Damned Nation

Back in 1987, when in the middle of a September night, an anonymous Earth First! activist rappelled down the 210 foot high face of Glines Canyon Dam to paint a crack and ELWHA BE FREE on it, dam removal was an unthinkable idea in the U.S. Dams were engineering wonders, monuments to the nation's "ingenuity and spirit of enterprise." Little was said about their ecological harm.

But in the last years, the removal of obsolete dams has become a growing movement. The documentary film DamNation, bankrolled by Patagonia founder and environmentalist Yvon Chouinard, calls for more action: "I hope this film leads to a revolution – a revolution about how we think about our water, and how we think about our rivers." The 75-year old appears in several scenes of DamNation, but the anonymous crack-painter is a much more prominent presence. His name is Mikal Jakubal, he now lives in Humboldt County, operates a bamboo nursery and works as an EMT and a documentary film maker. He still rappels down the occasional rock face or dam, but won't say where. DamNation is on the festival circuit.

If you can't catch a screening, you can buy the DVD or rent/download it on Vimeo, Netflix or iTunes.

(Full disclosure: Mikal Jakubal became a friend after I met him while reporting an article in Humboldt County in 2010 for the Financial Times Germany.)