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We can talk until we're blue in the face about how we don't want fracking, but if not natural gas, then what type of energy do we want to be supporting? Even supporters of natural gas development recognize that it is just another fossil fuel that will eventually become limited and therefore more expensive someday, so it is incredibly important that regardless of what is currently taking place, we do what we can to develop alternative energy that will sustainably lead us into the future (and hopefully give us an early departure from harmful fossil fuels). Enough with the "sacrifice zones" creating devastating consequences in one area to benefit another. Enough with the shady business dealings, absurd campaign contributions, and hypocritical profit-driving tactics of the fossil fuel industry. If all this fracking is supposed to "relieve our dependence on foreign oil," then what's with the proposed export facilities?! And when is it ever going to make sense to burn ridiculous amounts of one fuel in order to obtain another with such devastating environmental consequences, let alone to permanently contaminate perfectly good drinking water in order to obtain such a "clean-burning" fuel? 

A friend of mine had the opportunity to visit Banff last summer and sent me one of the most beautiful postcards I have ever received. After that lovely introduction, I came to find out that the Banff Centre hosts a world-renowned film festival once a year with visits to 40 countries across the globe. The application process to host the festival is a lot more competitive than it was a decade ago, but fortunately the Sierra Club Moshannon Group applied & started showcasing the magic eleven years ago in State College, PA. Lucky for us, the roots were planted and now the festival returns year after year! This year's films were fueled by extremely passionate people artistically showcasing what they truly love and believe in. 

 

In the feature film & award winner, attendees witnessed two young Norwegian surfers surviving a winter somewhere "North of the Sun" in a shack they hand-built from scraps and garbage they found on the beach. What they couldn't utilize, they

bundled up & ended up removing (nearly

"Nordfor Sola - North of the Sun"

three tons of garbage!) from the area when the winter was through. In "Stand," a stand-up paddleboarder traveled the west coast of British Columbia, visiting with the native people & highlighting just what is at stake if the Enbridge tar sands oil pipeline is constructed. The narrator makes a valid argument that the tourism & fishing industries that have been fueling the economy for decades could be totally wiped out with just one oil spill, and though that cannot be predicted, each tanker ship would have to navigate extremely dangerous waters through the narrow inlets of the Great Bear Rainforest before hitting the open ocean and heading for Asia. In "Streams of Consequence," we met the natives of Patagonia who are fighting the dams that would completely submerge the homesteads they have been thriving in for generations. 

 

Other film selections included:  a 71-year-old biologist's very first rappel into a South American canyon to document the age of a prehistoric frog species, the pebble toad; the beautiful story of one woman's life, the "Keeper of the Mountain" (Mt. Everest); powder skiing through the remains of a smoldering forest fire; a very recent women's triumph in the realm of olympic ski jumping; whitewater kayaking, rock climbing and canyoneering adventures; and the grand finale - a very artistic piece featuring totally naked skiers and snowboarders... what a riot! 

The State College High School Auditorium was packed with compassionate people who all seemed to love and appreciate nature and the adventure of the great outdoors. Local vendors and organizations showcased information and stimulated conversation. The energy was very positive and uplifting, and I'm glad we were able to be a part of it. Thank you to the Sierra Club Moshannon Group for hosting such an inspiring event, and to the Banff Center for showcasing such heart-warmingly important passion, talent and creativity. 

by Barbara Hurd
as featured in "Brevity Magazine," March 3, 2013 

 

 for our grandchildren, with apologies

 

And there it lay, miles under the surface, as the old basin above it emptied and rose and more continents meandered into each other and finally the sun dried the Appalachians, which eroded and softened, and three hundred million years after the first mud settled on the bottom of that basin, humans appeared. We developed with lightning speed - geologically speaking -our brains and vision and hands, our fast and furious tools, our drills and ingenuity, and all the while that ooze-become-rock lay locked and impenetrable, deep in the earth, farther than anything, including anyone's imagination, reached, until in the split second that is humankind's history on this planet we pushed a drill with a downhole mud-motor a mile deep and made it turn sideways and snaked it into that ancient rock speckled with evidence of another eon, and a few minutes later we detonated small explosives and blasted millions of gallons of slick water -sand and water and a bit of biocide in case anything was alive down there - into what hadn't seen water or light for four hundred million years.

 

The shale shattered, the black rock spider-webbed with skinny fissures as the above world inserted its tendrils, and into those tiny rifts we rammed more sand to keep them wedged open wider.

 

And then-remember the blue-green algae?-the gas that had been locked in that stony underworld for almost four hundred million years suddenly had an exit. It flowed through the intricate shudderings of brand new fissures and up the borehole through the limestone that had been laid down millions of years after the mud, and up through the bedrock just below someone's pasture and out into a world with air and fresh water where we humans, fur-less and in need of fuel to stay warm, exercised our resourceful minds.

 

And then in another split-second's time-geologically speaking-we drilled another thousand wells, fracked another million tons of stony earth a mile beneath our feet.

 

And when the slick water was withdrawn from the fissures and small slither-spaces and that prehistoric bedrock was lickety-split forever changed, no one could predict the impact, not even we inventive humans whose arrival on this planet is so recent, whose footprints, so conspicuous and large, often obliterate cautionary tales.

 

And soon the unpredictable, as always, occurred.

 

And now, in no time at all, not everything takes forever any longer.

 

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Barbara Hurd is the author of three books of creative nonfiction and two of poetry. Her work has appeared in numerous journals including Best American Essays, The Yale Review, The Georgia Review, Orion, Audubon, and others. The recipient of an NEA Fellowship for Creative Nonfiction, winner of the Sierra Club's National Nature Writing Award, three Pushcart Prizes, and four Maryland State Arts Council Awards, she teaches in the Stonecoast MFA program at the University of Southern Maine.