My grandmother always had a plaque hanging over her kitchen sink as we were growing up that read: “Never judge a person until you have walked a mile in their moccasins.” Timeless advice about understanding our fellow man before we criticize them for what they believe or how they live. I have not forgotten those words in the past 30-plus years and, a couple Sundays ago, I put those words into action, literally, and joined in the Third Annual Peace Pilgrimage through our mountains on its way to Oak Ridge, Tenn.

Buddhist monks and nuns from the Nipponzan Myohoji Order of Atlanta (www.stopthebombs.org) organized the walk to bring attention to their cause of eliminating nuclear weapons production. The walk began in Atlanta on July 16, marking the 56th anniversary of the first testing of nuclear bombs by the U.S. at Alamagordo, N.M., and concluded at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, the last full-scale nuclear weapons production facility in operation in the US. Their Aug. 6 completion date coincided with Hiroshima Day, when the U.S. dropped the “Little Boy” bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, effectively ending WW II and opening the book on nuclear warfare.

Approximately 20 of us had assembled in rainy Dillsboro by 9 a.m. at the beginning of the 18-mile journey to Cherokee. We had come from North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Japan and Australia to walk together, young and old alike, along soggy U.S.74/441 in an effort to raise the hope of peace by our action and intent. Well-wishers honked their horns as the monks began their drumming and chanting, seemingly in rhythm to the squish of wet shoes along the road’s edge. The rain picked up within the first 100 yards of the journey, letting the participants know that today’s walk would not require the sun screen and large quantities of drinking water as some of the previous two weeks walking had. The cars and trucks slushed by, tourist pulling trailers blew up wet windy walls on their way to the next R.V. campground as our feet moved one ahead of the other.

This was a different kind of church service for a Sunday morning. Rather than sitting in pews, we walked single file down the shoulder, chanting, talking and sharing our desires for a peaceful nuclear-free world. Much of the time we walked quietly, saying personal prayers and thinking about the nuclear questions most choose to ignore. In the first couple miles I questioned many sides of the dilemma and my personal role in the solution. I heard some frightening statistics which made me question the rationality of our leaders and our science.

One thing I learned was that the warheads and bombs of today are 10 to 20 times more powerful than the one used against the Japanese at Hiroshima, and the fact that we have 800 or so of these warheads on the ready at anytime, 24/7. I’ve seen the pictures of the aftermath and have to wonder why we would need an arsenal even more powerful than that, more efficient at producing devastation and vaporizing everything within 100 mile of the impact site, appropriately dubbed Ground Zero. I suspect that the name reflects the odds of anything being left after such an explosion where temperatures soar to the millions of degrees Fahrenheit.

I’ll not argue our “need” for nuclear weaponry on the grounds of national security, nor on the moral or religious sides of the issue. I also shy away from discussions on our nation’s role as “peacekeepers of the world”and our reliance on the “nuclear deterrent” to keep our enemies at bay. My logical, left-brain predisposition and business mindedness force me to question the rationality on the basis of economics. How much is superior firepower worth? Nuclear armaments have already cost us trillions of taxpayer dollars. That’s thousands of billions, which are thousands of millions. I don’t know how big a pile of 100 dollar bills that is, but I am sure it would take a very big bulldozer or an act of Congress and the Appropriations Committee to move such a mountain of the peoples’ money. And that doesn’t even include clean-up and centuries of storage of the by-products and wastes the industry continues to produce. Now the DOE wants another $ 4 billion to rebuild the Y- 12 facility complex to upgrade the W-87 warheads on our MX missile stockpile, so that they last longer. With environmental degradation continuing to increase, millions of people starving and living in squalor, an increase in sweatshop labor and human right abuses and rising numbers of HIV/AIDS cases worldwide, I have to ask if our emphasis and expenditures on nuclear weaponry is the best use of our resources, technology and intellect. The president is urging us to move to yet a higher level of investment with his new “Defense Shield” program, even though no one is sure what that is.

After several miles of the walk I clasped hands with each of the participants, thanked them for their effort and their worthy mission and walked back to Dillsboro to retrieve my truck and get on to the rest of my Sunday obligations. I thought deeply as I walked alone along our route. One of the greatest privilege of being an American is our right to freedom of speech and of religious choice guaranteed by the First Amendment. We are able to worship as we choose and to question our government when we feel they are not acting in the best interest of the citizenry. God bless America! Land of the free, home of the brave, with liberty and a huge, incredibly expensive nuclear weapons stockpile capable of planetary annihilation for all.

(John Beckman is a building contractor and Operations Mgr. at Unahwi Ridge/Pomme de Terre Farm in Jackson County. Contact him at www.unahwiridge.com)

 

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