All They Really Want is to Have Fun

Some portion of the time I’m doing something relative to this project, actually moving my hands, feet and eyes for such tasks as mixing soil for garden boxes, monitoring the sun at different times of the day on the house and garage roofs, looking for possible locations for solar panels, researching heat sources, reviewing utility bills, or planning errands so that I can spend more time on the bike and less in the car. Some portion of the time, I think the greater portion, I’m thinking about it all, contemplating our next move, wondering how effective anything we’ve done might really be, or imagining the net effect of all we might do and struggling to see it in the larger context of global health.

I find it easy to get lost in the details of this endeavor. For my family, and I suspect for most in our culture, reducing our carbon footprint is not an event like setting a bone and waiting for it to heal. It’s more like treating a thousand cuts while trying to learn how to walk through the briar patch. Avoid one cane of briars only to walk into another. Feel the relief of one group of cuts healing only to have new scrapes appear somewhere else.

One thing is clear, however; we are progressing toward a goal. We are in motion on this journey, and while we can quantify certain changes we’ve made (example: by switching cars and changing our driving habits we’re currently burning a half to two thirds less gasoline per week – but always wondering: shouldn’t we be able to do more?), the greater change seems to be in our awareness of how we’re living vs. how we’re striving to live. And the greatest impact of what we’re doing seems not to be the energy that we’re saving today, but the approach to living that we’re nurturing in our kids. What for us requires research, thought, planning and sometimes perceived sacrifice, becomes natural for them. In their minds: sacrifice? What do you mean?

Summer months during my formative years were spent doing tricks on water skis pulled behind a big, growly, exhaust-belching ’43 Crist Craft. My grandfather would crank up that burly six-banger each summer morning, rattling all the cottage windows on our side of the lake, and my sister and cousins and I would suit up and hit the water. We progressed through the early stages of terror as six-year-olds when our parents made us HOLD ON to be dragged behind the BEAST, to our teen years when that boat was no longer a loud scary thing, but became a necessary accessory to our water-skiing glory as we gorged our teen egos on daring tricks and tall rooster tails, impressing each other and moving on down the shoreline to find others to impress. I tell you what; it was awesome! I miss those years.

Why? Because I was having fun with the gang. I was impressing my parents and grandparents. I thought at the time that I must look exceptionally cool to onlookers.

I want my kids to experience that. I want them to do the same things I did so that they feel how cool I felt, and so they know how cool I was.

I want to make them hold on to be dragged behind the beast.

Did we ever think about the fact that we were burning gallons and gallons of gas and belching out CO2 driving around in circles? Nope. Too busy having fun.

Why did that magnificent coolness come to my sister and cousins and me in the form of this highly petroleum-intensive activity? Because that’s what our parents did with us for fun.

So here’s where I get to have a realization and make a choice.

Realization: it wasn’t the boat and the skiing that did it for us. It was the fact that our parents and grandparents were with us engaged in boisterous recreation, took obvious joy in our accomplishments, gave us their applause and affection, and that we were having fun.


Choice: I’m going to have the same kind of fun with my kids, but I’m going to use low carbon methods.

Okay, for me that feels like a sacrifice. No big boat, no high speed coolness, but that’s just my perception.

In fact, my kids and their cousins have already headed down that path with little conscious help from their parents. They like nothing better than to get into a paddleboat (it’s a two-seater that you peddle like a bike) with their cousins and schlop along splashing and carrying on just as I did with my cousins, albeit at a slower pace. And when they want to hit the water, they ask to go canoeing. Why? Because that’s largely what we’ve done with them so far for fun.

Canoeing and paddle-boating to them is no sacrifice; it’s what they want to do. See? Lightbulb: on, and it’s a CFL.