Free Thoreau's Legacy by Richard Hayes Page B

these fantastic pieces of vehicular engineering, my hypocrisy hit me in the eye. You see, I’m also an advocate of clean sources of energy, and I talk a lot about the environment to my friends. I take the high road and feel so good about myself and my moral position. I had just finished reading Lester Brown’s Plan B 3.0, a well-researched scholarly book that documents the devastating effects of global warming on our planet, describing in scientific detail how climate change affects everyone, rich and poor alike, and what we can do about it. I’ve told my friends and relatives about the book and even bought copies of it for them to read.
    So how the devil could I drive a high-powered gas-burning vehicle spewing exhaust fumes that will contribute to the earth’s demise and ruin this planet before my grandson has a chance to enjoy it, just because I like the sound and feel of a hot car? No way! So I upped and got me to a Toyota dealer and leased the newest Prius hybrid. It drives very nicely, thank you. It gets me where I want to go, in style and comfort. It comes with every conceivable option. It is plenty fast, and its acceleration is more than adequate for any U.S. highway—I’m not racing at Le Mans. One of the benefits of the Prius is that I get around 45 mpg in the city and more than 50 mpg on the highway. Better yet, I backed my words with action, stopped being a hypocrite, made a small sacrifice, and did something to save our planet. I’m proud of me.

    Robert N. Shorin is a psychoanalyst and vice president of the Karen Horney Clinic in New York City. He lives on Long Island with his wife, Alene, who has been his best friend and supporter for forty-eight years.

Sea Bear
    Blake Matheson
    MASSIVE ANIMAL TRACKS—TWENTY INCHES FROM
heel to claw—push deep into the blue ice, luminous and crystalline in the gold of the Arctic sun. They are the unmistakable marks of Ursus maritimus—the great sea bear.
    A hard west wind rolls over my back, then ripples out over snow-choked lagoons and frigid reefs. The gray horizon is broken only by a towering crimson spike. When I move closer, I realize it is the nine-foot-long rib of a bowhead whale, slaughtered by Inupiats in September. Each year the ice retreats farther from shore, and soon the leviathans will be out of hunters’ reach for the first time since man came to Barter Island.
    The harsh and beautiful frontier we call the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) lies below me. In the summer months it is an expanse of warm russet tones rolling out from the roots of the mountains to the steely water of the Beaufort Sea. Beyond the Beaufort, few places carry men’s names until the Arctic Ocean transits the earth’s pole.
    Now, in October, the auburn of the tundra has disappeared, succeeded by a white immensity broken only by black veins on the cracked heights of the Brooks Range and by the sun’s ephemeral light.
    I follow the bear’s tracks toward the water’s edge. Atop a whale vertebra the eyes of a snowy owl break the scene’s gravity. Long-tailed ducks drift placidly in the last open water of fall. A flock takes flight, riding the wind to the southeast, the supple sound of air beneath their wings. I watch until they vanish in the opacity of a faraway mist.
    From behind a rocky outcrop the old bear appears. Big shoulders propel his tremendous legs over swaths of gravel and ice, his stride unbending and stiff. Hunting has been difficult for him in recent years, and his blue-black lips hang loosely from a gaunt, tired visage. Aged he may be, but the 1,200 pounds of carnivore before me is no less daunting for all his hard-won years.
    The bear’s head hangs low, then unexpectedly his eyes lift, meeting mine squarely, resolutely. A black fire burns deep within them, and he steps toward me. In the space between heartbeats, borne by ecstasy and silent terror, I know what it means to be human, to be vulnerable. He, too, knows what I feel. He has seen the terrified eyes