One Small Step...

           I could not see anything.  My $5 headlamp was grossly inadequate at penetrating the seemingly endless dark of the Costa Rican rain forest.  The torrential rain beat down upon me, soaking through my clothes, as I stood frozen in place.  A lifelong fear of suspension bridges prevented me from moving.  I knew the green metal foot bridge would be slippery, and I could hear it creaking in the wind.  I also knew that about halfway across it was slightly crooked and I wondered if my boots would have enough traction.  I stood there, watching the flickering of my classmates’ headlamps fading away into the distance on the other side.  All I could do was breathe.  The rain was warm, which was strange, not what I was used to.  The river, swollen from the heavy rain, flowed somewhere unseen below.  The nighttime noises of the rain forest: tink frogs, marine toads, an occasional vermiculated screech-owl, countless insects, and myriad other creatures, created a stunning cacophony with the sound of the river and the rain.

            Suddenly, Peter cleared his throat behind me.  My teacher and fearless leader of this expedition, he knew about my fear of bridges.  In fact, I had given him a short list of all the things of which I was afraid: bridges, streetcars, emotions, root vegetables, etc.

            “Just take it slow,” he said loudly in his strong west Texas accent, “one step at a time.  I’ll be right behind you all the way.  If you want to turn back, I’ll take you back.  If you want to go on, I’ll take you.  Don’t be afraid.”

            I hesitated, took a deep breath, and braced myself.

            “But Peter, you don’t understand!”  I yelled into the darkness behind me.  The wind whipped the warm rain into my face as I turned.  “If I take one step onto that bridge, I’ll never come back!”

            He smiled and slapped me on the back.  “That’s my girl!”

Bat Girl

The flight from Atlanta to Nicaragua was much shorter than I expected.  I must have fallen asleep.  The jolt of the landing gear hitting the runway knocked me back into consciousness.  I sat up, excited, nervous, terrified, proud.  My previous trips to Central America had all been arranged by the college, all I had to do was show up.  This was different: I had done this all on my own.  I gathered my belongings, retrieved my checked bag, and went outside into the tropical evening to find my guide.  I hoped she would recognize me, and I her.  We had met thrice before, but the street outside the Managua International Airport was dark and chaotic, so loud, and so many insects and smells and yelling people.  I quickly found her and we proceeded to the hotel.

            “Is that a Townsend’s?”  I heard a strong southern accent as soon as I walked into the lobby.  “What?” I asked, taken aback.  “Your tattoo.  Townsend’s big-eared, right?”  A tall man with tattoos, scruffy facial hair, and glasses was the speaker.  “Corynorhinus townsendii,” he said in his slow southern drawl.  I smiled.  I had been extremely nervous about meeting the other people in the group.  They all knew each other, all attended the same university, and I was the odd one out.  During four years at college, I had never met another bat person, yet here they were.  Six of them!  I had found my people.  I breathed a sigh of relief, but I still did not feel totally at ease.

            The first day of the trip was fairly uneventful: traveling to the field station (bus, ferry, a smaller bus on unpaved roads), getting settled in and acquainted with each other.  On the second night, it was time for the part I was most excited about: catching bats!  After an exhausting two mile hike in the stifling tropical humidity, we set up three mist nets and had a brief training session.  I was to work at net “A” with the tall, scruffy, tattooed gentleman who had identified my tattoo.  Our first bat of the evening flew into the net just after dark; my partner removed it and placed it in a small fabric bag.  We waited a few moments, and then began the short hike back to the processing station.

            In order to return to the station, we had to cross over a small ravine.  One side was quite steep and covered in dense, thorny brambles.  My partner grabbed my left hand and I stepped about halfway up the bank.  Suddenly, the earth crumbled away beneath my foot and I fell, hard, all the way down.  The worst pain I had ever felt in my life, along with a disgusting popping sound, erupted from my left shoulder.  When he dropped my hand, my arm fell down, limp, lifeless, like a piece of meat.  I could not move it.  My brain sent signals, but received no response.  After a couple moments, I could not feel it either.  With my right arm I pushed myself up, brushed the dirt off my legs, pulled the two-inch-long thorns out of my thighs, and grabbed his hand again.  This time I made it up the bank, covered in dirt and blood.

            Several weeks, many doctor appointments, x-rays, an arthrogram, and an MRI later, I found out that I had dislocated my shoulder and while I was in shock had popped it back into its socket, bruising the end of my humerus and pulling ligaments in the process.  I never let on to my bat people, not even the professor, how badly I was hurt or how much pain I was in.  I paid a lot for that trip (all of my financial aid refund and then some), and went through a lot of trouble to get myself to Nicaragua (including three expensive rabies vaccines and the logistical nightmare of getting from rural western Maryland to Reagan National), and I was not going to let a totally useless left arm stand in my way of making the most of the experience.  I could not lift or carry anything.  I could not put any weight on it.  I could not even wash my hair properly.  I had trouble sleeping.  I was in constant pain, with only extra-strength acetaminophen for comfort.  As Clark W. Griswold says, “Nothing worthwhile is easy.”  Yet all the while, I smiled, laughed, studied, and worked as hard as anyone.  I soaked up as much knowledge as I could.  I wanted to learn everything.  Every night I helped set up the nets to the best of my ability.  I also recorded data and after a couple nights began to process the bats.

I had touched bats before, but I had never been able to hold them.  This time I had rabies inoculations and thick leather gloves, so I was ready.  I knew from experience that they were the softest creatures I had ever felt, but I was not prepared for the emotional reaction to actually holding one in my hands.  Holding a bat is a delicate balancing act.  You have to be firm enough to prevent escape, and gentle enough to prevent suffocating or crushing them.  I discovered that I am a natural.  I cradled each bat in my fingers, with my thumb under its jaw, allowing it to chew on the end of my glove.  In this position they become more or less docile, and you can measure and manipulate their wings and bodies.  It also helps calm them if you whisper in their ear.  I felt like I was the Mother Bat and they were all my babies, so I had to be gentle and loving and protect them.  It filled my heart with warmth and a sense of purpose I had never felt before.

Over the course of the trip, my bat people were incredible sources of support and inspiration.  I felt like we had always been friends, though separated by time, geography, and circumstance.  As the Great Gonzo says, “There’s not a word yet for old friends who’ve just met.”  One evening, after partaking in the local rum, I collapsed in the bathroom.  One of the boys found me and rescued me off of the floor.  (I could not get up myself because of my shoulder, plus I was heavily intoxicated.)  I clung to him and started to cry.  The stress, exhaustion, pain, anxiety, all melted away.  He held me for a few moments, and then showed me a huge scar on his left shoulder, which had been rebuilt after he had been injured in Afghanistan.  He was lucky to be alive.  He showed me how his hands shook constantly due to nerve damage from the injury.  I showed him the scar on my back where a precancerous mole over an inch in diameter had been removed.  He noticed the scars on my arms, and then the ones on my wrists.  I, too, was lucky to be alive.  “PTSD?” he asked.  I nodded.  He embraced me again, for much longer this time.  He asked me why, what happened.  I told him the awful dirty secret.  He hugged me tighter and said, “The important thing is that you survived, that you’re here now, and that alone makes the world a better place.”

The trip ended with more traveling (bus, ferry, bus, taxi), a fire ant attack, a creepy jewelry vendor, Italian food, accordion serenades, and emotional goodbyes.  I had known my bat people for less than two weeks, but they will be in my heart forever.  In that short time, I learned so much from them, not just how to capture, handle, and identify bats, but how to accept myself for exactly who I am and never back down from anything.  Hopefully they learned something from me as well, maybe how to laugh at themselves no matter what happens, or how to do whatever it takes to reach their dreams and be happy.  According to Max Fischer, the secret is to “find what you love to do and do it for the rest of your life.”  For me, it is working with bats.

Why I am, and probably always will be, a canvasser.

            My job is hard.  I go door to door in my hometown, attempting to reach out to people about an issue very important to me: destruction of the environment.  It is a job which most people I know neither appreciate nor respect.  They remind me I have a college degree, I could get a “real” job.  What they fail to understand is that I am called to do this job, from somewhere deep inside me, my heart or soul or guts, maybe my conscience.  It is my duty, my obligation.

            More specifically, I work for a small grassroots group dedicated to protecting one particular National Forest from illegal and destructive logging.  This forest is where my entire hometown gets drinking water, some of the cleanest in the country.  It is also a forest where federal agencies who were designed to be stewards and caretakers of these great lands have gotten away with breaking the law for a long time, and few people seem to notice.  Luckily, those few people have done a lot, and inspired more people to get involved.  My job is to educate the public, one at a time, and hopefully inspire more people to get involved.  On a typical night, however, I see more apathy, complacency, and laziness in people than I do inspiration or any other kind of emotion.  The most common response I get is, “What does that have to do with me?”  I want to reply, “Do you drink water?  Do you breathe oxygen?  Do you know where those things come from?”  Instead I say, “Everything.”  This issue has everything to do with you, and this is why:

National Forests are public land.  They belong to me, and to you, and to every citizen of this country.  They do not belong to the government.  The US Forest Service and other agencies were created to manage these lands in the public interest, yet somewhere along the line the public forgot that and the forest became a commodity for private interests, such as logging and energy companies.  Put simply, the government is destroying MY land, YOUR land, for corporate gain.  Old growth is clearcut, water is poisoned, and endangered species are eradicated.  That land and everything on it belongs to us: soil, water, flora and fauna.  If a government agency broke into your home, took your belongings, sold them to the highest bidder, and kept the money, you would be pissed.  If they then cut down all the trees in your yard and did the same thing, you would again be pissed.  So why not get pissed when they do that in our public forests?

I am pissed about it.  I am mad as hell.  They have no right to do that.  And we have no right to sit idly by and let them.  The reason I go door to door and tell people about this is because I want them to get angry.  I consider my night at work a success if I can get one person riled up about this.  Most nights, however, I end up feeling defeated because no one I spoke to all night gave a crap about the water that comes out of their tap or the air they breathe.  I wonder if what I do is worth it at all.

I have sat and cried on more curbs in this city than I care to tell.  I have been called every name in the book, as they say.  I have had the police called on me, been threatened with guns, chased and bitten by dogs.  I have been stalked and physically attacked.  I have passed out from heat stroke and broken my foot.  I have screamed and pulled my hair out because I could not take the apathy any longer.  I believe in this cause so strongly that I have put my mind and body on the line, all so I can hear the majority of people say, “What does that have to do with me?”  “I’m not interested.”  “I’d rather not get involved.”  My favorite of all time was, “Oh, you must be from the Too Little, Too Late Committee.”

My mom asks me from time to time why I keep going back if it is so distressing for me.  I tell her it is because I have to.  I refuse to believe that people do not care.  I know they do.  And each new door is an opportunity to connect with people who care and want to do something about it.  Sure, most people out there are assholes, but a few are not.  I am looking for the few.

I have worked for this particular group on and off for over seven years.  In that time, I have built up my fair share of canvasser horror stories, but there have been some really positive, moving, inspiring moments as well.  I have met some incredibly passionate, caring, generous individuals, along with some activist grannies, awesome little kids, and adorable pets.  I have been given cocoa and warm meals when I was cold, ice water and air conditioned breaks when I was hot.  These are the moments that make my job worthwhile, and part of why I keep coming back.  It is also pretty nice to come home from work knowing I did something good for the world.

But the main reason I do my job is that I am mad, and I want other people to be mad too.  I want them to be mad enough to stand up and do something.  It is our land.  It is our problem.  And, whether people like it or not, it is our responsibility.  So, if you are reading this, get angry!  Maybe not about this exact issue, but about something!  And use that anger as fuel to go out there and change the world!