I cry during movies frequently, though I am rarely – if ever – wrecked by a children’s movie. “Hoppers” did it; minutes in, I felt tears welling as the on-screen grandmother teaches her granddaughter Mabel to turn to nature for restoration. Moments later, my eyes are stinging as Mabel scrambles over a fence and out onto a beaver dam loaded with explosives. She knows no other way to save it.
As the tale descends into its darkest hour, Mabel confesses to her beaver king friend that she is so tired of being alone, that she is tired of everything feeling broken, and she can’t fix even this one thing – the glade she loves – and she can’t understand why nobody else cares. Oh Lord, the tears spill over. The Beaver King says he cares and hope emerges.
Why is this children’s movie hitting so hard? Last month, I attended a meeting hosted by Metallic Minerals discussing “The La Plata Project,” the precursor of a possible mine in the La Platas. April 8 was the last day for public comment on a revocation of Public Land Order No. 7923, which protects a 10-mile radius around this significant ancestral Puebloan site. Why revoke this order? The potential of drilling for oil and gas. An urgency fills me not to take 1 acre of public lands for granted.
I realize I am part of a great machine that requires unfathomable amounts of resources to maintain. Metallic Minerals’ website features a page speaking to the push to acquire minerals for energy shifts and the ever-growing demands of AI. I feel trapped. I imagine the alpine meadows I know – soft carpets of green, with tiny flowers scattered like confetti across the slopes – scraped bare or collapsed for mineral extraction. Do we carve up these wild mountains as a sacrifice to consumerism?
Optimism calls for hope in responsible mining. At this stage of consumption, harm reduction will be the name of the game. Metallic Minerals says it is leading the way in responsible mining and acknowledges the area is significant to several Indigenous peoples. Unfortunately, saying “I love the La Platas” followed by zero plans for incorporating these values into their work did not reassure me, or seemingly anyone else attending, that these statements went any deeper than a nod to progressive aesthetics.
“The La Plata Project” is still in its prospecting phase. The public, and apparently Metallic Minerals employees, don’t know what impact a mine would have in the valley. “We just don’t know,” they continually repeated. This leads me to the fact that our laws determine what happens on our public lands.
That’s the scary piece. As demonstrated around Chaco National Park, protections can be – and increasingly have been – removed. What can I do? I am recovering from a children’s movie because I haven’t resonated with a character so much in a long time. I am reminded that I am not the only person who sees wild places as a wealth banks can’t dream of. Protecting public lands is a job bigger than any one of us.
The powers we resist will always have the last say if we say nothing. This pushes me to find ways to alchemize fear into love. Hope often feels silly, though I’ve never received a prize for anticipating the worst. It is deeply inspiring to see how quickly Save the La Platas organized to resist mining. The more I look, the more I see others who care and, better still, act. It may be a signature, a sticker, small actions – but together, we are pushing the boundaries of hope.
Sage Grizzard is lucky to call Durango her first home. She has worked in Durango’s outdoor industry since graduating from Fort Lewis College.
