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While the other twelve-year-olds were roaring around in a gang, John Slade, usually a solitary kid, was snorkeling in a lake with myriads of fish and tadpoles and turtles. He discovered a freshwater sponge, which he brought back to the dock to show everyone. No one was interested. It was limp and green and it smelled.

Over the following half-century, the snorkler watched as hundreds of fish become a scattered few, because acid rain ravaged the lake. When fishermen overstocked the lake with six-inch bass, year after year, the snorkler watched the smaller fish and frogs and crayfish vanish until the lake was nearly barren of life. The bass flourished for a while, then ate their own young. When John tried to talk with the fishermen, they gave him the finger.

John knows, today, about poisoning and plundering a lake. He knows that the same can be done, on a global scale, to planet Earth. While the other young teachers were seeking tenure-track positions, John Slade, with a doctorate in literature from Stanford University, taught English further and further from home. He taught West Indian students on an island in the Caribbean, Norwegian students above the polar circle, Sami students (the reindeer people) at their new college on the tundra, and Russian students at a university in St. Petersburg. The solitary kid found his best friends in the international classrooms.

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