looking back one year

Lately the lyrics to a Cranberries song have been running through my head: "how my life is changing everyday, in every possible way."

One year ago I was in prison in Greenland. Prison was an unsavory experience, but the journey that led me there was epic and beautiful. Not long after Andy and I made the cross country drive from Seattle to the farm, I received a call from a friend asking if I was available to join the action team for a Greenpeace campaign. Once I learned that the campaign was stopping oil drilling in the arctic ocean, and after talking it over with Andy, I was packing a backpack and heading down to D.C. for climb training in the Greenpeace warehouse.

A few days later I was on a flight to London. After narrowly being passed through Heathrow Customs and Immigration (let's just say this isn't my first rodeo), I sleepily watched the beautiful English countryside pass me by on a train to Fowey on the southern coast. This is where the Greenpeace boat Esperanza was docked.

The last time I embarked on a Greenpeace boat (the M.V. Arctic Sunrise) I was barely 18 years old, and had no idea what was in store for the next several months as we sailed up the Pacific and through the Inside Passage of Southeast Alaska campaigning to protect the rainforests of the Tongass National Forest. I knew this would be a very different experience- different boat, different crew, different ocean, different campaign, and the biggest difference was my role on the boat. Seven years prior, on the Sunrise, I was a deckhand and the ships 'garbologist'. My day-in, and day-out duties involved sorting trash, recyclables and organics (food waste) on the ships poop deck. Of course I also got to clean, swab, paint, and help out with a few odd projects that involved some fun power tools. And then there were the campaign duties- painting banners, giving tours of the boat to visitors at each port we stopped in, and running educational activities for the kids who visited (this was one of the best jobs on the ship in my opinion, especially with the gang of half-feral kids that visited everyday while we were docked in the Alaskan village of Haidaburg). I even helped in an action off the coast of British Columbia where I froze my butt off for a few hours helping to unfurl a huge floating banner in protest of destructive fish farming in ocean waters.

I'm the little dot floating under the "K". This was before the helicopter came in to take video footage and blew the whole banner over forcing us back into the frigid water and rearrange the giant letters again. 

I fell in love with ship life in those three months on board. It was more than just the constant slap of the water on the bow, or waking up to a new coastline everyday; I was living and working with incredibly passionate people from around the world, that had no shortage of life experiences to share with me. My heart swells with nostalgia thinking back on the incredible people I shared that time with and the beyond-words-beautiful places we experienced together.

On the Esperanza I was part of the action team- there were three of us climbers. The first few days at port in Fowey were busy loading gear and supplies. It was a confusing time as I wasn't sure what exactly this campaign entailed or how we were planning on stopping a huge oil rig bound for drilling in the Arctic Ocean- it was also confusing because the Esperanza is a much bigger ship than the Sunrise and it took a few days to find my way around and learn the names of the almost 30 people on board. Soon enough we set sail, I got my sea legs back, and I began to get to know my new shipmates. 

What a crew they turned out to be. Representing 18 countries, this crew was a grab bag of personalities, skills and tastes in music. I delighted in conversations during meal times or over a beer and a card game after a days work on deck. There was a fun-loving and hard-working bunch of deckhands and campaigners that made action training on deck a pleasure. I was so thankful for this as the day to confront the oil rig neared and my nerves grew. Most of my time was spent climb training. This involved regaining a muscle memory of important knots, dangling from the ships structure (all the while swinging to and fro with the ocean swells), and practicing for nearly any scenario we might encounter on the rig.

Climb training in the helicopter deck and work on deck.

In an email to a friend a few weeks before Oliver was born, I compared this month of training on the Esperanza to the wait for Oliver's birth: While Andy and I have had a lot of fun preparing for peanut's arrival with classes on birthing, breastfeeding, and newborn care (not to mention a stack of books that has taken over the bedside table), it is hard to feel prepared and relaxed knowing it could be any day. It's oddly reminiscent of the month spent taxiing around the North Atlantic looking for an oil rig, that once found (day or night), would deploy me into a crazy unknown length of time dangerously dangling thirty meters high off its structure. No matter how much I prepared or how many safety nets we had in place, I knew it could go drastically wrong, or really well, and that even the best case scenario would be scary, uncomfortable and incredibly rewarding. 

When the day came to climb the oil rig I watched from the bridge as my climb team scaled the back side of the rig and secured the pod between the flare booms. The constant summer sun was at its lowest point in the sky, giving a dusky glow to the cold choppy water even though it was the middle of the night. I soon joined them on the rig...that sentence in no way captures the epic-ness of getting up to my climb team; let me try again...with a dry suit, climbing harness, and about 40 lbs of gear strapped to me, I climbed out the pilot door on the side of the Esperanza, and into a zodiac that sped into the wake of the behemoth oil rig. The zodiac pilot kept pace with the rig at about 8 knots to position us directly under the pod where a climbing rope dangled down about 80 feet to me. As I clipped onto the rope and began to jig my way up, the zodiac pulled away, and all the remained underneath me was the deep, freezing Arctic Ocean. I was breathless and overheated when I climbed through the bottom hatch and into "the pod" that was to become my home for the next 4 days.

The pod was actually a recycled bottle bin that had been reinforced with kevlar and fiberglass and fitted with a top hatch, bottom hatch, porthole and air vent. It has been used to lock-down to the anchors of drilling ships in the past- the evidence of this was left on the pod wall with drawing of each oil vessel that was occupied and tally marks for the number of days in the pod. It was about the same space inside as a two person dome tent, only packed with supplies- comms equipment, batteries, laptop, food, water, sleeping bags, first aid, and climbing gear. There was barely room for one, but it was home for me and my pod mate Luke. Luckily Luke and I got along well, and seemed to strike a balance between keeping each other company and allowing quiet time for an escape from the person mere inches away. 

Not long after I got up to the pod, I climbed out onto one of the rig's flare booms (using slings and a harness to keep me safely attached to two points of the structure at all times) to retrieve a strop that was left behind on the initial climb up the rig. The flare booms are crane-like structures that are swung out from the rig during drilling to burn off gas encountered while drilling. As long as we were locked to them, the rig couldn't drill. I paused on the boom to take in the scene around me.

Two ships in front of me: the Esperanza, and a Danish Navy vessel. To my left, 12 miles away were the steep, white mountains of the Greenland coast, their jagged, glaciated peaks in stark contrast to the crisp sky above. In the expanse of ocean beside me I could barely make out the outline of the massive icebergs we had sailed passed the day before. Taking a moment to reflect on the sights from the days just prior to that, I recalled majestic sea birds floating over head, pods of pilot whales sleek in the dark blue waters below, and the crispest, cleanest air my lungs had ever encountered. Looming behind me was a rusted, 53,000 ton, behemoth oil rig- only a reflection of our current place in history where the last, bitterly expensive drops of oil are being sought to feed our addiction to cars, plastic and cheap energy. 

The magnitude of this moment overcame me. This rig was quickly approaching its first exploratory drill site. What would come of the pristine arctic environment around me if oil was found? How long until deep sea drilling here would lead to a massive oil spill, the likes of which is still poisoning the banks and economy of my native New Orleans? It was easy to see from the harsh weather and icebergs we had encountered, that an oil spill here would never be able to be cleaned up. This was highlighted by the fact that drilling here had only recently become possible due to the climate change induced retreat of the arctic ice cap. 

From our pod we were able to talk about what was at stake in the arctic with media from around the world. The pod was a beacon of what our energy future could look like; a windmill and solar panel gave us energy to connect to the world via internet, satellite phone and radio. The days and nights blurred into one another with the midnight sun. The rig suddenly stopped one night at the drill sight. Loud noises and vibrations ensued and I was terrified they were going to recklessly start drilling with us attached to the rig. They didn't, but we were costing them thousands of dollars everyday they couldn't drill. Each day they couldn't drill was another day that an arctic oil disaster was averted. As word got out in the media, Cairn's stocks dropped, at a time when the rest of wall street was celebrating a rise. If you want a large corporation with a lot of momentum behind it to listen to you, you have to hit them in the bottom line. Dollar signs are the only language they speak. Greenpeace knows this; it is how their activists have managed to reform the destructive actions of several multinational corporations and save countless acres of wild land. 

Just when I started adjusting to the constant light, noise, movement and cramped quarters of the pod we were plucked out by the Danish Navy, brought on deck the oil rig and arrested. On the helicopter ride from the rig to the capitol of Greenland where we would be imprisoned, I looked out the window and took in the pristine beauty and elegance of the ocean and ice carved mountains. I had kept calm and collected through the excitement thus far, but once I got to the Nuuk jail everything hit me at once and I weeped for this place and the destruction we are hell bent on bringing to this planet. 

I spent the next week in the Nuuk prison with Luke and a bunch of Greenlandic guys. I'm glossing over this part, well, because it was dehumanizing, boring, and at times terrifying. There was a great celebration however. One morning during our 30 minute "recess" in the tiny courtyard outside, a guard told Luke and I that 20 more of "our friends" had been arrested. That afternoon we were picked up by the chief of police and brought back to the jail where we had been booked. We walked back to the cell and were greeted by the raucous, celebratory cries of our shipmates. They had boarded the rig a few days after we were taken off and demanded to see Cairn Energy's oil spill response plan. Words cannot describe how happy I was to be reunited once again with some of the dear friends I had made on the boat and thought I may never be seeing again.

Luke and I were deported to Copenhagen, where we spent the night in single cells of a huge prison. The next morning we were taken to the airport and each put on flights home. I arrived in New York in June wearing the same long johns and sweatpants I had been in from the pod through prison; I was frazzled and exhausted; and I was met by the warmest, safest arms I've ever known- my Andy. 

My Andy, who had been sleeplessly following every step of the action and anxiously awaiting any word from me in Greenland, held me in his arms and drove me back to our home on the farm. I was so happy to be home with him. There were some jokes made about me needing to be barefoot and pregnant to keep me from going off on such a daring adventure again....you do the math.

Cairn never found oil that season at a loss of $1.2 billion. Exploratory drilling is set to continue off the coast of Greenland again this summer, this time in Baffin Bay. Part of me would like to be up there stopping the drilling. But, a bigger part of me feels like I did all I can do at the scene of the crime, and I'll continue the fight safely here on the home front, for now. Besides, I have taken up a new cause. One I am even more passionate about. It's important to fight against destruction, but I feel that it is equally important to create the world we want to see as well. A just and sustainable world based on authenticity and community. So for now I am trading in my harness and banner and I'll be busy raising my baby boy and tending my garden with love. I just discovered the name for this cause: Radical Homemaking.