Green Means Doing the Little Things
Some Earth Day thoughts on our camp.
Each year, this April week brings a taste of real warmth to the north, and that turns the topic of every local conversation to ice-out on Algonquin lakes and rivers.
On television, the week is often loud with caring claims around Earth Day. There are dire warnings of global resource calamities, new technologies and innovations to rescue the planet, and often many companies selling us something with a ‘Green’ twist.
But this April week can be a good time to just sit back and reflect a little; reflect on the little things that we can do. That’s how Earth Day started 39 years ago, with young people doing little things like cleaning up roadside garbage, planting trees and trying out the novelties of composting or recycling, turning off some lights in the house, or writing on both sides of the sheet of paper before tossing it.
Some little things Pathfinder trippers do:
- wash cookware with minimal soap, away from the water
- build small cooking fires with clean burning cedar and hardwoods
- pack out all their trash, and whatever litter they find from others
- rebuild vandalized fire places
- leave some dry firewood so the next camper won’t cut live growth
- put out root fires
- pack light and travel light on the land
- leave every site better than they find it
Some little things done at Pathfinder Island:
- severely limit the use of electricity and use cfl bulbs wherever possible
- use pit toilets with holding tanks, to conserve energy and water
- capture all grease and food waste for removal from camp
- remove all human waste to licensed septic facilities each year
- use sanitary dishwashing and real plates instead of disposable paper goods
- recycle all paper, cardboard, plastic, glass and metal
- compost all food waste and composting paper products
- lake bathe with bio. soaps, avoiding energy use and wastewater from showers
- use 4-stroke outboard motors, and paddle when possible
- maintain existing trails and do not create new ones
- plant trees and ground cover beds
- tankless propane hot water heater instead of conventional tank
- low-impact water purification and conservation
It's the daily practice of these little things that tend to make our boys feel like citizens of the natural world, and to carry that feeling into their thoughts and actions as men. When they do, it can lead to college and career choices that put the environment first, and later on to personal, family and business decisions that can protect wild places, or conserve resources.
Maybe in some ways, the little things in a Pathfinder summer trump the hype of one media day in April.
Canoe Tripping - When we canoe trip with Pathfinder, it tends to make us citizens of the natural world.
Think of a Pathfinder trip. We travel softly on the land. We paddle waters in cedar and canvas canoes, walk ancient trails with what we can carry on our backs. We kindle our cooking fires at campsites used for thousands of years, with only a few small tents and a pot and skillet. We bring little into the backcountry and then take it all away with us when we depart. We even take away a lot of everyone else’s refuse that’s left behind.
We can’t help also taking away a feeling of caring about the woods and waters. We do the little things. We don’t dig ditches around our tent set-ups, we don’t trample campsite vegetation, we don’t wash our dishes in the lake, we don’t cut live growth to make a fire, we don’t build silly benches or tables at sites. In fact, Pathfinder trips clean portages and campsites along their way, rebuild vandalized fireplaces, report damaged outhouse privies, put out root fires, and give a hand to tourists who might leave a mess just from inexperience or fatigue.
Maybe more than anything else, the Pathfinder tripper feels differently about the world, having traveled it by his own muscle power, with only what he can carry in his canoe and between his shoulders. He comes to feel he belongs to this world. He is cooled by a swim in it, quenched like never before after a long drink of it. He spends his nights closer to it than he does in his house. He listens to and watches it ‘from the front row,’ at dawn, dusk and noon.
His style of travel means he will see moose feeding in the channels of creeks and the backs of bays. He drowses and wakes with pine bough shadows swaying overhead and loon calls carrying across the water. He hikes and sweats across a trail flanked by swaying stands of pine, balsam, cedar maple and beech. He sees a forest floor carpeted in needles, ferns and bunchberry. The lake is such a welcome sight beyond the last horizon of trees. Stars, an overhead carpet, defy belief as they emerge in the blackest of blue nightfall skies. His fire crackles and burns low. The tripper feels tired but satisfied, feels tuned to every sight, sound and smell, feels a belonging to the world, and feels that probably early man felt a similar belonging. He doesn’t want this world to disappear.
In the grip of this feeling of connection, a Pathfinder tripper is sort of making a pact with the natural world that will survive to influence his thoughts and actions in the future.
At Pathfinder Island - Our Campers and Staff spend the summer away from the constant car shuttling that is life in the city and suburbs. We eat together as a community, which can feed itself more efficiently than can individual families.
We live in canvas tents, so we have shelter, shade and cooling without modern buildings. We bathe in the lake with bio friendly soaps, rather than use energy and cleaning supplies and have wastewater handling hassles by building shower houses.We use old-fashioned vaulted pit toilets, rather than pressure water toilets requiring high-impact septic systems. All camp toilet waste is held and then removed from the Island to licensed septic landfills in Ontario, which turn waste into inert solids and clean water.
Electricity is minimal at camp, no lights or outlets in sleeping areas. The light bulbs are mostly compact fluorescent, with a few low voltage halogens. Food waste is composted. Outboard motors have been switched over to 4-stroke technology. Over the past two years, trash has been radically reduced through a partnership with Algonquin Park. Today, most waste is either recycled or composted. We avoid putting batteries, paper, cardboard, plastics and metals into the waste stream.
Overall, it’s admittedly a tough call whether the jet flights, car rides and bus trips to Pathfinder Island use so much fuel and resource that it balances out the benefits of simple living on the Island. But one thing is certain: the investment in getting boys to Pathfinder can pay dividends in their long-term attitude toward the earth and its limited resources.
While we may not yet be embarking on solar, wind or geothermal power at Pathfinder we are still shaping boys’ consciousness, by doing the little things.