A Tribute to Dana Meadows by Robert Braile
~Journalist, The Boston Globe~
Several years ago–this would have been 1996 or 1997–I was sitting in Dana’s office up at Dartmouth. I remember that it was a bitterly cold, winter afternoon, quite unlike today. A snowstorm was bearing down on Hanover, and was expected to arrive at any moment. I had stopped by Dana’s office, as I often did during my time at Dartmouth, to see how she was, to hear what she had on her mind, but mostly, to be in her presence. As you may not know, Dana was the person who brought me to Dartmouth, and so the person to whom I will forever be indebted, as she made it possible for me to have the most meaningful, most rewarding experience of my professional career, including everything I may have accomplished in my 25 years as an environmental journalist–the honor and privilege of teaching the finest students any teacher could possibly ask for. Students like Ashley Graves Lanfer, who you’ll meet in a moment, when she speaks. Dana had become a mentor, an advocate, an ally, a friend, the person most excited about my coming to Dartmouth in 1994, the person most disappointed about my leaving in 1998.
On this one afternoon, Dana wanted to talk about Cobb Hill, the eco-village she was at that time developing in Hartland Four Corners, Vermont. This was to be a place, Dana said, where people could live sustainability, could live environmentalism, could live their ethic, an enclave of hope, of humility, and of certainty, the certainty that comes with a conviction to what one believes.
I remember telling Dana how impressed I was, with the entire venture, the entire idea.
Then, after a pause, Dana said, “You should live there, Bob.” And she said it just like that. “You should live there, Bob,” a simple imperative.
As you might imagine, I was somewhat taken aback. “Well, Dana, you know I live clear across the state in Durham, New Hampshire, where I own a home…”
“Sell it,” she said.
There was another pause. “Well, Dana, you know I have a wife, with a job down there, I have two kids…”
“Bring them,” she said.
Now you have to understand–I knew Dana was serious, because every time Dana was serious, every time Dana wanted to make a serious point, and Dana always wanted to make a serious point, she’d get this slight, Mona Lisa smile on her face, and a lightning quick twinkle in her eyes, the combined effect of which was utterly engaging, utterly disarming, utterly arresting, an effect that actually enhanced the gravity of her otherwise serious point, through sheer contrast. At that moment, I saw that smile and that twinkle, and so I knew she was serious.
I told her I’d consider it, sounding ever so much like the diplomat I so long not to be.
In recent weeks, I’ve been thinking about certainty–what it is, where it comes from, how we attain it, why it matters. And I’ve been thinking about certainty because I–like you–have been thinking about Dana. For among the many gifts Dana was blessed to have and to bestow, the one that resonates most forcefully in my life, after the gift of enabling me to teach at Dartmouth, was the gift of her certainty. For Dana understood what so few of us understand, or perhaps we do understand but are for some reason reluctant to embrace and to live, in the same way I was reluctant on that afternoon in Dana’s office to embrace and to live the opportunity to move to Cobb Hill.
What Dana understood is that we are most alive, when we are most certain.
Thoreau, a century and a half ago, instructed us to live deliberately. But how many of us actually do that? I remember another afternoon, this one more recent, the afternoon of February 21st of this year, when I was at my desk, writing the obituary on Dana for the next day’s edition of the Globe. I picked up the phone and called Noel Perrin, the essayist, and another former colleague of mine and Dana’s in the Environmental Studies Program at Dartmouth, to get his thoughts on Dana, to ask him what comes to mind first when he thinks of Dana. Without any more solicitation than that, he cited the same gift–certainty. “Dana,” he said, “was more consistent than Thoreau. It’s characteristic for many environmental thinkers to not carry over their environmentalism into their private lives,” he said. “But not her.”
We are most alive, when we are most certain.
I don’t know if I’ll ever live at Cobb Hill, in Hartland Four Corners, Vermont. But in a sense, I already do. In a sense, we all do, those of who are here today, celebrating Dana’s life, those of us who at this very moment are doing the same all across the country. For we have remembered Dana, we are remembering Dana, and we will remember Dana. And in remembering Dana, we will continue to draw from the living gift of her certainty, making us better able to carry out the work, the good work, Dana called on herself to do, and called on the rest of us to do.
And I have to believe that on this day, one so different from that cold and snowy day a few years ago at Dartmouth, that understanding, that revelation, that conviction is bringing a smile to Dana’s face, and a twinkle to her eyes.
