Another typed protest letter, this one to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, regarding the permit that would allow 20 miles of crude oil to be transported every day through the fragile ecosystem of Glenwood Canyon. You can read about the issue and the more staid protest I attended here. It felt okay to stand outside a play a drum and strain to understand what people were saying as they bleated through an under-powered megaphone, but in the end, I prefer to show my stripes with beauty, humanity and the donation of pre-dawn hours.
Though of course the final piece has improved moments and jokes that deviate from the draft, it’s included for you below.
Dear Secretary Vilsack,
Dark here in western Colorado. Sun’s not due up for another couple hours. The fire is burning low and my eight-year old daughter is restless on the couch. She’s fallen ill at last after having fought off weeks of all the goings-around at school, and the care required threatens the many plans of my day, but so it goes (which is easy to say in the dark and stillness of a predawn; when the sun’s up and the day afoot, I’m sure to find a more piquant frustration). On a brighter note, she was able to stay well and make all the performances of her play this past week, her first with the local children’s theater. It was beyond adorable and she was so proud. That put a ring of warmth around my heart that I can rest against.Â
Small moments. Minor victories and defeats. Another man finding his path forward with the people he loves, trying to do what’s right by everyone.
I’m a teacher. I teach music to children grades 1-8. It’s wonderful work and it’s my hope to give them something beautiful, something that brightens their day and makes them feel connected to something large and true. I’m not always successful, but that’s the goal. Small moments, minor victories and defeats, tiny seeds of peace and change planted for a future I can only hope will come. I cling desperately to the faith that all of it will add up to something meaningful, making some small impact on the world.
A man in your shoes keeps different score. You’ve tasted power, made big moves. The seeds you plant either bear their fruit for you to taste or die on the vine before your eyes. You’re a here-and-now fellow.
I would imagine that’s how this issue of the Unita Basin Railway permit hits you, with immediate economic and political interests on one side and some noisy rabble-rousers talking about the terrors of the what-ifs and a brighter ecological future that may or may not ever come to pass. If I was a 71-year old white powerball winner who’s spent my life wrapped in the comfortable arms of success and power, I don’t know that I’d spend much time thinking about whether or not the world is salvageable. I might be willing to accept that we’ve made our decisions and are on a slow road to collapse and destruction and take comfort in the fact that I won’t be around to see it. I don’t mean to suggest that’s what you’ll do. It’s an outlook that’s so common, however, that it’s easy to conjure in the dark predawn.
But what I can imagine, also, is that your heart beats with something true. That you can look and see that adding millions of tons of carbon a year to the climate emergency is not a good thing to do. That threatening the Colorado river — a critical resource to agriculture and people that’s tapped beyond belief — with with 20 miles of heated crude oil a day is just a bad idea. I was flabbergasted when I heard that the folks who designed the project expect a rail accident every two years. They’re counting on it! Surely you’ve been along some of the route through which this railway passes. I’ve done a lot of imagining this morning, and I’ll ask you to just take a moment to do the same and picture a two-mile long train with heated crude oil falling off the rails, catching on fire in tinderbox of Glenwood Canyon and spilling its contents into the Colorado River.
What I know is that you hold the power to stop this project. The cost of doing so will be what? The anger of the executives of an oil company, certainly. They want to make as much money as possible extracting oil from the earth, despite all the terrible costs that come along with such an endeavor. Here’s the sad joke — they’re already making millions at it. They just want more.
But what risk do you really run to anger oil executives. You are, indeed, 71 and the end of your political career can’t be too far off the horizon. Maybe not tomorrow, or next year, but the fact is that it’s coming sooner than later. If there was ever a time to make good on your word and risk becoming unpopular amongst the powerful, it would be now.
And so unlike me, a man who must be content with the planting of small seeds, with a stroke of a pen you could do something incredibly important that could change the course of a great many lives right here. Today. You hold the power to revoke the permit that allows this railway to go forth and operate.
To say that I’m jealous of that would be an understatement.
I know I’m not alone in this appeal, and I hope that you’ll come through for our immediate and long-range environmental concerns about the Unita Railway Project.
And if you don’t, I hope that we can hear a response as to why you feel like a massive uptick in oil production that requires risky transportation through a vital and ecologically sensitive part of the country is the best path forward for us as a people.
It’s 5:30 now, though still dark as pitch. I’ve spent nearly an hour in making this letter to you. I tried to be honest, to show something of myself to you so that this appeal has a humanity behind it that goes beyond the form letter which I also signed. I think it’s worth the time and effort, because though I can’t revoke that permit, I can be with you in a way that’s peaceful and loving. I can show my daughter that when we try to stand up for what we think is right, we can do it in a good way. There’s always a good way to be in the world. Sometimes that’s to good way is also a hard way, sometimes it takes more time and effort than the other way, the easy way, but we try. We always try.
Thank you for taking the time to be with me this morning.
Wishing you peace and a happy holiday season,
Clay Allen
Carbondale, Colorado
Your friend, Clay 