I greatly admire Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States. For those who are unaware, there are two basic ways to describe him.
The first relies upon your imagination: summon before your mind’s eye a single human being whose physical, behavioral, and philosophical characteristics are a composite of every positive and negative cliché that springs to mind when you read the word “American”. Teddy was that fucking guy.
The other way uses information: T.R. was a literally-saber-rattling warrior, who gave us the “speak softly and carry a big stick” approach to diplomacy, while winning a Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the end of a war between the Russian and Japanese Empires. The man was crazy-tough and determined; someone shot him on his way to a campaign event, but he shrugged it off as a minor inconvenience, and went on to deliver his ninety minute speech with the bullet still inside him. He was a trust-busting friend of the working man, the scion of a wealthy family who was considered a turncoat by the monied elite. He was a bigger-than-life individual who –despite holding a few of-his-time ideas that would be alarming today– was ultimately one of the most significant progressives of the modern era.
But for my purposes, he was primarily a passionate conservationist. Teddy loved the natural world even more than he hated being called “Teddy,” and arguably did more to safeguard the land and all that lives upon it than any other American, before or since. He was an avid hunter and fisherman who knew our wondrous, complicated planet was a finite, shared resource that must be nurtured and allowed opportunities to grow wild and free.
Teddy cared for Mother Earth and protected her, so that she would always be his to prey upon.
…and now you know how I call myself a feminist.