Posted on 03/05/2005 2:11:47 AM PST by Jet Jaguar
After attending a rally against drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Polly Andrews said a visit to the refuge lets people know that there are things on the planet that are bigger than themselves.
The 20-year-old Fairbanks woman has visited the refuge a half-dozen times.
"As far as the eye can see, there is nothing to remind you of others," she said after attending the Rally For the Refuge on Thursday.
"No cities, no pop cans, no cigarettes, no traffic," she said. "You can go out there and empty your mind."
She was one of an estimated 250 to 300 protesters who gathered Thursday at Bicentennial Park to protest drilling in ANWR.
Drilling proponents have said this year offers the best chance of opening the refuge to oil exploration. Senate leaders have said they expect to move ANWR-opening language through a budgetary process this year that will bypass a filibuster threat on the Senate floor. Critics have called it a sneaky, back-door approach that will avoid a debate.
Luci Beach, the executive director of the Gwich'in Steering Committee and one of the rally's speakers, is one of them.
"That's one of the most un-American things I've heard," she said after the rally. "Once again, Native people are going to be walked right over without any kind of recourse."
Beach said her people have depended on the Porcupine Caribou Herd for food for generations. Oil exploration, drilling and development would diminish the herd, she said.
Those at the protest called today's trip to ANWR by five congressmen and two members of President Bush's Cabinet a farce because the group is traveling there in the winter, when snow blankets the landscape and reinforces the idea the land is barren.
A better time to understand ANWR's wild nature is in the spring and summer, said Debbie Miller, a longtime ANWR advocate and author.
But winter has its own importance, she told the crowd. Polar bears build dens in the snow and give birth to cubs around the first of the year, she said. Now the cubs are about 2 months old, the size of a husky puppy and defenseless. If the mother bear is disturbed by unusual noises, such as seismic testing, she'll leave the den, Miller said.
"The cubs will die," Miller said.
The refuge is home to other wildlife and birds, she said. Many of the birds migrate from as far away as South America to nest and have young in the refuge in the summer.
Lane and Dorothy Thompson spent one summer walking the banks of the Jago River, one of the many waterways in the refuge, and saw the animals for themselves. Dorothy Thompson recalled the rainy day the couple sat on a hillside for almost four hours.
"The caribou didn't stop going by us," she said.
Both are longtime refuge supporters. Lane Thompson carried a sign that was 15 years old. The sentiment hasn't changed.
"Don't destroy a wilderness treasure for 200 days of oil," the sign read.
Johnathan Blackburn told the crowd he went home to visit his brother who lives on the North Slope.
The landscape had changed with the addition of new roads, pipelines and other oil field structures and he got lost, he said.
"The point I want to make is what I saw at Prudhoe Bay can happen in the refuge," the Inupiaq Eskimo said. "And people like me (will keep) getting lost."
Diana Campbell can be reached at 459-7523 or dcampbell@newsminer.com .
up yours polly.
By the way dolphins died tody in Marathon Florida
"you can go there and empty your mind . . ." So that's where liberals leave their minds.
Way too much free time.
oil drilling in the artic-controversial yes
Losing millions of wetlands where I want to duck hunt--Tragedy.
Let those who oppose the recovery of our domestic oil resources have a choice, drill, go fight for ME oil or don't use any oil that others have fought for. Creepy bunch of hypocrites, this idiot woman has burned oil to visit ANWR 20 times for what reason? She should of ridden a bicycle!
They're hampering the war effort and should be charged accordingly.
"You can go out there and empty your mind," Said The Protester
"You Had Nothing In There To Begin With, you Useful Idiot!" Said the FReeper.
Lady, you didn't need to go out there six times to accomplish that.
I think she completed the job on her first trip.
Who could ask for anything more?
Polly...a mind is a terrible thing to waste...get a life..come down to Texas and worry about the plight of the two peckered billy goats in West Texas who have been looking for love twice, in all the wrong places..
Both she and I would love to send her to the MOON!
"No cities, no pop cans, no cigarettes, no traffic," she said. "You can go out there and empty your mind."
Young lady, you have much to learn about the world. While "emptying" your mind at a suitable location, one assumes you are adequately equipped with more modern implements of civilization other than say, a pointy stick and your wits.
A reasonable guess would include freeze-dried goodies in your nylon backpack, a GPS, synthetic or goose-down sleeping bag, therma-rest, and horror of horrors, a gasoline powered camping stove. And, how did you get there all those times? I bet you didn't walk. It is the height of absurdity to disparage several thousand years of progress in so cavalier a manner. These people are brainwashed.
Drill Alaska!
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