My August and September Hiking the Pipe
Dear Family, Friends, and Co-Conspirators of Various Types,
For those unaware, I’m hiking the pipe this August and September.
Meaning that, along with various groups of other people along the way, I’m walking the route of the proposed Pacific Connector Pipeline from Malin OR near Klamath Falls to just north of North Bend OR on the coast. We’re following the route of the pipeline as close as possible: hiking on public land or on private land with permission or hiking nearby roads. The proposed pipeline is 272 miles and the hike is 37 days, about 5 weeks, from Eastern Oregon to the Pacific Ocean, across 2 mountain ranges and multiple rivers. We will document, witness, and record all that is threatened, meet the people and places at risk, and have lots of opportunities to interact and collaborate. There are multiple events along the way and I’d love it if you showed up.
For those who don’t know much about the project, there is a long list of reasons why the Pacific Connector Pipeline and associated Jordan Cove energy project means turning southern Oregon into a sacrifice zone for corporate fossil fuel profits. The pipeline would transport explosive compressed natural gas through both remote and wild places and near homes and communities, crossing multiple sensitive watersheds, and permanently log and empty a huge swath of land. To gain pipeline access, a foreign corporation, currently flooding southern Oregon with money and advertising, plans on bullying local landowners into submission using eminent domain so they can export fossil fuels to foreign markets for massive profits for themselves while putting local communities at massive risk.
The Jordan Cove energy project would build a massive energy facility on a sand spit in a tsunami zone and would, after the Boardman coal facility closes down, become the biggest carbon source in the state of Oregon thus this project would massively further climate change and fossil fuel profiteering at a time when our world, our state, and the economically struggle southern Oregon region deserve better. A lot of folks have been fighting this project for years and will continue to do so and deserve massive kudos and support for their work. The time to stop this thing is right now before final regulatory processes are approved and before ground breaks on construction.
All pipelines leak but this pipeline could easily explode locally and is a carbon bomb globally.
For those who don’t know much about me, I’m no stranger to the fight against industrial projects of killing life on earth in the name of profit. I’ve dedicated a large portion of my time, energy, and heart in my adult life to the intertwined work of stopping the suicidal and omnicidal projects of industry and creating viable alternative ways of living. I’ve seen successes and failures in this work here in the Pacific Northwest (called Cascadia by some) and elsewhere. I’ve had an opportunity to see the success and failure of the Tar Sands Blockade struggle against the KXL pipeline firsthand and I think southern Oregon can succeed where east Texas could not.
But before all of that, I grew up in Oakland OR in Douglas County, I’ve lived in Ashland in Jackson County, I’ve lived and I have family in Bandon in Coos County, and I have family currently living in Coos Bay not too far from the proposed explosive Jordan Cove facility.
I’m intimately familiar with the Umpqua, Coquille, and Rogue Rivers. I’ve seen them brown and churning carrying whole trees during a rainy January and I’ve jumped from black basalt into cool emerald waters in the hot August sun. I’m familiar with the slow shifting tides and the herons and cranes of the sloughs and inlets of Coos Bay; the wet steep slopes and dense underbrush of the temperate rainforests of the Coast Range; the oaks and rolling hills of the Umpqua and Rogue Valleys; and the long views of the drier mountain forests of the southern Cascade mountains.
I’m a white woman from a culture that is disconnected and driven by domination of land-base, but, to me, these threatened places are the nearest things I’ve been able to call home. If I’ve ever lived my life as an act of love in service to a world of interbeing rather than dominion, it is because of these places that nurtured me. I love forests because of these forests, I love trees because of these trees, I love rivers and the ocean because of these rivers and this ocean, I love wild beings because of my experiences in these places, and I love the possibilities of healthy communities because of experience of community I have had in these places.
I would not be the person I am without the profound love of this region and these places.
So, 272 miles (probably more) and 37 days to record, witness, meet, and collaborate. A quest not away from but through home. A deeply personal journey with global political dimensions. A major physical and mental challenge (272+ miles, yikes). And also, for me, a spiritual act. Each of my footsteps for all 272 miles will be something of a prayer that goes something like this:
‘May this place and all places be free of pipelines.
May this place and all places be free of exploitation and destruction by a machine of profit and greed.
May the forces of care and connection win this and every time.’
I sincerely hope you all will meet up with me along the way. I’d love if any of you want to hike a stretch, even for just one day, and I’d love it if you showed up at one of the events along the route.
– Emmalyn
P.S. I will rarely to never suggest that anyone donates to Indiegogo campaigns that directly benefit me but if you are a person who wants to pitch in some funds for this project, here you go and many thanks:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/hike-the-pipe#/story
Emmalyn Garrett is an Oregon native and long time climate justice organizer, notably working with Rising Tide and the Tar Sands Blockade.
