SOLAR TODAY - April 2010

___ _ solarmilestones the movement matures Earth Day at 40: Roots of a Solar Advocate

ATRUE CHILD OF THE 1960s, I spent my late teenaged years in post- Beatnik alienation. Neck deep in hor- mone-fueled weltschmertz, I was look- ing for meaning in life and not finding much. I felt utterly insignificant. Even prominent figures seeking change appeared powerless.

The superpowers faced off with tens of thousands of hair-triggered nuclear weapons.

Jowly, red-faced politicians in the American South unleashed police dogs and fire hoses on nonviolent preachers and kids who were just seeking a decent education, a good job, the right to vote, to use a public drinking fountain and to eat at a lunch counter.

My country was on the wrong side of a war in a tiny Southeast Asian nation, where we would ultimately unleash more explosive force than had been detonated by both sides in World War II. Before it was over, one out of every 10 Vietnamese had been killed.

So, at 19, I just checked out. I strapped on a backpack and went hitchhiking around the world for three years. I was a disk jockey in Honolulu and a swimming coach in Tokyo. I taught English, was a short-order cook and (to my daughter’s later bemusement) got a gig as a model.

I’d always been a loner, but never more so than during this period. On the inside of my paperback of Catch- 22, I’d inscribed Kipling’s aphorism:

Down to Gehenna Or up to the Throne He travels the fastest Who travels alone.

I took the Trans-Siberian Railroad from the Pacific all the way to Moscow in the dead of winter. I roamed over Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Living mostly on rice and peanut butter and seldom sleeping indoors, I spent about $3 a day.

One day in early 1965, in southwest Africa, I hitchhiked from the coastal town of Lüderitz to the main north-south road running from Wind-

AP

Denis hayes, head of Environmental Teach-In Inc., the organization coordinating activities for the first Earth Day, shown at the group’s Washington, D.c., office, april 22, 1970. also pictured is Judy Moody, a staffer for the event.