dinner with friends
on environmental advocacy and appreciation through the generations
On a Wednesday night in February, I walked up the steps of the Clubhouse on Highland. The smell of snow loomed over the Highland Park neighborhood, the whispers of flurries and sleet stretched from one edge of the city to the other. When I think of snow, I think of my grandfather dying.
He had been in the hospital for several weeks with a terrible bought of pneumonia. Being a teenager I was filled with miracle-dredged optimism that simply wasn’t going to make my dream of him recovering come true. I remember my mother saying to me, “Taylor, it’s snowed twice and he has no idea.”
That was the year of Snowpocalypse when I had spent the night in the science teacher's workroom at my high school. Her saying that to me was like cracking open a sheet of ice, cold, harsh, and worst of all it made me come to terms with the sharp reality that he would soon pass onto the place we go when we die.
I wouldn’t exactly call my Dede an outdoorsman. He didn’t really hunt or fish like my other friend’s grandfathers did–but that didn’t mean he didn’t appreciate nature in his own way.
Most of my childhood memories of him are outdoors. If we weren’t at the beauty shop with my grandmother, we were running around the yard while he worked. Our first driving lessons were in his lap as he taught us how to steer the riding lawn mower. I’ve written before about how he would poke the holes in the lids of mason jars so we could catch insects and release them when it was time for supper. He took daily walks in the woods behind the house and the Great Smoky Mountains were a regular family vacation destination. He was the first person I ever saw a black bear with.
The last time I walked on the clubhouse steps was in 2017 after my sorority’s semi-formal. The Clubhouse on Highland was modeled after the Arts & Crafts movement in 1910 and served as the headquarters for the Alabama Federation of Women Club's ’ 3rd District for over 60 years.
The amber overhead light casts a warm glow against the windowpane door and carved wood frame. Lights beamed from inside, and I clutched the decorative brass doorknob before being welcomed back into a historic home. In truth, it’s a mesmerizing place, a relic of a time when new homes had character and weren’t lifeless walls of white and gray floor paneling.
I had been invited to join a not-so-secret club of environmental activists. Each year, Vickey Wheeler and Henry Hughes invite 50 environmental advocates to dine on white tablecloths and discuss their work while looking for ways to collaborate and get involved in other areas. Some are invited again, but for the most part, the 50 guests are made up of new faces or new members of this club of nature lovers.
I was flattered to be asked, mostly because I feel like many of the attendees there are people that I look up to and admire. There are many things I don’t yet know about our environment here in Alabama. When I’m out there exploring I am always learning a handful of new things and I try to pass it along whenever I can.
Dinner parties like this one are a slowly reviving art. I’m a staunch advocate that we should have more parties and that parties should have rules. Structure helps build the aura of the gathering and it helps guide guests to new places where perhaps they wouldn’t have gone before. When I had been invited I thought that perhaps I could cling to the few friends I knew.
When happy hour ended we sat at our tables, marked by a place card with our name and the piece of art Vickey had created for each of us. One of the hosts remarked that we might only recognize one person at our table—that was by design. They wanted to push the people across the generations together, and for people to find a new stretch of the community to get to know.
Tina Mozelle Braziel read her poem, “What the Creek Says,” and the hosts listed off collaborations that were born at this same event the previous year. I appreciated getting to know members of my table: one of the hosts and his wife, the owner of a beloved restaurant in the same neighborhood, an environmental lawyer, and an employee for an organization whose main goal was to plant trees across the city.
We exchanged stories of why we felt this call to nature, we talked about our previous strategies and goals for the new year without being too bogged down about the current administration and other horrific things that have been happening in the world. This night was meant to be a positive one, where our own optimism and charge fueled our passions and determination to build a better future.
In the South, respecting our elders is something that is deeply ingrained in the way that we’re raised. At times, there is an attitude of sitting down and being quiet, but at this gathering, there is a level of equality through the generations. We respect each other’s tenure, no matter how long or short they’ve been working. We’re building our relationships and our goals together, we are fighting a battle together. Mother nature, it seems, does not have time for egos.
I’m looking forward to seeing members of this club again and figuring out how we can work together to protect, preserve, and restore the places we love so much. Since this dinner party in February, I’ve had the chance to work on some exciting projects and I look forward to sharing those projects with you soon.
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