Who:
John Hart
friend
Where:
San Rafael, CA
Taking a breather between book projects, I'm relaxing in a lakeside cabin in northern Michigan and trying to learn a new way of enjoying the outdoors: board sailing. (Can you teach an old California mountaineer new tricks?)
The key to making progress on a sailboard is the ability to move against, as well as with, the wind. I can't resist the analogy with environmental work. People who care for the environment are always fighting their way upwind: against the steady pressure of old habits, short-term economics, institutional inertia, natural human cussedness. Once in a while the breeze is at our back, mostly we're angling across the wind, cranking as hard as we can on that sail, trying for a few degrees of progress. Sometimes it's harder than others.
And yet how much has been achieved! I've just finished a project for Sierra Club Books called *Legacy: Portraits of 50 Bay Area Environmental Elders.* A collaboration with photographer Nancy Kittle, it profiles four dozen heroes of World War II vintage who have done wonders in protecting the environment of northern California. Masters, all, of progress against the wind.
