Moscow Food Co-op Volunteer Profile

by Yvonne McGehee, from the January 2006 newsletter

Keeping the sidewalk at the Co-op swept, the snow shoveled, the front door windows sparkling, the shopping carts under control, and the dog's water container full, requires Donal Wilkinson to be here every day, so you have a good chance of seeing him at work.

Donal was born in Providence, Rhode Island and grew up all over New England. In 1940 his grandfather bought 500 acres in New Hampshire's White Mountains for one dollar per acre. Here he built seven cabins for his seven children.

To get there, you have to drive down a long dirt road, honk the car horn, and then wait at a lake for someone to come over and pick you and your stuff up; there is no access by road. Every year, Donal's mother joined the rest of the family for the whole summer at these cabins, where Donal had about 30 cousins to play with. There was a hand pump for water and no electricity. Everything was do-it-yourself, and the children had a lot of freedom to run and play and explore the land. On weekends there was a huge potluck for sixty or seventy people. There was no need to worry about locking anything up, as there was no theft, and very little anxiety about anything at all.

The older Donal gets, the more fortunate he feels to have had this experience. It fostered a love of wild places and was a very nurturing environment to grow up in. He now knows that a lot of people don't have nurturing environments in which to grow and explore.

Donal was in the U.S. Navy for six years after high school. He grew up in a conservative family, voting for Reagan in 1984. In the Navy he worked as a cryptologist. This was in 1983 to 1989, before the Internet was available to everyone. A cryptologist acquires raw data from satellites, agents, antennae arrays, and telephones. The communicated raw data is conveyed to intelligence experts for interpretation. Donal thought the interpretation was often skewed by the current political climate, which caused him to leave the Navy and start a career in activism.

Donal started college at Sonoma State in California. He was a member of Greenpeace, an Earth-First activist, and an anti-nuclear activist. He feels that the anti-nuclear protests worked, causing President Clinton to put a moratorium on nuclear testing. Donal counseled conscientious objectors to the Gulf War, and was a spokesperson for the San Jose Peace Center.

Donal came to think that activism is effective at changing the present; if you chain yourself to a redwood tree it will have the effect of preventing cutting; but that it is not effective at changing the future. He feels educating an entire generation, so they will not desire to cut down redwoods, would be more effective. So Donal became a science teacher for grades K through 12. Science education is his way to make a positive impact on the world.

Donal explains that the disconnection from the natural environment for children who have never experienced it is huge. If a child grows up in Las Angeles, he may not notice air quality, because he has never had it. Kids grow up without knowing where their food and their water come from. Science education can help rectify that, teaching children about cycles of the natural world, and how disruption of a single aspect can cause damage to whole ecosystems. For the past six years Donal offered summer camps in the wilderness for families, so they could experience the outdoors as Donal had as a child.

Yvonne McGehee has been breeding elegant borzoi dogs for the past 30 years. She feeds them a fresh food diet. See her dogs at http://personal.palouse.net/valeska.

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