When
Paul was a boy growing up in Utah, he happened to live near an old copper smelter,
and the sulfur dioxide that poured out of the refinery had made a desolate wasteland
out of what used to be a beautiful forest.  When
a young visitor one day looked at this wasteland and saw that there was nothing
living there — no animals, no trees, no grass, no bushes, no birds ... nothing
but fourteen thousand acres of black and barren land that even smelled bad —
well, this kid looked at the land and said, “This place is crummy.”
Paul knocked him down. He felt insulted. But he looked around him and something
happened inside him. He made a decision: Paul Rokich vowed that some day he would
bring back the life to this land. Many
years later Paul was in the area, and he went to the smelter office. He asked
if they had any plans to bring the trees back. The answer was “No.”
He asked if they would let him try to bring the trees back. Again, the answer
was “No.” They didn’t want him on their land. He realized he needed
to be more knowledgeable before anyone would listen to him, so he went to college
to study botany.

At
the college he met a professor who was an expert in Utah’s ecology. Unfortunately,
this expert told Paul that the wasteland he wanted to bring back was beyond hope.
He was told that his goal was foolish because even if he planted trees, and even
if they grew, the wind would only blow the seeds forty feet per year, and that’s
all you’d get because there weren’t any birds or squirrels to spread
the seeds, and the seeds from those trees would need another thirty years before
they started producing seeds of their own. Therefore, it would take approximately
twenty thousand years to revegetate that six-square-mile piece of earth. His teachers
told him it would be a waste of his life to try to do it. It just couldn’t
be done. So
he tried to go on with his life. He got a job operating heavy equipment, got married,
and had some kids. But his dream would not die. He kept studying up on the subject,
and he kept thinking about it. And then one night he got up and took some action.
He did what he could with what he had. This was an important turning point. As
Samuel Johnson wrote, “It is common to overlook what is near by keeping the
eye fixed on something remote. In the same manner, present opportunities are neglected
and attainable good is slighted by minds busied in extensive ranges.” Paul
stopped busying his mind in extensive ranges and looked at what opportunities
for attainable good were right in front of him. Under the cover of darkness, he
sneaked out into the wasteland with a backpack full of seedlings and started planting.
For seven hours he planted seedlings. He did it again a week later. And
every week, he made his secret journey into the wasteland and planted trees and
shrubs and grass. But most of it died. For fifteen years he did this. When a whole
valley of his fir seedlings burned to the ground because of a careless sheepherder,
Paul broke down and wept. Then he got up and kept planting. Freezing
winds and blistering heat, landslides and floods and fires destroyed his work
time and time again. But he kept planting. One night he found a highway crew had
come and taken tons of dirt for a road grade, and all the plants he had painstakingly
planted in that area were gone. But he just kept planting. Week
after week, year after year he kept at it, against the opinion of the authorities,
against the trespassing laws, against the devastation of road crews, against the
wind and rain and heat ... even against plain common sense. He just kept planting.
Slowly, very slowly, things began to take root. Then gophers appeared. Then rabbits.
Then porcupines. The
old copper smelter eventually gave him permission, and later, as times were changing
and there was political pressure to clean up the environment, the company actually
hired Paul to do what he was already doing, and they provided him with machinery
and crews to work with. Progress accelerated. Now the place is fourteen thousand
acres of trees and grass and bushes, rich with elk and eagles, and Paul Rokich
has received almost every environmental award Utah has.

He
says, “I thought that if I got this started, when I was dead and gone people
would come and see it. I never thought I’d live to see it myself!” It
took him until his hair turned white, but he managed to keep that impossible vow
he made to himself as a child.