A Conversation with Kurt about The Circumference of Home

The author paddling near Sucia Island in the San Juans

Q: Why did you choose to embark on this unusual journey?

A: To be honest, I didn’t really feel like I had a choice. I had to do something. It became a matter of personal necessity after I saw Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth, and followed that up with an online carbon footprint survey. Between the two I took in for the first time at a gut level how much is at stake, and at the same time I really saw how large the gap had become between my convictions and my actions in regard to climate change. This way forward opened up for me unexpectedly, in an offhand conversation with a friend over breakfast, after I had almost given up finding any way through this conundrum, and I just went for it.

Q: Why did you do it this way? What was the inspiration for going car-free and staying so close to home?

A: I wanted to serve multiple purposes through this yearlong car-free vow; first, to invest a spirit of adventure into a sometimes disempowering sense of crisis, and in the process to renew my feeling of connection to the landscape of home. I didn’t want to be half-hearted or ambivalent about the changes I was making. I also wanted to move in the direction of a more robust physical life, to regain my sense of contact with my home place, and to create more connection with local friends and community in the process.

Q: What was the best thing and the hardest thing about living without your car?

A: There were plenty of challenges, but in general I was struck by how much easier it was to get on board with this than I had expected. It needed strong motivation to stay with the inconveniences, but I also found very quickly that the benefits outweighed the costs. I had to be more conscious of my reasons for going on errands and outings, since it did take more planning and more time enroute. So I didn’t travel frivolously or simply out of boredom and restlessness. I found myself settling into where I was more, and the act of travel itself became “lived time” rather than “lost time”. There was a feeling of satisfaction at seeing my body’s strength and capacity increase, and I had a very strong sense of purpose that kept me on course throughout the year. I have rarely felt so engaged or committed to a course of action in my life. If there is any benefit to this crisis, this is it: once we really understand what is at stake, we can do a lot more than we might have expected, and our lives can become richer for it.

The hardest part of the year was simply the fact that I live five miles from the nearest town and a hilly four miles from the ferry, which I often had to do by bicycle, sometime very early and late in rainy weather, because there is such limited bus service in the vicinity of my rural neighborhood. It would have been much easier to pull off, in some ways, living in a city where ample public transportation is available. But even that came to be simply part of what I did, and I would almost always arrive where I was going more invigorated and happy than if I had simply jumped in my car for a mindless commute.

Q: What was your biggest adventure during the year?

A: There were so many. Before the year I made a schedule of trips I wanted to take that were within the circumference of my circle, and that could be done under my own power – on foot, by bicycle and by sea kayak. Usually I dedicated a week or more out of each month to these explorations, and they all felt like real adventures. My 130-mile walking trip through the Skagit River basin and down the 50-mile length of Whidbey Island was fantastic, and my 500-mile bicycle trip around the “rim” of my circle (as far out toward the circumference as the terrain would allow me to go), was also memorable. My trip up Mt. Baker, from home to mountain and back under my own power, had a real feeling of pilgrimage to it, and even though I didn’t make the summit on that trip it was an amazing expedition. My 200-mile kayaking trip from South Whidbey to Vancouver Island and back to witness the Native canoe rendezvous in Cowichan Bay had an epic feel to it. It I was really changed and enlarged by these experiences, and my sense of the scale of my local landscape was also considerably expanded. There were plenty of smaller adventures not mentioned in the book that contributed to this renewed sense of belonging, and this expanded sense of scale and possibility within my own home territory. There was a grandness to it that really touched me.

Q: How does your year-long experiment compare to that of Colin Beavan’s No Impact Man?

A: I respect what Colin Beavan did, but I think our motivations were different, and I did not go to the radical extremes that he did. I also did not attempt to press my wife and children into service as co-participants. Beavan cut himself off completely from the power grid and from most public transportation as well, in an effort to cut himself loose from the carbon economy cold turkey. He literally froze with his family in the dark through a long New York City winter.

He was also up front about the fact that his motivation was to give himself a good subject for a book. He was seeking publicity in the most direct and dramatic way he could think of, and he was successful in that. He generated a lot of publicity for himself and his book.

I didn’t have that motivation, at least at the beginning. I just wanted to see if I could narrow the gap between my own beliefs about climate change and my high-carbon lifestyle. I couldn’t stand the tension of living in the midst of such a wide gap. I also wanted to do something that was, at least in theory, plausible – something that would not be completely out of step with the practical constraints of my life. I wanted to set a new template for myself that might prove to be sustainable over the longer term.

The book idea came later. It grew out of my awareness that, within my circle metaphor, I had stumbled on a compelling story, and from the fact that I was realizing such positive fruits from the effort. I really did feel like I was involved in a grand adventure, and that my experiences might prove helpful for others who are wrestling with similar questions. Framing my response to climate change as an adventure rather than an ordeal, which it largely was for Beavan’s family, gives a very different tone to the story.

Q: Do you really think your actions made any difference? What can one person really accomplish against a challenge so huge?

A: I think that is the wrong question. I would ask about the consequences of our failure to act when we know what is at stake. Our climate emergency has been caused by our collective personal actions. Unwinding this dilemma isn’t somewhat else’s problem. It will turn on our personal actions as well. As Mother Teresa said, “In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.” It is an act of great love to make small changes for the better that are within our power to make. Not to do so, when the stakes are this high, is to court despair. To do what we can do, here and how, is to cultivate resilience. Aligning our values with our actions is always the best formula for peace of mind, and also our best shot at actually making a difference.

Q: How long did it take you to write your book?

A: It took me almost exactly a year to write the book, and writing about the experiences almost exactly paralleled the timing of the events I was writing about one year later. So I found myself reliving these adventures during the same seasonal progressions a year hence, and it felt at times like I was immersed in the adventure all over again. It was a kind of inward plumbing the depths of what had been a largely outward experience, a honing with deeper appreciation what I had experienced during the year itself.

Q: What practices have you continued from the year? Are you using your car again, or traveling by jet outside the region?

A: I am using my car again, but a lot less than I did before. I have a much-increased awareness of public transportation alternatives, and a much greater willingness to use them. I travel now by bicycle or public transportation whenever it is a reasonable alternative, and my definition of what constitutes a “reasonable alternative” is much enlarged from before I began. It is difficult to make use of alternatives when you don’t know they are there, and especially if you are not open to them to begin with. I am both open to and knowledgeable about these alternatives now, and quite committed to using them.

I drive a Prius, so using the most efficient technology available also plays into the formula in an important way. And when I do drive a car, I carpool as much as possible, a lot more than I did before.

I travel outside the region again, but apart from family emergencies, I have maintained my commitment to not fly on jets, which are the biggest source of personal carbon emissions for people who travel a lot, dwarfing the emissions from the use of our cars. A single flight to Europe from Seattle, for example, produces roughly the equivalent emissions (per passenger) of driving an SUV for six months, or a hybrid car for a full year. So when I travel to Alaska now for my summer guiding season with Inside Passages, I take the ferry from Bellingham both ways rather than flying. When I travel East I take the train, and use the time for work enroute. It is not a trip I can realistically take very often, so I don’t travel outside the region as much as before, and I try to cluster my engagements when I do. This will be an interesting dilemma to sort out with the publication of my book, since I am hoping it will have a more than regional appeal, and I do want to engage with my readers.

Q: Are you working on another book now?

A: I’ve done a lot of different kinds of work over the years, rarely just one thing, and I haven’t tended to hang my identity on any one thing that I do. So although I’ve always enjoyed writing, I haven’t thought of myself as a “writer” except as has served some larger purpose for which I needed to write. The Circumference of Home grew out of a larger need, a deep desire to bring my life into greater alignment with my values. Telling the story of my year in circumference was a satisfying way to share what I had learned, and to deepen my own understandings in the process.

When I have an equally compelling reason to write another book I won’t hesitate to do so. But wasn’t it Socrates who said that a man should do three things in his life: build a house with his own hands, raise a son, and write a book. I’ve now done all three. It took me sixty years to write my first book, so I feel pretty relaxed about the second one, considering that it isn’t due out until I am 120 years old.”

Q: What is your biggest hope for this book? What would make it “successful”?

A: Of course I want this book to be well received, and to be widely read. All authors want that. But more than anything else, I will know this book is a success if the people who do read it, wherever they are, find it helpful and engaging and encouraging as an alternative way of meeting a future that holds great risk and uncertainty.

The problems we face are so daunting that it is difficult to find the courage to really let them in, to let them speak to us. The biggest potential gift of climate change to the human family may be that, for the first time in history, the true depth of our interconnections is finally being brought home to us in a way we can no longer ignore – rich and poor, developed and under-developed, all races, religions, nations and regions of the planet – we all share directly and viscerally in this crisis. Consequently, we can appreciate in a new way how bound together our destiny is as a human family. I think there is an enormous gift in that message, if we can let it in. My greatest hope is that The Circumference of Home will convey the message that our potential for self-transformation and shared human resilience is still there for the taking, that the cultivation of these qualities on a personal and community level has everything to do with whether we can emerge from this crisis intact, and that life is still a miraculous gift, regardless of how things turn out. That is what I took from my year in circumference, and that is what I have tried to convey in my book. These are changes we are not only capable of making. We can significantly enrich our lives in the process, physically, psychologically and socially. Our response to climate change, which has been aptly called “the defining issue of our era”, really can be used as a call to adventure, an extraordinary opportunity to wake up to the richness of what is right on the ground beneath our feet.