Marcher Walker Pilgrim: A Memoir from the Great March for Climate Action

By Ed Fallon

“An epic story of an epic wander–few people in America have had more hours to really think about climate change, and Ed Fallon has put the time to good use!” — Bill McKibben

On March 1, 2014, Ed Fallon set out with fifty other climate warriors on a journey th

• Language: English
• Publisher: Business Publications Corporations Inc.
• Release date: Nov 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9780998652870

Ed Fallon

After spending four years in college and six years traveling the world, Ed Fallon's long life in public service began in 1984. In 1993, Ed was sent to the Iowa Legislature where he served until 2006. As a lawmaker, he focused on protecting the environment and defending constituencies whose voices were being drowned out by big money and brash power. Since 2009, Ed has hosted a talk show called the Fallon Forum. He also directs Bold Iowa, a non-profit organization whose mission is to build rural-urban coalitions to fight climate change, prevent the abuse of eminent domain, protect Iowa's soil, air, and water, and promote non-industrial renewable energy. Ed strives to be the change he hopes to see in the world, growing much of his own food and biking or walking instead of driving.

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DEDICATION

To the marchers, staff, and supporters of the Great March for Climate Action

All proceeds from the sale of this book  go to Climate March to support ongoing climate action.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

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INTRODUCTION

A MEMOIR FROM THE GREAT MARCH FOR CLIMATE ACTION

A MEMOIR FROM THE GREAT MARCH FOR CLIMATE ACTION

Formerly, only a few men wrote valuable books. Now, anybody writes and prints anything he likes and poisons people’s minds.

— M.K. GANDHI, HIND SWARAJ

Humanity has traveled a long way since the printing press. Today’s writers are no more gifted than writers of the past, yet there are certainly a lot more of us. If Gandhi fretted over the access the printing press gave to the masses, we can only imagine his distress had he known of the Internet.

When I set out to write a book in 2009, one modest goal was to not poison people’s minds. A more serious goal, and perhaps one that would have pleased Gandhi, was to share my story about the rewards and challenges of a life of public service.

The flow of that literary focus was redirected in 2014 by the Great March for Climate Action, an idea that sprang from my experience with the Great Peace March in 1986. I had been eager to join the Peace March but, due to a series of back injuries, I couldn’t even walk half a mile let alone across the country. So I signed on as an organizer, and a notepad, landline, and old manual typewriter became my life for the next six months.

Despite its near collapse early on, the Peace March was a success. It infused new life into the nuclear test ban movement, spawned citizen-led initiatives in US-Soviet diplomacy, and inspired thousands

of Americans to deepen their commitment to peace. The experience transformed the marchers and, for me, solidified a lifelong commitment to public service.

Similarly, I knew the Climate March would change the lives of its participants. I knew it would have an impact on my life as well. It did, but in ways I never could have imagined.

Walking across America is an enormous challenge. Pounding pavement, gravel, and sand 15 to 20 miles a day for eight months is unkind to one’s body, even under the best conditions. The difficulties are markedly greater when one walks on a schedule, as we did, with rallies and events planned along the route weeks and even months in advance. When you walk on a schedule you can’t take time off for an illness.

You can’t rest for a week to recover from an injury. You can’t take a leave of absence for a funeral or a wedding. You simply keep going or you quit.

It became important for me to try to walk every step of the way. Sure, there’s something gratifying about traversing the breadth of    a continent on foot. But far more important, I saw the March as a moving dramatization of the urgency of the climate crisis. Our steps were sacrificial performance art, showcasing the deep individual commitment we all must make to assure our collective survival in the New Climate Era.

So, this book had no choice but to evolve. It’s become the story of my experience on the Great March for Climate Action, and how the March changed my life — and in a small way, may have helped change history.

With  the Climate March as the conduit, this narrative evolved  in another more deeply personal way as well. It became the story of my search for love and meaning. That search took unexpected twists during eight months of walking, interacting with people and places in ways not available to one traveling by car, train, or even bike.

My search for love is, perhaps surprisingly, a relatively new quest

— one that began in earnest after my second divorce in 2010. Since then, with every subsequent failed relationship, I learned something new and important, gaining experience I hoped would prevent me from botching the next opportunity to find deep, lasting love.

My search for meaning, on the other hand, goes back to my pre-teen years, when such a quest was disparaged simply as odd behavior. I recall someone asking my mother, When did Eddie start acting weird? Without batting an eye, she responded, Age 11.

True enough. At 11, the weirdness began. I gave up soda pop and hotdogs. More significantly, I became almost mystically devout — praying fervently, embracing the symbols and rituals of the Catholic faith to a degree that was, well, weird for anyone, let alone an eleven- year-old boy.

Then, just as dramatically as it started, this short-lived mystical encounter crumbled. Doubt filled the void. Skepticism eroded the facade of faith, and with an intoxicating blend of recklessness and exhilaration, I abandoned any pretense that Catholicism had even an iota of meaning in my life.

I sealed my exit from the Catholic Church in dramatic fashion during Mass at age sixteen while seated in the balcony with my brother Bill. The parish priest, Father Commane, openly despised and ridiculed young people. Every sermon provided a new opportunity for him to rage against us. That day’s tirade was particularly vitriolic and had me furious. When he bellowed at the congregation, Young people today think God is somebody who rides on a motorcycle, my right hand, seemingly of its own volition, thrust its middle finger toward the spiteful priest, no doubt securing me a balcony seat in the great fiery beyond.

During the Great March for Climate Action, as I walked what seemed an impossible distance, the quest for love and meaning intertwined with my daily struggles against the raw power of nature, with quarrels with  other  marchers,  and  with  our  efforts  to rouse a lethargic America to mobilize against the changing climate that threatens our very survival.

Ok, you say. "That’s great that you want to share this incredible adventure of walking across the United States with us and remind us

of the urgency of climate change. But really, why burden us with tales of juvenile navel-gazing and your pathetic love life?"

Like wine, writing is truth serum, possessing the power to  impart unanticipated clarity and understanding to one’s experiences. It liberates even as it leads to discomfort. It exposes fears and aspirations one would rather leave undisturbed. Writing facilitates self-discovery, and I’ve often found myself unprepared to embrace the self that writing discovers.

So, perhaps I write this book for selfish reasons as well: to find answers to my quest for love and meaning.

I have one final motive in writing this book, and that is to reflect on the importance of home — both this planetary home we share with all life and the more intimate, personal homeplace we share with our family, coworkers, and closest friends.

On the Climate March, we traveled through astounding natural beauty. We met deeply generous people who welcomed and embraced us nearly everywhere we went. Yet I felt a strong, continual longing to be home. And home for me is two places — Iowa and Ireland. As a child and young man, Ireland sowed the seeds of my love for the land. Ireland is my spiritual refuge, the place which, in my youth, connected me to my historical past, fired my imagination, and taught me the value of both farming and community.

Iowa has been my physical home since 1984. I’ve traveled enough to know that few places on Earth are as blessed as this lush, verdant crescent between the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. Iowa’s subtle, fertile beauty is a treasure beyond comprehension to the masses of agriculturists around the world, many who toil in soil that barely deserves the name. Iowa is a garden that warrants tending, preservation and, in far too many cases, restoration.

While every city and hamlet on the planet are home to friendly, compassionate people, nowhere in my experience compares with Iowa and Ireland, where farming is not only economically important but socially respected. And Iowans, like the Irish, are a relentlessly hospitable people even when they vehemently disagree with you.

If J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth were a real place, its heroes — the humble, agrarian Hobbits of the Shire — would live in Iowa or Ireland. And being partial to good soil, I imagine Hobbits would prefer the rich, black loam of Iowa over Ireland’s rocks and rushes.

It was, of course, Hobbits who saved Middle Earth from death, darkness, and unimaginable evil. Perhaps in the New Climate Era the down-to-earth farm people of places like Iowa and Ireland hold the key to our species’ survival on this beautiful planet we call home.

So, I write this book to chronicle a journey of seven million steps, sounding the alarm that we have unleashed great evil upon our collective home, attempting to rouse a nation out of apathy, challenging everyday people to extraordinary action.

Perhaps through sharing this story of walking a great distance against so many external odds, while wrestling with internal struggles that bubbled closer to the surface as the miles ticked away under foot, I can make one more contribution to the future we all hope to enjoy.

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CHAPTER 1

A MEMOIR FROM THE GREAT MARCH FOR CLIMATE ACTION

A MEMOIR FROM THE GREAT MARCH FOR CLIMATE ACTION

FAILURE

The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.

— F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, THE GREAT GATSBY

I wake to a light rain misting my face. The caress of a moist leaf brushes my cheek as it falls from a tree. Another leaf drifts toward me, lilting back and forth, the water droplets on its surface glistening in the soft glow of a nearby streetlamp. Smiling, I fight to stay asleep, and dream I’m watching a half-naked fairy princess ride another leaf to the ground like a silent green glider.

But consciousness fights me and wins. I feel the hard, cold ground against my spine taunting the battered muscles of my arms and legs. The soothing white noise that was a bubbling stream in my dream fades into the shrill blight of heavy traffic.

The pulse of oil-powered steel a mere twenty feet away reminds me of everything that is wrong with this moment, reminds me of my utter exhaustion and aloneness. The traffic seems to shriek, You’ve failed. You’ve failed. You’ve failed.

Have I failed? It certainly feels like it. To have come more than 3,000 miles on foot only to collapse under a stand of trees along a highway somewhere west of Washington, DC, does not ring of success. For eight months, the Great March for Climate Action had set its sight on the White House. Every day our destination drew 15 miles

closer. I’m now less than 20 miles away, and the realization sinks in that I’m not going to make it.

I’ve made my share of mistakes during this transcontinental odyssey. Some of them flash before my eyes as I lie under the trees, the mist now bringing a chill to my body. But it seems I’ve saved the worst mistake for today.

After an exceptionally poor night’s sleep, I miscalculated the availability of food and water along the C&O Canal Trail. I ran out of water at the ten-mile mark and walked 22 miles with nothing to eat. On top of that, the plantar fasciitis that first troubled me in Nebraska returned with a vengeance.

Compounding my problems, halfway through the day my phone died — the phone that was instrumental for conducting March business and, even more important, for navigation. Unable to find    a power source along the trail and unable to access a map, I had no idea where I was.

Now I lie under these trees trying to remain present, assessing my condition and options. I want to remain invisible. I doubt drivers on the nearby highway can see me. Yet  I wonder about the people  in the mansion through the trees just beyond the fence. Perhaps the mansion’s security cameras have been monitoring my presence all along. Perhaps the police are already on their way to arrest me and charge me with trespass.

I lie still, like a wounded animal hoping to avoid detection from a real or imagined predator. I try to stay warm yet feel unable to move. The reality of my isolation presses ever harder against my chest, against my heart.

I had left the other marchers  a  week  ago  after conflicts that had grown so virulent and tiresome that I desperately needed a break. I needed to walk in peace before rejoining the group for our final hike to the White House. But now I miss the camp, despite its dysfunction. I miss the familiar comfort of my tent. I half-hope, half-imagine, that Sarah Spain, the March’s gregarious logistics director, will drive by, sense my presence, and pull over to rescue me. Sarah has certainly worked her share of miracles on the March, instantly connecting with whoever stood between us and whatever we needed. In an Arizona bar, Sarah’s cowboy hat and eagerness to pose

for a photo with a shotgun scored us a rodeo-ground campsite. In New Mexico, her charm with a commune of aging hippies landed us foot massages and a delicious meal.

Whether it was campsites, food, vehicle repair, or showers, Sarah always found a way to deliver.

But today, there would be no Sarah-magic.

I feel the sting of loneliness on a deeper level, too. Two years ago, I met Grace, the woman who I was certain was my soul mate. Grace and I talked often but weren’t able to spend much time together. When I left Des Moines in February, I was confident that would change, certain that when I returned from the March, Grace and I would begin our life together. But what transpired during our months apart sowed doubt.

A desperate sadness sinks in and I imagine its weight will push me deeper and deeper into the ground.

A truck roars by on the highway, wailing on its horn, rousing me from my lethargy, transporting me back to the reality of my place under these trees dripping with mist, coldness, and irony. I ask myself, How the hell did you come so far to end up here — battered, alone, defeated?

CHAPTER 2

WHY NOT A MARCH!

Very few people on earth ever get to say: ‘I am doing, right now, the most important thing I could possibly be doing.’ If you’ll join this fight that’s what you’ll get to say.

— BILL MCKIBBEN

In February 2007, Bill McKibben came to Iowa State University where he spoke to  a  packed  house about climate change and the loss of community. His message was a blend of warning and hope. Americans will be happier if they return to the 1950s lifestyle of eating together as a family, talking with neighbors and carpooling to work, McKibben exhorted.¹ Consistent with his call to simplicity, McKibben joined a group of

us afterward for chili and corn bread. We sat on stark benches under dim lights at a long table in one of the campus dining rooms. I guess you could say it was very 1950s, but my mind got stuck on the dining scene from Oliver.

I have no stomach for self-absorbed celebrities, and I’ve met plenty. Joe Biden came to mind as I sat across from McKibben. Biden had called to seek my endorsement in his campaign for President in 2006, the year I ran for governor in Iowa. As we settled in for a beer and a game of pool, Joe asked about my campaign. Twenty seconds into my response, Joe jumped in, and for the next hour the conversation

¹ Speaker cites loss of community, by Karla Walsh, Iowa State Daily, February 20, 2007

was all about him. Nice guy. Captivating stories. Lousy listener. Biden won the game of pool but lost my vote.

I can’t speak to McKibben’s pool game, but when it came to conversation, he was the opposite of Biden. He was down-to-earth and unpretentious. As we blew on spoonfuls of hot chili and corralled wayward crumbs of cornbread, Bill mostly listened and asked questions. He was genuinely interested in what students were up to and curious about my campaign for governor.

I told him it had been edgy, quirky, cobbled together. We didn’t pay a penny for our campaign headquarters — an unused house in Des Moines’ inner city.

Well, not completely unused. The house was infested with possums who were outed one day by a campaign worker’s shriek as  a furry head appeared in the heating vent. Over the course of the next week, three possum-squatters were captured, evicted, and relocated to more upscale digs on the rustic fringe of suburbia.²

On Election Day (June 6, 2006 — or 6-6-6, for what that’s worth), I finished a respectable third place, crediting the campaign’s strong performance to its grassroots nature, solid support among suburban possums, and firm positions on controversial issues. I’d talked about money in politics, economic justice, marriage equality, and climate change.

Climate change isn’t an issue, Bill interrupted, without any haughtiness or condescension.

What? I responded. You’re the climate-change guy. How can you say, ‘climate change isn’t an issue’?

It’s not an issue, Bill said. It’s a crisis.

That caught me off guard. I thought about it a lot during the ride home. Over the next few days, as I read more about climate change, the truth of McKibben’s words weighed heavier and heavier upon me. Humanity was indeed facing a crisis like none other in history.  A world of hurt was coming our way, and if we continued a lifestyle powered by fossil fuels, Earth could be rendered uninhabitable for our species and most others.

I began to prioritize climate action in my work but struggled for a

² http://qctimes.com/news/opinion/editorial/columnists/maverick-fallon-knows-anything-can-happen/arti- cle_2e7fa12b-50cf-52fb-b9c4-3d78e6588e58.htm

long time with what big contribution I was called to make. Unexpectedly, one blustery day in February 2013, it came to me: Why not a march!

In that moment, the Great March for Climate Action was born. A thousand people would walk 3,000 miles across America. Our commitment and sacrifice would draw others into conversations about climate change. We would be the Paul Reveres of the movement, sounding the alarm and inspiring tens of thousands of people to take action.

I started raising money, writing press releases, putting together the outline of a plan. The vision needed structure and discipline. I hired Shari Hrdina, an exceptionally gifted tactician who enjoys all the aspects of organizing I despise. Forms, spreadsheets, and paperwork make me apoplectic. They make Shari giddy.

Our destination was clear: Washington, DC, where ultimately the most far-reaching decisions about climate change would be made. But the starting point was negotiable: somewhere on the West Coast between Canada and Mexico. I spent weeks pouring over maps, studying terrain and elevation, analyzing weather charts, and talking with local authorities up and down the West Coast. The most enthusiastic supporters stepped forward in San Francisco and convinced us that the Golden Gate Bridge should be our iconic starting point.

As we plotted our path upward through the Sierra Nevada in late winter and early spring, the words Donner Party kept coming up in conversation. The Donner Party, of course, was the unfortunate band of settlers who, trapped in the Sierra Nevada in the winter of 1846-47, survived by dining on the Party’s less-fortunate members.

Further analysis of weather trends, conversations with locals, and a proliferation of uncomfortable jokes about marchers eating marchers compelled us to abandon what had been no small piece of work and seek a more southerly route.

After another round of deliberations, I settled on Los Angeles, which made so much sense for so many reasons. Los Angeles had been the starting point of the Great Peace March. Southern California was normally comfortable and dry in early March, and beginning there would keep us in the desert and south of the Rockies until warmer weather.

With our start and end points determined, everything in between was up for grabs — everything except Nebraska.

Of all the places in the country threatened by the aggressive build-out of fossil-fuel infrastructure, central Nebraska was ground zero in the battle to stop TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline. In ten of eleven states we would walk through, the main event would be a rally or march in a large city. In Nebraska, the main event would be a rally in a cornfield at the point where the March crossed the proposed path of the Keystone pipeline in the heart of the Sandhills.

The intensity of organizing mushroomed over the summer. We needed more staff fire-power to pull the remaining pieces together. I hired my friend Jimmy Betts as program director. Jimmy had signed up to march and volunteered in our office from time to time. He’d participated in some of our training walks, sometimes playing his violin during the two-mile stroll around Gray’s Lake in Des Moines.

Jimmy’s work history was, well, interesting. He taught Qigong and meditation and had held a real job for a short time. Occasionally, he’d give blood to earn cash or, worse yet in my opinion, sign up as a human guinea pig for some experiment to test a new food or drug. I told him I’d rather eat weeds and live under a bridge than earn money like that.

These days, Jimmy mostly traveled between Texas and Iowa, hanging out with friends, sharing his passion for ancient wisdom  and disciplines, sometimes for pay, sometimes not. I had a hard time imagining that he’d stick with us for the duration. But I also felt there was some great, untapped potential in Jimmy that could be unleashed through his full-time involvement with the March.

One of my guiding principles is that, if you ask people to do a difficult thing, you have to be willing to do it yourself. Whether it’s a hunger strike, civil disobedience, or a march, the history of progressive movements is littered with the fleshy bodies of those who challenged others to greatness while avoiding the hardest work themselves. With this in mind, I initiated an aggressive fitness program.

When I began training in July, even a three-mile walk left me sore for days. By the end of November, I was able to log 25 miles a week. I grew increasingly confident about my ability to walk long distances and wondered if I might be able to manage all or most of the March — though a haunting history of back trouble left plenty of doubt.

Yes, a series of back injuries in my 20s and 30s had debilitated me to the point where walking more than a short distance was impossible. My right leg had atrophied badly and I was told my back would never again be fully functional. It was indeed a miserable 15 years. The nerve damage on my right side was so bad I could sit for only 10 to 15 minutes at a time. During college classes, I stood in the back of the classroom with my right leg up on a chair for relief. I had to lie down during car rides and couldn’t lift or carry my kids.

I was a wreck, but had come to accept that this was my lot in life. Doctors provided no relief, each misdiagnosing the problem according to his specialty. I was told I should apply for disability, but couldn’t bring myself to admit I was disabled and didn’t want to depend on public assistance. After five misdiagnoses, a friend studying to be a physical therapist correctly diagnosed the problem as a slipped disk.

In my mid-30s, with the help of other physical therapists,  I began to heal. I started biking. My right leg recovered its strength and the atrophy gradually disappeared. I discovered the importance of flexibility and core work and, over time, the muscles in my abdomen and back grew stronger. It took years, and I knew I would always have to be cautious, but eventually I regained the ability to live a more physically active life.

Two months before the scheduled start of the March, I was walking 35 miles a week. I felt so good about my progress that I thought I had a shot at walking the entire distance, coast-to-coast.

Then in early February my back inexplicably spasmed. I was confined to bed for three days. After a week of gradual recovery, I began walking a few miles at a time. Since my late-30s I had come so far toward restoring and maintaining a healthy back, toward living a normal life. Why did this happen? Why now? I was beyond disappointed and certain I had ruined any chance I had of marching much.

Still, I felt enthusiastic as I prepared to leave for Los Angeles. Despite many obstacles, the March had come together reasonably well.

As my departure from Des Moines drew closer, I felt a heightening of that primal tension — the lure of an adventure into the unknown versus the familiarity and comfort of home. Overriding both was a strong sense of duty to sacrifice for the life-and-death cause of climate change.

My piano would sit idle for the next eight months. This would be the first year in thirty I wouldn’t tend a garden. I would miss my home, my community, my friends. Especially, I would miss Grace.

What I craved above all else was a quiet, settled life with Grace — the woman I loved deeply — to one day be with her in a home alive with love, food, and music. That dream was shoved aside by the call to service. The path into the unknown had been charted. Its first steps led out my back door into a cold February night, away from the home I wouldn’t see again for a long time.

CHAPTER 3

SECOND-CLASS TRAVEL

Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything.

— CHARLES KURALT

The three worst inventions in the industrial history of man (yes, blame men) are the television, the nuclear bomb, and the automobile. I’ve been mostly successful at avoiding television, to the point of being culturally illiterate. Someone once asked what I thought of Downton Abby and my response was, Huh. I didn’t know Des Moines had a monastery.

Regarding nuclear bombs, perhaps simply through dumb luck,    I have so far managed to avoid them. Given that Earth is home to 15,000 nuclear weapons, 1,800 of them on high-alert and capable of being launched in a matter of minutes, dumb luck is a quality I share with all of humanity. Let’s hope it holds. Better yet, let’s hope the nuclear nations of the world come to their senses and disarm.

Regarding the automobile, my track record is mixed.

During America’s 240 years of nationhood, we’ve built remarkable, even beautiful infrastructure. We’ve also built spirit-crushing rubbish that would have made Josef Stalin proud. The Interstate Highway System is of the latter genre. The ascendency  of the automobile as the sole form of transportation for most Americans was enabled and solidified by this system.

It’s as if the Interstate’s designers said, "Let’s create the most soul-

sucking, isolating travel experience imaginable, then underfund or eliminate every other form of transportation so people have no choice but to use it."

In this, the designers were eminently successful. Not counting time spent as passengers, Americans drive an average of 280 hours each year, about 24 percent of that on Interstate highways — or freeways, as we’ve been conditioned to call them.¹

Freeway is one of the most brilliant linguistic coups of modern times, more impressive even than changing the name of the War Department to the Department of Defense, or calling civilians killed in war collateral damage. Calling something free that cost Americans

$114 billion to build and hundreds of billions more to expand and maintain is social engineering at its finest.

Because it’s free and, for many people, the only viable transportation option, few Americans question the necessity for ever- bigger, wider swaths of asphalt and concrete.

Unlike televisions and nuclear bombs, I do own a car. She’s a rusty, battered old Subaru named Beast that my friend and former legislative colleague, Bill Witt, sold to me for a buck. My previous car was another rusty, battered old Subaru, also named Beast, also sold to me by Bill for a buck.

(And no, Bill isn’t a Subaru dealer. He’s a photographer and generous to a fault. So ask Bill for a photo of a Subaru, but don’t pester him about whether he’s got a real one kicking around that he’ll sell you for a buck.)

My first Beast and I shared seven years of car-man bliss before she dramatically exited this life in a glorious burst of smoke at 60 miles an hour in heavy traffic. True to the end, Beast guided me to the road’s shoulder unharmed as she bellowed her final dying breath. In my present life in Des Moines, thanks to an old bike and good walking shoes, I can go a week or more without commissioning my new Beast into service.

Yet as a state lawmaker and candidate for governor and Congress, I was imprisoned in a car for as many as 30,000 miles a year. My occasional furlough was to escape the Interstate and meander backroads homeward, annoying my children and frustrating my staff. As far as