[Note: For didactic, polemical, and provocative purposes, in this piece I imply a questionable/dubious opposition between (1) explicitly service-oriented, perhaps professional or semi-professional policy-types and (2) those who “actually get out there a lot.” One should not be so naive as to believe that a single individual may not embody both ideals. But do check around for yourself and see if there is any truth in what follows.]

The “porpoise of the soul is service”––such was the revelatory dream-image pun reported by environmental activist and author Terry Tempest Williams, Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth last winter.

For the environmentally-conscientious person this inspiring exhortation raises obvious, “What should I do?” questions such as, “What is the best route to service?” or “How does service manifest itself most effectively?” And, in particular for many outdoor-enthusiasts, “What if I admire and revere the idea of service but my self-satisfying outdoor-activity-obsession trumps ‘service’ every time? I want to be OUT THERE all the time doing either outdoor sports or contemplative and exploratory ramblings. Not going to meetings. Not organizing events or letter-writing campaigns. Not raising money. Not working towards a career in sustainability sciences. Not working in an office for an enviro group.”

Take heart if the above describes you, for it’s possible that your approach can be just as an effective––and in fact sometimes a more effective––route to service as the more orthodox “front-door” route. Your seemingly “non-service” way of life can in fact equip you beautifully for highly effective service in terms of ability, knowledge, and motivation.

Ability

If you’re usually in the company of fellow Dartmouth outdoor-obsessives, you may be surprised to discover that the level of outdoor skill and fitness you’ve acquired (even unwittingly and incidentally) is probably vastly higher than you realize, especially in comparison with the average American. Decisions about land-use have to be based on intimate knowledge of the land––not just knowledge of abstract policy. But, sadly, very few people are adept at bushwhacking through forests or navigating smoothly and extensively over rough and trail-less terrain. Thus you may have unwittingly become a tremendous asset to the wider community since you can (and will, due to your passion) get out and see with your own eyes what desperately needs to be seen first-hand.

For example, unscrupulous exploiters-of-the-land often rely on the citizenry’s poor physical fitness; they trust that people won’t actually venture very far on foot to see the destructive mischief they have planned. Cunning developers often present rosy scenarios in planning board meetings––their slick and hypocritical rhetoric full of high-minded, co-opting references to “preservation,” “deferring to the land,” and “honoring nature”––when all too often they don’t care about the destruction they are about to wreak on some gorgeous, rugged, boulder-and-wetland-filled valley.

Shocking as this may seem, their bought-off wetlands specialists may actually lie outright: they’ll purr reassuringly (and falsely) that, for example, no streams exist in a given targeted area, and when they guide an official site-visit they will steer the often-sedentary and/or pressed-for-time planning officials away from sensitive areas. But, dear outdoor enthusiast, that land which is forbidding and daunting to others is, to you, inviting, comfortable––almost heaven. You can and will roam all over that dense hinterland and see with your own eyes what the developer did not want the citizenry to see. Then you can report back and raise the alarm. And why will you roam? Not because it’s a job, a service-duty, a chore, but because you want to. It’s beautiful, and you simply love being out there.

Knowledge

Your exploratory passion and unprecedented intimacy with natural areas will give you a supremely valuable, detailed, and specific knowledge of the land. You’ll come to see firsthand the poverty of maps in the most literal way. A faint waver of topo-lines on the map turns out to be a stunning subsidiary ridgeline paralleling a main ridge, and the lines of sight from, up, down, and over this completely unknown mini-ridge turn out to be sublime.

Maybe no one else knew this––or the knowledge had been lost. Your more explicitly service-oriented sisters and brothers will no doubt be armed with abundant environmental-science and policy-options knowledge as well as specific knowledge about a given type of landscape or area of terrain. But even this latter knowledge is still one level more abstract than is optimal or necessary, and such people may still have only the haziest idea of what specific marvels a given several-square-mile tract actually contains. Since you have come to know it intimately, however, the experts may (to your surprise) come to you asking to hear what’s out there.

Further, you begin to understand the visual, auditory, and other aesthetic linkages between parts of the landscape that can be known only by moving around within the landscape often and by approaching from a number of different directions. Definition merely by acreage, degree-of-slope, soil-type, plant- and wildlife-inventory, and so on leaves out the entire aesthetic dimension. You come to love certain intermittent streams, hidden valleys and obscure upland wetlands that don’t exist on the map. You revere the wild assemblages of glacial erratic boulders––veritable Zen-gardens of ancient perfection which fall between the topo-lines’ scale. And you come to know all of these not just as classes of objects (as abstractions) but with the greatest degree of specificity. One by one they become your intimate friends (for climbers, the boulders and outcrops are veritable yogic mentors). These things all become sacred to you (or, in a less-Cartesian formulation, their sacredness is revealed to you).

Motivation

This intensification of intimacy and love (which can quite naturally segue into a vivid awareness of the sacred) creates a massively powerful motivation to actively protect these places––a passionate motivation which may eclipse the sincere, well-meaning, but by contrast relatively tepid preservationist sentiments of those for whom saving these particular places may merely be a kind of generalized example of sound environmental practice. A powerfully visceral reaction to threats may be what it takes to save the day: when you feel like literally vomiting at the thought of the despoliation of your particular sacred places; when you’re overcome, almost trembling, with despair, disbelief, astonishment, and rage at the folly, stupidity, greed, and blindness which would destroy what you know is so unique and perfect.

If a prime motivation in your life tends to derive from, to revolve around, “my duty, my identity as an environmentalist,” be cautious. There is a subtle trap therein––not inevitably compromising, but it exists. When you go to work as, say, a legislative expert for an environmental group in D.C., be aware that the kind of “abstraction” discussed above––the fact of being one step removed from “the facts on the ground”––may undermine your effectiveness.

I saw firsthand a case where a trained environmental lobbyist with high ideals and absolutely the best of intentions lacked a crucial one percent of knowledge of a certain public-lands policy issue; her failure to fully comprehend one tiny, subtle––but crucial––point which threatened to undercut an important environmental initiative in Congress, that those of us “in the field” had been working on for years. The nation obviously needs full-time professionals who are adept at shepherding worthy environmental regulations through the complex maze of the federal legislative process. But if, for you, such work becomes “just a job,” albeit a noble and important one, if it’s not matched by accurate and full “on the ground” knowledge of an issue backed by passionate motivation, then beware. Some people are, in fact, quite well-suited to professional environmental work––full-time lobbying and the like. But if you can’t abide the office and the paperwork (your outdoor passions taking you always out), on those occasional instances when you do happen to find yourself in the thick of an enviro battle, you will speak with authority. You will be convincing and effective. Your eloquence might even surprise you!

Let’s return full-circle to Terry Tempest Williams. Perhaps you heard her speech and long to be part of a good fight like her battle to save Castle Valley, Utah from unscrupulous developers. Look no further, for precisely the same kind of battles are raging right here, right now, in Hanover, Lebanon, and Norwich. The cultural attractions of Dartmouth together with the natural beauty of the area and a thriving world-class research and esoteric-engineering economy have made the immediate Upper Valley a hot commodity. Real estate developers are swarming, and local planning and zoning boards, composed of entirely of part-time volunteers, are struggling to keep abreast of the action. Even with the help of the towns’ tiny professional planning staffs, staying ahead of the planning curve is proving tremendously difficult. Not only are the issues and problems complex and their resolution sometimes inobvious (for example, anticipating the unintended consequences of subtle changes in obscure zoning regulation language), but the scale of proposed development has been gargantuan; and developers have been sometimes disingenuous and dishonest in their dealings with the towns, ever-ready to threaten litigation if their moneymaking ambitions are thwarted. Out-of-state developers in particular seem to possess a particularly stunning blind spot when it comes to choosing where to build. Some of the area’s last remaining serene, beautiful wild areas are, incredibly, blithely marked for destruction.

Dartmouth students should be aware that some of your very own professors are currently waging gallant battle versus these big-money interests, their lying wetlands scientists, and cash-hungry absentee landowners for whom, appallingly though predictably, maximizing profit trumps all other values. Years of scholarly debate and truth-seeking have honed these academics’ powers of reasoning, acute and thorough observation, and verbal persuasion in a way that no time spent laboring in continuously-compromising bureaucratic situations likely could have produced. Inquire around among the environmentally-conscientious professoriat and you’ll immediately discover many fabulous opportunities to engage in various aspects of our local equivalent of Williams’s Castle Valley battle. You will learn a huge amount from this (and you might even garner, merely coincidentally, some great interviews and fabulous thesis material!).

Most of all, stay fit, stay inspired––and get out there and wander in alert amazement “between the topo-lines.” You’ll like what you find!