Following Gandhi's dictum, "You must be the change you wish to see in the world," the group undertook projects of all sizes, from picking up trash and moving baseball bleachers to installing community gardens, helping to build a new library, and finding a lost whitewater rafter. They also painted over 600 faces, spontaneously led games in city playgrounds, invited all strangers to join them at their meals, danced and sang a song at every state border crossing, and held memorial services for thousands of road kill animals they encountered along the way. Through pre-arranged sponsorship by friends and family back home, riders also raised money for various nonprofit organizations. They did plan a few stops in advance--to help nonprofits seeking to address the roots of problems (e.g., teaching low-income families how to grow their own food, instead of just feeding them)--but most of their trip unfolded spontaneously.
In the summer of 2001, the second Haul of Justice took place-a three-week ride through Maine, with similar activities and goals. The group now plans to travel in one state per summer; for 2002, Ethan and friends have chosen North Carolina.
Before this interview, I had heard Ethan talk several times about the Superheroes; in fact, earlier the same year, volunteers from the Hero Alliance (the local, part-time continuation of the Haul of Justice project, based in Cottage Grove and Eugene, Oregon) had helped us at Lost Valley Educational Center with garden bed preparation. The conversation below took place in November, 2001, during a break in a workshop Ethan was participating in at Lost Valley. Against a background of troubling world events--terrorism and war had dominated the news in recent months--I found his stories and visions extremely hopeful and inspiring. As Ethan remarked later in our conversation, "I've seen how beautiful people are, at the core. I really believe that, even to the point of taking life, people who do 'evil' things are acting out of fear and not being loved. The best I can do is live my own truth. That will assure that I'm not overwhelmed by the evil in the world, because I start seeing beauty everywhere." In Ethan's experience, "being love" and "being peace" (Thich Nat Hanh's term) are not only possible--they're contagious.
Besides being a Superhero, Ethan currently teaches courses such as "The Bizarre World" (a science class) and "Cartooning for Social Revolution" to high school students at Wellsprings Friends School in Eugene, and appropriate technology classes at Aprovecho Research Center in Cottage Grove, a few miles from the farm on which he lives. He is strongly committed to eco-friendly forms of transportation (he bicycles, walks, or uses public transportation wherever he goes) and to learning and teaching about ways of leading more ecologically harmonious lives. Far from being a stereotypical self-righteous activist, however, he extends a generosity of spirit to others that radiates fun, love, and inclusiveness. Ethan is a magnet for community, and a catalyst for projects that spread joy, spontaneity, and connection among those they touch.
CR: Can you explain the background of the Superheroes? Who are the Superheroes? And why should we be interested in them?
EH: The Superheroes started a long time ago. When I was in high school, I wore a cape at a beach to recruit kids to pick up trash. That was the first manifestation. They wore capes and it made it exciting for them; we'd shout, "Fear me, trash!" All of a sudden I had a line of ten kids when before I could get no one. That's when the Superhero meaning came to be. Superheroes are people all around the world who give to their culture, give to their society, give to their community.
I thought, wow! It would be great to take this on the road. I started dressing up as a Superhero to fight food waste, and I was a Superhero at the WTO protests in Seattle. Then I realized it had always been limited to certain events or times-but how about the idea of a Superhero who was in the moment whenever something presented itself, whether it was growing organic food or helping somebody find a place to stay? There wouldn't be one preselected cause, just whatever cause the universe sent. We would set out in the most mindful way we could manifest--which meant human power, bulk organic meals, our kitchen and tents towed by bike trailers complete with guitars, juggling balls, and facepaint.
I sent a couple photocopied flyers out, and news spread word of mouth. On that first ride, forty-two riders took part. Seven of them just met us spontaneously on the road. One farmer jumped on his bike--"Dirtman"--and rode with us for sixty miles. In Oregon, we met a nineteen-year-old on a cross-country trip on his bike, and shared meals with him; once he reached the West Coast, he turned his bike around, met up with us in Kansas, and rode three thousand miles with us. So the Superheroes are organic and every trip we do is different. People come who feel moved by that mission: to go out and just do good--bike until you see someone in need.
CR: When was that trip? Was that the first cross-country trip?
EH: That was the summer of 2000. We went five thousand miles over a period of four months. Our only intention was to be open to what we saw and to serve. We called it the Haul of Justice. This summer [2001] was the second ride, which was in Maine. We did just one state, for three weeks, riding a total of five hundred miles.
CR: I've heard some of your stories about that first summer trip. Are there any that you'd like to tell?
EH: Yes... I guess one of the big things is to realize how a tiny act can change someone's whole perception of the world.
We met a man for two minutes at a health food store. The next day, we were crossing the highest peak of the trip at 11, 700 feet, Hoosier Pass. He had woken up early in the morning to go up there with a huge bag of cherries, marked "Superheroes." We went up and found it at the peak. We never saw him again, but I still think of him and how that one act gave me so much hope--to see that he was so moved that he would go out and give us sustenance.
Another time, we came into Rawlings, Wyoming, and saw a man standing in front of the church, so we asked, "Do you know anyone in the community who needs help with anything?" He said, "Go around back." There were all these twelve year olds trying to build an outhouse on wheels and we were saying, "Good God, what's happening here?" "It's a local outhouse race, the whole town does it, and the winners get $300. Our kids are trying to win it to share the money with their youth group to go on a trip." And we realized, "Great, this is our mission," so we spent all day helping to build this outhouse on wheels and training with them, running through the church parking lot. In the morning we went to the race to cheerlead. It's this crazy race, there's a radio announcer and hundreds of people in the streets cheering for different outhouses. They roll down the street and have to throw toilet paper through basketball hoops and Roto Rooter through pipes and do all these events. The children lost, but I carry them so in my heart. Here were all these adults racing, people trying to get the money for themselves, and it was the twelve year olds who were wanting to share. They became the Superheroes of their town. When they lost they felt really bad, but we circled up and just acknowledged them all as Superheroes and then said, "You know, you've won, because you've moved us and all of these people." Superheroes are everywhere, helping their communities, the earth, and our hearts!
CR: How did you find people to help? Would you go to a public building when you first came into a town?
EH: Or if we saw someone working, like an old man outside of Astoria, Oregon, who was taking rocks out of his garden...with individuals too we'd just stop and offer. One old woman in Pennsylvania was maybe 88 with this push mower, looking like she's going to die, and I stopped and asked, "Can I help you?" and she answered, "This is the best part of my week," but then was very thankful that we'd asked. So it would be whatever we saw. Sometimes we'd come into the town and go by the Chamber of Commerce, a shelter, or sometimes we'd just pull up to a person on the corner of the street and say, "Do you know anyone...?" It was whenever and wherever we were moved; there was no pattern.
What makes people feel alive is the unknown. We're not thinking, "I'm going to go out for this." Instead, it's "I'm going to go out and be open and trust the world," and that unknown makes it exciting.
CR: What was your first day on the road like?
EH: At the very beginning, as we prepared to leave Seattle, we didn't know what was going to happen, so there was fear. We had just gone through a ritual to become Superheroes, and literally we're about to get on our bikes and a BMW went by with a flat tire. And of course we're so excited to do something--that's what we're about--so we're chasing the BMW down the street, with the guy looking in the rear view mirror saying "Oh my gosh, there's seven adults in capes chasing us." Finally, when it was totally flat, he pulled over and just cracked the window: "What do you want?" "We want to help you change your flat." He and his wife and daughter got out of the car finally and we started changing the tire. It turns out it was his birthday, the first person we interacted with. They were going to lunch, it was about noon, and they had a reservation, and he thought he was going to have to call AAA; he didn't know how to fix a flat. Within a few minutes we had switched the tire, and the daughter and mom were clapping, and we're hugging, embracing this total stranger, and he was saying, "This is the best birthday gift I've ever had."
When we made a commitment that every moment was looking outward, as an experiment, all of a sudden the world changed. We were just so attuned to whenever we saw an orphanage or some kind of group--we seemed to be led to them--and every time we went in they'd say, "Oh, we've been wanting to build a recycling shed," or whatever it might be.
CR: So how did you--or did you--draw limits or boundaries? Let's say that someone had enough work to keep you busy for four months?
EH: That was a fear. There were two fears, about money and about work. We had raised a pool of money to share with people, for things like meals or a place to stay or wood for a handicapped ramp for a homeless shelter. People would say to us, "You're probably going to be out of your money before you get out of the state of Washington, people are really going to take advantage of you." It was amazing: I think people felt our energy, the fact that we were totally ready to give, and then they no longer needed to take so much. It's almost as if when you're hoarding, people want to take it as an expression of "things as love." But because we were so open to giving, no one ever wanted to take it all.
We were in a town for two days once, because there were eight places that needed help, but then they told us, "That's all." People would get their base need met and then say, "Wow, you've really done enough, thank you." We were even with a farmer doing bales of hay in Kansas--it could have been weeks of work--and we helped him one day with his son and he said, "Gosh, you know, have dinner and move on." It's almost as if they didn't want to keep all that energy; they would realize "I can do this," and people didn't want to hoard our energy for themselves. So in four months, from the inner city to rural Missouri, everywhere really, no one ever took advantage of us in that way--financially either.
CR: You had a commitment to give whatever people asked?
EH: Yes. The only thing that would override that was our spiritual commitment to ourselves to not do something if it didn't feel right in our spirit, because then it wouldn't be from joy any more. So, for example, one time we had to spray pesticides in a park, and one of the Superheroes chose to sit out. Or if someone had been breaking into a car, to take an extreme example, and asked me to help, my reaction would be, "What do you need that's in that car--can I give it to you so you don't have to do this?"
If you try to be really open and aware, you can stay in your intention while helping people. You don't have to help them with exactly what they are doing, but just ask them, "How else can I help?" If someone's stealing something to eat, the solution is for you to give them food, or to support them, help them to find food.
CR: Can you tell me more about the time the Superheroes sprayed pesticides? Did it have any positive impacts?
EH: It gave me a new vision of what it meant to be active in trying to change culture. We were serving a man whose job was to put in a new playground and get rid of the weeds. His intentions were beautiful: he wanted a safe, open place for the kids to play. Because we gave our energy to him, and helped, giving his purpose validity, he knew that we wished the best for him. We had one of the Superheroes who knew the most about organic gardening and mulching write a page about different books and different techniques for eliminating weeds without herbicides, and then presented it to him. And he said, "Thank you, I researched which ones were the least harmful for kids and I didn't know what else to do." It became this gift. He told us, "I'm going to incorporate this and bring this to the city." We saw how beautiful it was: once we honored where he was, he was so much more open. That happened on GMO farms [growing genetically modified crops] and other places, a lot of farmland we went through in Kansas. If we had said, "Sorry, it is against our beliefs to help," and biked on, these farmers would have felt judged and probably never would have changed. We found that opening ourselves to others made change possible.
CR: So you worked on GMO farms?
EH: Yes, we would work with whoever, and they would ask us, "How do you eat?" and we'd say, "Oh, we have bulk organic we carry in our bike trailers." And because we'd already helped and given them love, they didn't feel attacked. They would ask, "Why do you do that?" and we'd have this beautiful two hour conversation. They let us in because we let them in. It was hard for me at times; I wondered, "Am I going against my ideals?" But I realized that here were three beautiful human beings trying to survive, this farmer barely making it with his wife and son, and all he knew was that GMO crops might do better so he could feed his family. I saw that I could just trust in the human spirit, and I remembered that getting from where I'd been years ago in my own life to doing what I was doing as a Superhero had been a process for me. I too had needed to learn before I could change. Many farmers took the Community Supported Agriculture hotline number, book titles, and were interested in changing to organic. They listened to us because we listened to them.
CR: Did the park policy change--did they stop using herbicides?
EH: Yes, they sent a letter saying that they had instituted a policy where they were going to start with black plastic instead, and actively seek alternatives. I didn't follow up to find out exactly how every single project was affected, but that was their intention and movement, and they were using those guidelines for more projects. Just knowing that, I thought: gosh, here's this ripple. We could have just said, "We're not going to do it," and left, and nothing would have changed. By giving energy, amazingly, we saw that the momentum shifts people's hearts.
CR: Is anything going to change on that GMO farm?
EH: We realized that changing what physically was happening sometimes wasn't as important as seeing spirits change. We heard so many people say, "Gosh, I have hope--you've spent four months going out to help people." Without taking a political or environmental stand, we were saying, "I'm here to help you as a human being." So we felt amazing spiritual changes in these places. If I went back and tried to measure it by whether they were growing organics or using herbicides or not, I'd be missing a lot of the point. That these people felt honored and moved by us is what matters more. The thing about this spirit work is, it's unquantifiable. I believe that when people feel respected and loved, they will naturally move towards beauty and mindfulness.
CR: You had a commitment to give whatever anyone asked of you, including your bike, right?
EH: Yes. There was one situation where I was catching up with the group, I was four days behind, and was outside of Chicago, in Illinois, at a park bench. People always come up--you know, you're dressed as a Superhero, sitting eating a piece of bread--and two guys came up and asked, "What's this all about?" I told them it's to help people, and they said, "Well, we need a bike." It was very aggressive energy, and so I was thinking, "All right, well, I made it to Illinois, you know, that's amazing, and now I'll be on foot." I had about eighty dollars cash and I handed it over to them and then I asked, "Could I keep my journal and my extra clothes ?," and they said, "Well, if you're helping, you know we need your clothes too." That was the moment, when they were wheeling the bike away with all my belongings, that I wanted to take back that trust and just say, "OK, I'm trusting, but that's a little too much, you know, give me the bike back"--thinking of all the reasons I had to catch up with my friends, and not trusting that maybe if they wheeled off the bike someone would have given me a bike and clothes in another twenty minutes, and that they really needed the bike more than I did.
But I was on the bench just biting my tongue telling myself, you know, "Just for these four months I'm going to go through with this, and that's it." They went off a pretty far distance, and you can imagine how long it seemed, waiting for them to do something. But it was gone, I was letting go of it, and all of a sudden one turned around smiling, and they both walked the bike back, shouting to me, "That's the best thing I ever heard!" And then they were shaking my hand and giving me hugs and telling me, "Right on!"
That kind of thing happened too when I was in costume traveling on the Greyhound, going through inner cities. People would come up, curious, and I'd feel really aggressive energies from some of them. Then I'd tell them what we were, and I was just amazed how many people cracked this huge smile and said, "Give me a high five!" It strikes a chord in everyone, from an Oregon logger to a banker, when we want to help.
We made so many people smile, without them even knowing what we were about. We would be riding through a town, wearing capes, ringing our bells, and making strange sounds, "Awooga!," and people would be laughing and honking and waving to us. People enjoy that, celebrating life creatively. If we had not helped anyone, but just ridden across the country in costumes, I think it would still have been a huge gift. It's really nice to see people having fun, you know?
CR: Who were some of the especially memorable people you met along the way?
EH: Virginia Lee Matthews was one-she was amazing. She's a local poet in Tribune, Kansas. She was tracking us in her car, and came up to us at lunch. We invited her to eat with us, then she invited us to her home. The surrounding town is all flat lawns and flat farmland, and then there was this one acre with just forest all around, you couldn't even see her house. She said, "Welcome to Eden." We went in and there were birds everywhere, and bird feeders and vines, and all kinds of animals she'd taken in. In her house we saw all these awards she'd received for her poetry. As a gift back to us, she gave us each a poem.
This was her gift back to the world, to write poetry and to give habitat and life on her one acre. Our gift was to celebrate her as a hero, to show her that she was seen. Other people we interacted with in the town saw her as a real, you know...some people called her a witch. She said once she'd gotten chased by the teenage kids, yelling "Crazy!" It's interesting that when someone does something different and challenges us, it's easier to put them in this inferior place, to ostracize them. So we realized the gift we were giving in celebrating her, because she was isolated and we recognized that. She started crying and was telling us, "Thanks for seeing me." What a huge gift to be able to give someone, to just come into a place and say, "We acknowledge you, you're doing beautiful things."
I have so many people in my heart. Jean-Paul was a little boy in Beaver Center, Pennsylvania, twelve years old. We rode into Beaver Center in the evening--we never knew where we were going to end the day, because we had a random plan, so we saw Beaver Center on the map and decided we'd pull in there--and there were just three houses. We knocked on one of the doors and Jean-Paul's mom came out. We asked, "Where's downtown Beaver Center?" and she fell down laughing: "This is it, what are you looking for?" And then we stayed at her place.
Jean-Paul just stayed with us all evening, helping us, and when we all went to bed his mom told us, "Oh, he sleeps in, so he's probably not going to see you in the morning." We woke up, I unzipped my tent at 6 in the morning, and he was in the chair, just waiting for us to come out. Then he was helping us again--"Anything I can do?"--and finally I asked him, "You're so eager to just be with us and help us, and it's beautiful, why do you...?" And he said, "Things like this happen every fifteen years in Beaver Center, so I figured the next time this happens I'm going to be twenty seven, and I'm going to be way out of here. So I've got to take advantage of every moment while you guys are here."
That's another gift, the wisdom we give to each other. Here he was seeing that the universe sent this opportunity, and he stayed up late at night printing this thank you card on his computer, with his picture, just thanking us for coming into his life.
It was reciprocal. Everywhere we left, when we'd be thanking people for the place to stay, and they'd be thanking us for the hope or for being joyful or for coming and helping. A lot of times we'd come into a home and they'd say we didn't have to do anything, but within a couple hours we were helping them move a boat out of a garage, or something else, once they saw that we really did want to help. It was addictive.
CR: So you never knew where you were going to stay?
EH: We only knew we'd find a place. It could be a muffler yard one night, a truck stop, sometimes a church, sometimes a city park--just a huge diversity of places. And that's how we looked at it: the universe doesn't always necessarily give you a hotel room. A muffler junk yard was actually a safe place to be. We might look and think, "What's this? you know, come on, give me something, not this." But we were always given something and always thankful for it.
CR: Was it difficult to adjust back into society and into your more "normal" lives after this trip?
EH: It was hard for everyone, especially for the riders who'd been through a couple months. We felt that we were back to working off of time, and working on what we think we're supposed to do, instead of letting the universe present our path in each moment.
We had to ask ourselves, "How do we bring this in to normal life?" That's how this local Hero Alliance started--we realized, "Hey, I can just start a permanent one in our community, and have Batphones--people can call and we can mobilize volunteers." So part of missing the energy of the ride manifested in creating it locally.
But it is hard. I love what Monkasphere said (he came this year on the Maine trip, dressed as a monk with a big M on his chest): "This is three weeks when my only goal, my only priority, is to open my heart as big as I can. This is the first opportunity of my life, and I need to take full responsibility for what happens. I don't have an excuse anymore; the whole thing is set up to try to be love." It's just beautiful to hear things like that, and to give people and myself the opportunity to be in that space. Seeing how profound it is for us and for other people is a huge gift.
CR: Is this way of life realistic for greater numbers of people? I know you raised money ahead of time for the trips. But how many full-time volunteers can there be in the world, who aren't trying to earn money? And how are they supported? Is this a model for reconfiguring society on a massive scale? Could everyone be like this all the time?
EH: The amazing thing is that if everyone did this for ten minutes a week, I think everyone in our community would be supported. If you multiply that by 300 million Americans, that's a lot of hours just serving those in need. Some of the riders came for two weeks or three weeks, whatever they could give to the energy. Other people who couldn't ride were the headquarters, or helped in some other way. You can support things so easily just with encouragement, so it's not to say everyone has to be out there giving 24 hours a day, but each person can be a piece of that change.
In the local chapter, I've really seen people sign up for what they love. One man loves doing computer work, another woman loves painting murals, so I call them only maybe once every three months. For a carpentry job, Yankee Rose is great; he just outfitted some ramps for a woman in a wheelchair. He also gets called about once every three months, but all of a sudden he's seeing that his carpentry's a gift. It's his job, but giving it away once every three months gives him extra meaning in his life. Imagine if everyone just fit in that little piece of support. The reason it feels as if we have to be out there 24-7 is that our culture's moved away from community, but if everyone truly was holding each other in the community, it wouldn't seem like a lot of work.
A big Canadian newspaper, The Toronto Star, covered us--just by whim, since we don't seek media. As a result, we just received a letter from a town of 25,000 asking us to send them the Superheroes startup kit. Well, we didn't have one, so we're now doing a comic book startup kit, and this town in Canada is going to have a Superhero team. In Maryland, a friend just did a Superhero ride raising money for inner city kids. So it's popping up organically without glossy brochures or without our telling anyone to do it. The ripples are amazing to watch.
It's just a simple format--stay simple, that's the wisdom--and it unites everyone. It's not a ten-page credo--our credo is basically move around mindfully and do good, be open to what the universe sends. And that simplicity also makes it palatable because everyone can understand it.
You don't need special qualifications, you just need the sincerity to say I'll do the best I can, so all of a sudden it's inviting to everyone. Everyone can go out and serve, from a two year old to an 80 year old. We didn't plan that, you know, we just were moved by the spirit of "Let's dress up as Superheroes and bike across the country." We don't know all the ripples, but as we see it, it becomes more and more beautiful.
CR: Did you ever feel depleted or as if you weren't taking care of your own needs because you were trying to serve the outer world so much?
EH: The amazing thing about the ride was, when we pulled in at the end after four months, no one wanted to stop. In giving that fully, we got so much given back to us. It was a real lesson in receiving, because we were thinking, "We're the Superheroes; you're not supposed to be cooking for us." But we realized that these other people were filled, just as we were, by giving to us in that way. Same with the Maine trip, people didn't want to leave. In that open format there was beauty, real beauty, and we didn't feel exhausted. I think it's because we went all the way out there with our hearts. Because we were all holding each other in that space of being open, the bounty of the universe just kept flowing back tenfold.
Contact the Superheroes at 78590 Echo Hollow Lane, Cottage Grove, OR 97424, (541) 767-9604.
Chris Roth edits Talking Leaves.
©2002 Talking Leaves
Spring 2002
Volume 12, Number 1
Food and Spirit, Grief and Hope