each brings southward to our ponds and fields some of the magic of the Arctic and a sense of connection to a remote place.
Not everyone senses it, certainly. Only receptive and generous hearts, hearts that understand what Wallace Stegner reminded us: that wilderness matters to all of us, whether we ever set foot in it or even see it.
These are people who know that wild earth is not a thing apart from the human experience but at the very center of it. These are WildAlert subscribers. They are you and others who believe we are a nation wise enough and wealthy enough to defend some places as inviolable against our resource appetites.
You made the difference. I can't imagine going into a wilderness fight without you and I dare to think that there is hope in this for wilderness on all our public lands, including those nearest to you and the ones you treasure most.
I will spend some of Thanksgiving Day with good friends skiing in the Chugach National Forest not far from my home in Anchorage, then join them for dinner. Before, throughout and afterwards, I will have you on my mind for all that you've done. And for the welcome hope you bring us all. Happy Thanksgiving.
-- Eleanor Huffines
Regional Director
Alaska Regional Office
The Wilderness Society
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#12 - Jade
Thank you for sharing this letter. As one of countless people who sent regular letters to congress women and men on behalf of protecting the refuge, I am ever so thankful that our efforts were successful. There's a lot to be thankful for this year, along with knowing that some day I too will get my chance to visit this special place, and partake of its magic first-hand. Thanks again----JLB