The Voyage Begun

 

               It is the end of Earth Week and the celebration has felt…underwhelming.  City and school events have been lackluster in engagement. One of my students observed “Well, people have lives to live and places to be” which is true, but makes me worry. How do we convey the urgency of this issue—and others—in a way that empowers people to take action, to take the power that we all hold, collectively, and turn it action at all levels of society? Because we are reading The Things They Carry, by Tim O’Brien, my mind turns to the idea of story.  Stories can save us, he says. Individually and, perhaps, collectively. So this is my Climate Change story for this year.

                The Voyage Begun, by Nancy Bond. Printed in 1981. I must have read it the winter it came out. I remember being chilly and I was often chilly in those years, living on my own, saving money by keeping the heat low. These were the years when the University of New Hampshire sent us home for an extra week of Winter Break because they would save so much money on heating fuel. That break, I spent several days spreading insulation in my mother’s attic. When we were done, the snow stayed on the roof rather than melting away.  One apartment I lived in had a base rate of heating paid by the landlord but we had to chip in if the costs went above a certain amount. I wore my great-grandmother’s shawl as I sat up in the kitchen, typing a paper for class, all winter. My roommate and I had an impressive collection of shared sweaters. Still, it was chilly.

                The novel is set on Cape Cod in the “near future”.  Having spent two winters on the Cape myself, I could relate to the landscape.  The energy crisis of the 1970’s has become permanent. Parts of the Cape are washing away—even though no one was talking about rising seas yet.  All of the summer homes have been abandoned and there are small gangs breaking in and robbing them. The local conservationist is considered a little crazy.   Only the permanent residents remain and they are struggling without the summer incomes. The setting is bleak.  A young man moves to Woods Hole where his father is climbing the administrative ladder; his mother is in deep denial about the level of the crisis and is not happy living so far away from the civilization that she remembers. The book comes together around the idea of community and working together in prickly partnerships that value some old skills, like wood boat building. The plot faded in my mind but the description of the world post energy crisis did not; the Boston Museum of Fine Arts was closed because they could not heat the space. I love the MFA.

                In 1981, we were not facing the climate crisis that we are today. Energy—yes. Jimmy Carter had put solar panels on the roof of the White House and was wearing a sweater, talking about turning down the thermostat. We knew, then, that there were limits on oil. And that, if we changed behavior, we would survive and even thrive.  If we did not, we were looking at a depleted world where more things were closed in winter than the UNH dorms for an extra week.  And this is where my mind returns when I think—when did I first become aware of the problem? This novel, set in a place that I knew and loved, washing into the sea because of our behavior. That is where the voyage began. And yours?