Article 2 - REVIEW OF "White Silk and Black Tar" March 2007 edition of First Church of The Streets

    The Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound was a prominent headline in American news. There has been speculation about the adverse effects on the spill on the environment over the years. The idea of America being "addicted to oil" has made the spill seem even more relevant. It is as though the waste spilling all over nature's backyard epitomizes how industrialized society wantonly waste resources without thinking of the consequences of the ecosystem around them.

    The damage to the environment because of the spill seemed obvious, but headlines have a way of going on to other things, as though the entire issue has been prettied up and readied with a perfect solution. This is not usually the case, and in the Valdez oil spill, this truth holds. What also was not apparent in the spill was the damage rendered spiritually to those who lived and loved the land that was affected. This kind of damage is harder to measure. An unquantifiable figure, how humans fit into the ecosystem in a spiritual sense seems less dramatic a headline. This doesn't make the damage, or the suffering, any less real.

    Page Spencer's "White Silk and Black Tar" is an autobiographic journal that catalogues the damage rendered upon the human soul as the oil seeps its way through the Alaskan wilderness. An ecologist employed by the National Park Service who was born in the forty-ninth state, Spencer witnessed firsthand the oil spill that crept into the pristine preserve that had nurtured her for her entire life. The book is a journal that catalogues how the environment around her was suddenly altered in a permanent way, from the assault on nature as well as the onslaught of strangers from Outside in the lower 48 that were consulted by both the Exxon company, and the government to help clean up the destruction.

    Spencer's writing is both scientific and elegiac as she catalogues her experience documenting the spill's damage in numerous beaches. The "White Silk" in her book refers not directly to pristine wilderness, but to the wedding dress she wore just before the spill took place. As she says in the book, if she had delayed her wedding to park ranger Bud Rice for just one more week, she wouldn't have been married at the time. For once the spill hit, instead of enjoying the land they both loved in the newness of the marriage, she and Rice were in separate spheres cataloging damage to something they both treasured. White silk and black tar could also be seen as the beauty before and the damage after, as Spencer reflects in her mind of better times when she walked the land before the spill and of the animals and land around her.

    Spencer's writing is both authoritative and mournful. She wrote this journal as a healing process, and it is obvious from her words that her spirit was damaged much as the land was around her. She mourns for the world she once knew, and also reflects on the damage that she is responsible for as a person who lives in an industrialized society and in a modern way, reflecting on how her lifestyle has contributed to the spill around her. How does one's life impact the world around him or her? This is the question she wrestles with as she changes along with the landscape around her. The spill becomes a symbol warning how mankind needs to learn to remember the land around them as they make the choices that impact it.