Perhaps all standoffs between so-called
environmentalists and industry are clashes of mythic proportion,
but the unfolding story of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
seems particularly so, a world-class drama whose players include
migratory birds, caribou, polar bears, native Alaskans,
eco-activists, oil executives and politicians. The outcome of this
mythic tale is yet unscripted. If not for the imagination and
action of a few visionary individuals, a largely unwitnessed,
tundra-smashing conclusion would have been enacted decades ago.
One of the visionaries, Mardy Murie, celebrated her 101st
birthday in August. A person who reaches such formidable age can
hardly help but acquire near-mythic stature of her own, and so
Mardy has become something of a legend: She is the grande dame of
the conservation movement. On her birthday, small clusters of
well-wishers greeted Mardy as she sat on the porch of her storybook
log cabin. Her white hair was elegantly arranged; she wore a dress
embroidered with flowers. She seemed to settle her eyes on mine
when I stepped forward to thank her for her life’s work and wish
her happy birthday. I knew she didn’t recognize me; It didn’t
matter. Mardy always loved a party, and probably would not have
minded that this one was also for us–those whom she’d inspired,
mentored or challenged to activism, on any scale.
It is
impossible to gauge the impact of this frail centenarian on the
American consciousness. Anyone who has ever heard of the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge has Mardy to thank (or curse,
depending).
With her husband, wildlife biologist Olaus
Murie, Mardy honeymooned by dogsled up Alaska’s Koyukuk River in
1924, inaugurating a love affair with not only with Olaus, but with
a wild place. More sojourns above the Arctic Circle followed, and
the couple’s connection with the land and creatures eventually
inspired the establishment of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,
for which the Muries–along with George Collins and Lowell
Sumner–were largely responsible. Olaus died in 1963, and Mardy
furthered their vision.
In 1964, she was present when
Lyndon Johnson signed the Wilderness Act into law; it had been
conceived on the Murie’s ranch in Moose, Wyo. In 1998, after
decades of impassioned writing, speaking and testifying before
Congress, Mardy traveled to Washington to receive the Presidential
Medal of Freedom for a life dedicated to conservation. She was then
nearly 96 and a true elder, an “environmentalist” long before there
was such a word who devoted herself to a wild place for, as she has
written, “the sake of the land itself.”
“Don’t call it
‘ANWR,’” she has said. “Use the words ‘Arctic’ and ‘refuge.’” Only
those specific words, she insisted, reflect any essence of the
place. She was right, of course. ANWR, with its unfortunate
pronunciation, “anwar,” sounds like a place far away, maybe in
Saudi Arabia–somewhere an average American probably doesn’t care
much about–instead of the last 125 miles of Alaskan Arctic
coastline that is not already open for oil drilling. Mardy
recognized that such confusion doesn’t hurt oil companies.
Mardy was a cultural aberration for her time, a woman who charted
her own course regardless of societal expectation. Politically
active as a wife, mother and widow, she was adventurous, a woman
whose unwavering conviction was rooted in an intimate relationship
with a wild place and which influenced the pro-conservation
decisions of at least four U.S. Presidents: Dwight Eisenhower,
Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, who vowed to Mardy
that there’d be no drilling in the Arctic Refuge on his
watch. Yet despite having audiences with presidents, over the
decades Mardy welcomed me and thousands of other ordinary pilgrims
with homemade cookies and tea.
She believed in the value
of conversation. She loved to dance, and at her 101st birthday,
while musicians serenaded her, she seemed to be waltzing inside. I
went home from her party wondering: How many of us can identify
what we cherish, where we commit ourselves with utter certainty?
Mardy Murie is legendary, but she is also an ordinary
human being who knew what she valued and who stood her ground like
a mother bear. She was simultaneously fierce and soft. She was an
unstoppable activist in an era before environmentalism took on
labels ranging from elitist to left-wing, and before a schism was
gouged between conservation and industry. Perhaps her path was less
rocky than ours. Still, her journey required hope that carried her
beyond wishful thinking, and into action. Her contributions are
many, but for me, her most enduring gift is the example of her life
— written large, and with wild grace.
Geneen
Marie Haugen is a contributor to Writers on the Range (hcn.org), a
service of High Country News in Paonia, Colorado. She writes in
Kelly, Wyoming.
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