M Jackson - While Glaciers Slept: Being Human in a Time of Climate Change

while glaciers slept

Being Human in a Time of Climate Change

M Jackson
Foreword by Bill McKibben

Brattleboro, Vermont

2015 by M Jackson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Authors note: As this book spans many years and several continents, I have had to re-imagine events and conversations based on occasionally incomplete memories in my mind. I have tried to faithfully represent the spirit of those scenes within these pages. For legal and ethical reasons, certain names and episodes have been changed.

Printed in the United States of America

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Green Writers Press is a Vermont-based publisher whose mission is to spread a message of hope and renewal through the words and images we publish. Throughout, we will adhere to our commitment to preserving and protecting the natural resources of the earth. To that end, a percentage of our proceeds will be donated to environmental activist organizations.

Giving voice to writers and artists who will make the world a better place Green Writers Press | Brattleboro, Vermont www.greenwriterspress.com

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CONTROL NUMBER: 2015936482
ISBN: 978-0-9960872-6-1

Photographs courtesy of: Colin Aiken, Kyle Dungan, David Estrada, Grant Jackson, M Jackson, Sarah Jackson, the Jackson Family Collection, Jon Marshall, Federico Pardo, and Elizabeth Ruff.
Author photograph by Annie Agnone.
Cover design by Ani Pendergast.
Book design by Dede Cummings and Ani Pendergast. Set in Bembo and Frutiger. Printed on demand and sustainably by Thomson Shore Printers.

THE BOOK INDUSTRY TREATISE ON ENVIRONMENTALLY RESPONSIBLE PUBLISHING SETS ATTAINABLE AND MEASURABLE GOALS FOR IMPROVING THE SOCIAL AND ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT OF THE BOOK INDUSTRY. IT WAS DEVELOPED OVER A FIVE-MONTH PERIOD WITH THE PERSPECTIVE AND PARTICIPATION OF PUBLISHERS, MILLS, PRINTERS, MERCHANTS, AND OTHERS.

This book is dedicated to Sarah and Grant, who keep my compass pointed home.

Any landscape is a condition of the spirit.

HENRI FREDERIC AMIEL

But I dont want to go among mad people, Alice remarked.

Oh, you cant help that, said the Cat. Were all mad here. Im mad. Youre mad.

How do you know Im mad? said Alice.

You must be, said the Cat, or you wouldnt have come here.

LEWIS CARROLL

while glaciers slept

I think our planet is slowly becoming disabled. Due to climate change, in natural processes that digest carbon, regulate temperature, keep the climate on an even keel, everything is off kilter. Undoubtedly, unquestionably, it has been shown with certainty: the way we live our lives is causing these systems to fail. M JACKSON

THIS IS TRUEAS TRUE AS IT IS POSSIBLE TO GET. There is a huge elephant always present in every room on our planet right now, the elephant of climate change. Nothing humans have ever done is so big, and nothing so big has ever been so thoroughly ignored.

And the reasons its been ignored, and the reasons we must ignore it no longer, are the reasons in this book. Not, ultimately, the prosaic and practical questions about sea level rise and increased risk of drought and ocean acidification. These things are all crucially important, but theyre not the core. At the core, somehow, is the question of whether the big brain was a good adaptation.

Or, more precisely, if it came attached to a big enough heart to get us out of the trouble were in. To get us out of the habit of staring at the shiny object nearest by, and to look instead at the mountain, the forest, my wife, your mother, our meaning. Those are the kinds of questions easiest to answer in the company of caribou and humpback, or of family and friends. The real company, not the virtual, pretend, screen-based company. We live in an abstracted, mediated world, and in that kind of world it seems possible that all that is real and beautiful might slip right by usespecially our home planet in all its buzzing, complex, cruel glory.

And so we fight. Sure we screw in the new lightbulb, but mostly we screw up our courage. Screw up our courage to well and truly love. Thats what this book is about, I think; I hope you read it in the spirit of openness it deserves, making yourself vulnerable to both hurt and joy. We may or may not be able to slow down climate change (I hope we are able, and so I devote my days to that task). But we are definitely able to witness the world, and ourselves on it, in these fragile and lovely moments. Thats our task, too.

BILL MCKIBBEN

ON MY DESK TODAY SITS A LETTER I FOUND WRITTEN by my dad to my mom. A year ago, my brother, my sister, and I were sorting through the old desk at the farm. It was the first step, the first of packing up, cleaning out, choosing what was important and what wasnt. We chose to start with the desk because it wasnt their bedroom, it wasnt the loft, it wasnt the kitchen, it wasnt all those other places where the fingerprints of our parents rained thick and deep. We thought, then, that the desk was full of business papers and insurance forms and bank statements. Neutral things. Not the things that really make up a person. But

It also contained a letter. Buried under stacks of manila envelopes and plastic cases and paperclips and thumbtacks.

Undated, on yellowed paper, with no envelope: my dads distinctive engineering script. I saw the handwriting before I saw the letter, before I registered it for what it was. Each capital I looked like a J. There was a faint stamp on the upper left cornerperhaps this was a postcard sent through the mail. It read:

Dear Madam.

I declare my love for you, and wish to beg you to consider leaving your husband and running away with me to an enchanted deserted island. If you say no, I shall hurl myself over the Narrows Bridge.

I love you.

John

Ive framed this letter, and it sits on my desk.

My parents are dead. They both had terminal cancers, and they passed away within two years of each other. I was twenty-six.

Those are the basics, but there is much more.

All stories have so much more.

My mom was married to someone else when she met my dad. But at the time the letter was written my parents were married. I know this because my dad is humorously threatening to jump off the Narrows Bridge in Puget Sound. My parents moved to Washington State several years into their relationship, years after Mom had divorced her previous husband and began to build a life with my dad. Theyd lived all over the map, traveling north and south in bell-bottomed jeans along twisty roads in unreliable vehicles, searching always for a place to believe could be home.