By Rita Saylors
On August 7, Denver suffered from the most polluted air of any city in the world. Mountain ranges to the west and even the downtown skyline were visible only in hazy smudges. Around the freeways signs warned “Air unhealthy for sensitive groups” and advised “Combine your trips.” Somehow it seemed too late: combining trips seemed like urging children to hide under their schools desks in case of a nuclear attack. And yet, like thousands of other tourists in the Colorado mountains, Thorpe and I were not combining our trips. We had made the long trip, all the way from Texas, burning carbon as fast as we could.
We had driven from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to Denver a few days earlier, along US highway 285. The road cut north through the San Juan valley west of the eastern range of the Rocky Mountains. Santa Fe, too, had been smoky, obscuring the Jemez, Sangre de Cristo, and Sandia Mountains. We blamed our air on the fires in California and Oregon, with their drought, careless campers and irresponsible electric companies. It was somebody else’s fire, though for a couple of days Santa Fe had had its own small fire, in the mountains a bit north out of town. We could see the black plume rising through a smoky haze and worried that it might spread. Albeit sympathetic to the suffering others were enduring, we felt somewhat immune, for the moment.
As we drove through thinly populated northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, the air cleared, and we once again could feel wrapped in the beauty of distant mountains. This is what we came all the way from the flat Gulf Coast to experience: awe, a sense of the sublime, our human smallness. It seemed like our right to have nature on beautiful display: green forests, blue skies, range after purple mountain range in the distance. The last time we made this drive to Colorado it was at night, the darkness obscuring all but the glittering lights in the hills and towns. It was winter; the air was cold, clear, and pure.
This time, in August, as we approached Breckenridge, we could see the sprawl of condos squatting on every available space like a cancerous metastasis. In the distance, cars backed up for blocks at every traffic light, and pedestrians swarmed around shops and restaurants like hungry insects. But here we were, ourselves among the swarming, hungry insects, eager to feast on mountain experience. We were disappointed at the quality of the feast on offer—at this moment only heat, smoke, and crowds. Afternoon sun through the smoky haze felt oppressive. The contrast with memories of Breckenridge a decade ago exacerbated our grief. Knowing we were better off than the poor people in California and Oregon didn’t make us feel better. Where was the clear, cool, crystalline air, slightly scented with pine? The vistas of purple mountains’ majesty? Too many of us! The knowledge that we were part of the us only increased the moral bind we felt at traveling in the first place.
In order to travel and burn so much carbon we had had to make a moral disconnect between our individual actions and collective responsibility. We said to ourselves that we wanted this trip; that we deserved it after the Covid year of not seeing friends and family; that our actions were a small part of the carbon load. But we knew that what individually may be of little consequence, collectively is disastrous. We also knew we were abrogating personal responsibility. And yet: with my 80th birthday looming in a few months, I was determined to make this one, possibly last trip to the mountains.
I felt grief at the loss of natural beauty, anger at the heedless tourists around me, anger at myself, anger at human nature in our selfishness and greed. How much more angry will our grandchildren be at us? Will they know clear mountain air and the sight of range on range in the distance?
Grief, anger, action. That is apparently the emotional progression. Grief and anger are the easy part, action less so. It takes an act of faith to do what we “little people” can do: marching, conserving (albeit never enough), writing letters, giving money to environmental organizations. Once again the tension between the individual and the collective comes into play. Individually we can seem powerless, yet collectively we are unstoppable.
But how to arouse the collective? What will it take? I have a friend who some might call a climate-change fanatic. He manages to bring most conversations around to climate change. He rides his bike wherever he can, probably hasn’t bought a new shirt in 20 years, keeps up-to-date on the latest science. Climate change is his life. He is like the prophets of the Old Testament warning of doom. He is right, but like the prophets, he probably has few friends. People avoid long conversations with him. I cannot follow his example.
A decade ago I read Jane Jacobs’ Dark Age Ahead and thought it exaggerated in its predictions. Now I am not so sure. A dark age doesn’t come at once, Jacobs explains, but incrementally, with a thousand unkind cuts. Now we see smoky mountain air, parts of the Louisiana coast in ruins from several hurricanes and shrinking in population, billions spent on disaster mitigation. With future rises in sea level, there will likely be no Miami, no New York city. And what goes away with them? Education, the arts, life reduced to survival mode? It feels as if I am living at the end of a golden age and helpless to preserve it. So I grieve, feel angry, resolve to take more action, hope for enough charging stations to travel in an electric car. Will I burn carbon next year to go to the mountains? That question is hard to answer.
Houston Writers' Group 