A Tree-Hugging Granola-Faced Pansy Boy

So I grew up going to a Christian school (a very good school, too) in Midwestern Suburbia. Our state representative, state senator, US representative, US senators, governor, and the rest were typically Republican. My teachers in school taught a very conservative political outlook on life, fueled by doses of Rush Limbaugh and Michael Reagan.

I'm still fairly conservative politically. I find the abortion issue tough to sidestep, and I still weigh that issue very heavily in my consideration of candidates to vote for. I'm still registered as a Republican voter. But there's an insidious streak of liberalism in me, and for this I place the blame squarely on my dad.

Readers who know my dad will doubtless be shocked by this wild accusation. Dwight Purtle teaching liberal politics to his son??? Lemme 'splain you how come.

It started with the family vacations. Unlike most Baby Boomer uber-capitalists, my parents didn't buy us enormous piles of plastic junk for Christmas every year. We got stuff, and it was good stuff. But some of my friends got a lot more stuff. One year when I was about ten and my sisters were about eight and six or so, I noticed the disparity between my friend's stack of Christmas loot and my own. I broached the subject with my dad, and he looked thoughtful for a bit. Then he told me that my friend Steve's* parents spent half the year every year paying off Christmas. They were apparently proud of it. He told me that wasn't the way we did things.

Then he asked me where Steve had gone for vacation that summer. I told him I thought they went to Branson for the weekend. "And where did we go?"

We'd gone to California. Two full weeks away. Granddad's house and Sequoia and Yosemite National Parks in the Sierra Nevadas. We did this at least every other year. I loved that trip, even though it usually meant a road trip of three days out and three days back in an 80-something Oldsmobile sedan with my two sisters and me in the back seat fighting most of the time. Sequoia National Park is home of the world's largest living thing: the "General Sherman" tree, a Giant Sequoia redwood. There are also lots of great mountain hiking trails and scenery.

Yosemite National Park was, and still is, simply my favorite place. I've mentioned it before in this blog. Granite monoliths almost a mile high, some of the tallest waterfalls in the world, and relentless beauty everywhere.

On these trips, my dad taught us wilderness ethics. Littering was a crime deserving severe punishment. We were to leave campsites "better than we found them," picking up not only our trash, but the trash the previous people had left as well. "Don't feed crackers and food to the squirrels," he said. "Our food isn't good for them." We were not to get too close to wildlife, even though other people would surround a deer or bear with their cameras clicking excitedly. We were not allowed to pick wildflowers. "Leave them so everyone else can see them too." We stayed on the trail: we didn't want to damage the plants or erode the soil. We kept our voices low, and saw more wildlife than many of the other hikers. We went to ranger talks in the evenings and paid attention when they told us how to "leave no trace" when we hiked and camped. We listened as they told us how people had damaged many of the pristine wilderness areas, and how we could help restore those areas by following certain guidelines. We decried the debacle of Hetch Hetchy Reservoir.

Another major contributing factor to my liberalism for which I blame my dad is National Public Radio. The NPR member station in Kansas City is KCUR, and I've probably listened to more programming on that station than any other in my lifetime, with the possible exception of a Christian station in Kansas City called KLJC. My dad would also tune in the nearest NPR station wherever we were on the road. Besides promoting all kinds of obscure underground jazz, world music, and new age artists, NPR has a decidedly leftward-leaning slant on the news, especially on environmental issues.

And then we started to recycle. We started taking in aluminum cans long before it was fashionable. We got a "recycle bin" at home just like the rest of the neighborhood, but we actually did it conscientiously. We would cut the labels off tin cans and pop bottles, cut the little plastic rings off the tops by where the lids screwed on, and we recycled everything we could recycle - by the book. We turned off lights and tried to conserve water (this was mostly because it made good fiscal sense, it's true, but we did it). We lowered the thermostat in the winter and raised it in the summer. We got energy-efficient windows and light bulbs.

And finally, we took National Geographic magazine for my entire life. I still read it cover to cover every month. Do you know they have some of the finest photographers in the world on staff?

So let me make my confession. I am what some of my teachers at the Christian school might have termed a "tree-hugging, granola-faced pansy boy." When it comes to environmental issues and the whole "greenhouse gas," "carbon footprint," and even the dreaded "global warming" thing, I'm as left as the side of the road the Brits drive on. I like nature to stay natural. I like trees. I like people who pick up their trash. I like fair-trade shade-grown coffee and organic farming. I like clothing companies who don't exploit the environment or employ child labor in other countries. I support local farming. I like fuel-efficient, low-emissions cars. When my wife gets a cup of coffee to go, she saves the cup and reuses it at least once. I'm learning to follow her example.

Let me make clear that I'm still skeptical about various environmental organizations. I read a news story about an Earth Day celebration in Dallas a few years ago that left a lot of litter all over the place. I think a lot of environmentalist wackos are precisely that: wackos. And I still believe God created this whole world, despite reading and hearing all the evolutionism in National Geographic and on NPR. And it's precisely because I believe that God created this world that I think it's worth taking care of. He gave us that job, remember? We're to have dominion over it, but we're not to wreck it with our trash.

Now go pick up some litter. And recycle that soda can.



*Not his real name. Mysterious, eh?