Full Circle

I'll be heading home to Moab on Election Day, to gather with old friends at the local watering hole to watch the returns.

In a sense, this marks a full circle return for me, an end to a journey that began eight years ago when I sat down at the Rio Colorado in utter disbelief as the election between Al Gore and George Bush was called, then not called, then called again before descending into 35 days of purgatory that led eventually to the hell that we've all experienced as the Bush presidency.

In a very real sense, that night led me soon enough to Burlington, Vermont and the Dean campaign, and to the last five years of fighting for Democratic candidates and progressive causes.

Perhaps for a moment that night we'll all be able to pretend that the last eight years hasn't happened -- that the failure of George Bush to protect America on 9/11, the shredding of the Constitution, the senseless war in Iraq, the rape of our environment and plundering of the Treasury for the benefit of Republican cronies -- that all of it was just a bad dream.

But of course, it wasn't. It stuns me to remember that as bad as I thought George Bush would be in 2000, I truly had no idea how bad he would actually be. I knew he'd bankrupt the nation, but didn't really comprehend what that would look like. Now we know. I knew he'd be bad for public lands, but never really conceived the degree to which his policies would transform the once-vast West into a vermiculate network of dirt bike trails and drilling rigs. But one needn't venture very far outside of Moab now to see the physical damage that his administration has done to some of the last wild places in America. It's heart-breaking -- so heart-breaking that even the Governor of Utah recently protested to the Bush administration at the extent to which the Bushies have lain waste to so much of the beauty of the West.

And who could have even conceived that eight years later we would live in a country that spied on its own citizens without a warrant, that practiced torture, and that turned the rule of law into a schoolyard mockery?

But at the moment, we do, and somehow 25% of people who live in America still think that that is alright.

Years ago, Paul Shepard, evoking William Golding's The Lord of the Flies, wrote that "the only thing more frightening than a world run by children is a world run by childish adults." It's a phrase that I often think of when I think about George Bush and his supporters, and the petulant nasty crowds that have attended the rallies of John McCain and Sarah Palin in the closing weeks of this awful era.

If all works out, the adults will be back in charge, starting tomorrow -- though of course George W. Bush will mess up the sandbox a bit more before he leaves, with the atrocious last-minute environmental actions that he has planned, which are his way of flipping the bird to God and his creation, just because he can.

There's going to be a hell of a lot of cleaning up to do, after the mess these people have made of this great country.

But for me, and I'm sure for millions around the country, I'll just be glad to be home again.

Light posting as I disappear into the canyons for a while....