Mark McClain’s passion for the planet grew out of spending time outside.
“My interest in environmental matters really grew out of my outdoor things—the canoeing and hiking and so forth—because you see the outdoors and you see the things that need to be protected,” said McClain, 64, a Salem resident and Oklahoma native. McClain is involved in a number of local green organizations, including the Sierra Club, the Roanoke Valley Greenway Commission and the Roanoke Valley Cool Cities Coalition, which he co-founded with his long-time sweetheart Diana Christopulos.
The Cool Cities Coalition is one of the Valley’s environmental success stories. Its purpose is to make a difference in the fight against climate change through education, outreach and community action.
“We’re really involved now with the business community,” said McClain of the coalition. “We’re working with the Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce on a thing called ‘Cool Green Biz,’ which is a business certification. We hope to expand that greatly and get more and more businesses involved in reducing their carbon footprint. We’ve started an awards program for people in the community who are doing things to reduce carbon emissions.”
“Long-term, we really aren’t sure where it’s going to go,” he adds, noting there is local interest in issues like sustainability, energy efficiency, and renewable energy sources.
McClain’s activism was born when he joined some paddling outings sponsored by the local Sierra Club chapter in the Dallas area. He soon discovered a passion for canoe camping.
“The kind of trip that I really like to do is where you get in the boat and throw all your camping gear in there and spend the night out on the river,” he said. “Before long we were doing three and four and five day trips, and pretty soon I wasn’t doing anything shorter than a seven day trip. That would be my vacation. I’d spend all my vacation on the river someplace.”
He met Christopulos on a canoe trip down the Brazos River in Texas around 1990. He was seeking an escape from Dallas because “the weather there was terrible,” said McClain. “It was hot all the time in the summer … bad air … congestion … a real big-city environment.”), the two looked around the country for a new home and discovered southwest Virginia. “We spent about two days here before we decided to move here,” he said.
McClain and Christopulos are also avid hikers, although McClain says, “That’s more her thing than mine. I’m kind of a five mile hiker. If I have a 10 mile day, that’s a long hike for me.” A decade ago the couple was on a trip to the UK and was surprised to find the country criss-crossed with trails.
Said McClain, “We thought, ‘man this is really cool.’ So the next time we got the idea to go over there, I said ‘How about if we do a trip that’s all walking?’” In 2005, they did “and we just loved it. We thought it was the greatest thing that we’d ever done.”
“So we did it again,” in the fall of 2009, this time to Yorkshire in northeast England, where they covered 124 miles of the countryside, carrying their belongings on their backs, staying in bed and breakfasts and eschewing the use of automobiles.
“England is generally a much more pedestrian and bicycle friendly area,” said McClain. “That’s just the nature of the way they evolved. The country was fully developed, fully built out, and fully populated before the age of the automobile.”
“These walking trails or footpaths are all over the country and you can get almost anywhere without walking on a road,” he added. “It’s much more expensive to drive a car there and much more expensive to park a car there.”
McClain and Christopulos kept a diary of their journey on the website trailjournals.com, complete with pictures of the quaint English countryside and tales of pints, crisps, and McClain’s morning repast of choice, the FEB (full English breakfast: fried eggs, tomato, bacon, sausage, toast, cereal, juice and tea or coffee, and sometimes baked beans, potatoes and black pudding or blood sausage).
The couple will present a slide show of their trip set to music titled “A Yorkshire Walk” at the Sierra Club’s Earth Friendly Friday on Feb. 12 from 6:30-8:30 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church on Grandin Rd. in Roanoke. The presentation is free and open to the public. For more information, call Bob Egbert at 384-7448.
By Dave Perry [email protected]