Wednesday with Margie

Margie was an avid hiker into her mid-eighties. She hiked all the US mountain ranges and then the Alps and the Dolomites and more mountain ranges that I don’t even know about. So she is grieving today, though you wouldn’t know it by this portrait she allowed me to make as we ended our time together. She’s grieving because the Trump government has decided to sell to the timber industry 11,742 acres of Mt. Hood National Forest, including 3,000 acres of mature and old growth forest with a wolf pack. “All those trees,” Margie said, tearing up. We sat in silence for the trees and the wolves for a long time. Speechless. How, in the face of the climate emergency, can this happen? There’s a protest tomorrow in Portland, but I will be keeping the children so I doubt I’ll make it there, and I’m not sure it will make much difference, as the logging of the old growth trees has already begun.

I suppose part of what changed Margie's mood is that we went on talking about how much we don’t know; how many surprises come from young people all the time; their brilliance, their inventiveness, their creativity. That’s why I am so fierce in my defense of “Antifa.” They are many ages but mostly young, and they’re all courageous, inventive, and filled with creative energy as they search for fresh ways to confront injustice. They’re working for something larger than themselves. Sure, some of them make mistakes sometimes; some get carried away on waves of anger. But how could we not love them?