Heartbreaking, dehumanizing, toxic -- these aren’t the
words most people would pick to describe the boreal forest of Canada.
But in the far reaches of northern Alberta, this description seems
accurate to me. This lush forest of larch, aspen and spruce –– a place
where wood bison used to roam –– has degenerated to ravaged Mordor, the
hellish land described in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings
.
For
the past two summers, I’ve made the long, nearly 1,300-mile trek from
Boise, Idaho, to Fort McMurray, Alberta, to see the tar sands up close. I
wanted to bear witness to the horrific scraping away of the land and to
experience, even just for a moment, what it is like for the people who
live with this industry in their backyard. But I didn't go there just to
gape at the largest, most destructive industrial project on the planet:
I went to walk.
The tar sands Healing Walk,
organized and led by Canada’s First Nations people of the Athabasca
region, began with a three-day gathering held mostly along the shores of
Willow Lake. It featured workshops, local speakers and a glimpse into
First Nations culture. This year marked the fifth and final Healing
Walk.
The walk drew hundreds people from across
North America, from Midwestern ranchers fighting to stop the Keystone XL
pipeline to folks from Houston, Texas, who deal with the impacts of tar
sands refineries.
In Idaho, we are struggling to
stop these corporations from using the narrow, winding road along the
Lochsa, a designated wild and scenic river, as a shipping corridor for
their super-sized equipment. These “megaloads” are as long as a football
field and weigh up to 900,000 pounds.
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