A young man wearing a baseball hat and a green Monticello 4H T-Shirt looked skeptically at the six-foot-tall pop-up sign that told him he was standing before a table about the Piedmont Environmental Council.
I had just arrived at Grace Episocopal to staff the table for the historic farm tour that was based at the church. He and an identically-dressed young man approached me.
"So, are you all against hunting?" he asked, clearly hoping to put me on the defensive.
"Not at all," I said. "We're about protecting habitat so you and others have a place to hunt." I gestured to one of the maps that listed all of the properties in Albemarle that are under conservation easement.
He wasn't impressed.
"What kind of environmental organization are you?" he asked, his skepticism sharp enough to cut me down, if I said the wrong thing. "Are you a bunch of tree huggers?"
I dislike that phrase, and know it's intended to belittle and subordinate. I didn't answer directly.
"We're about protecting land to make sure it's there so it can be farmed well into the future," I said, leaping into a defensive sales pitch.
I want people to keep an open mind, and looking past a word. This young man had seen the word "environmental" on our pop-up sign and saw me as an automatic adversary.
I don't want to be anyone's adversary. I suppose that's a naive way to look at the world, but that's not the intent. I want allies and partners, people who can work together to make things better for as many people as possible.
"You're not one of those groups that won't let people touch the trees, are you?" he asked. "I mean, the trees can't be cut down, but you kill thousands of babies every day."
I side-stepped that issue, not wanting to make an adversary. The two issues weren't connected at the moment.
"No, we're the kind of group that works with others to try to figure out how we're going to solve problems," I said. "Do you fish?"
He nodded.
"Well, we're working with the Virginia Department of Transportation right now to make sure when they replace culverts on rural roads, they do so in a way that lets fish travel along the streams, which helps their habitat," I said.
"I'm a Christian, and I believe God gave us all of these resources for us to use and take care of," he said.
"Exactly, but you still have to be a good steward of the land, and that's what we're trying to help people be," I said, thinking about all of the programs I've learned about in the past year.
I don't know if I won him over, but at least he and his friend walked away knowing something they didn't know before. And I stood my ground, proud of the work I do now.
