Everyone has a story and it’s a real treat when someone shares a few snapshots of their life. Our Fundraising Officer, Jennifer Gregg, recently sat down with one of our most extraordinary volunteers, Elizabeth Neat, and got the scoop on her adventurous life.
If you already love Elizabeth Neat or have not yet met her, you’re going to enjoy this inside scoop of her amazing life and wonder-filled spirit. What a treat it is to get to know a little bit more about the generous, wicked smart, and seemingly indefatigable Elizabeth Neat.
“I just finished a book called ‘How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen’ by David Brooks. He emphasizes that you should ask people about their childhood and be curious about their background. I don’t often get into talking about my life. He points out that our childhood is one of the big influences on our life and is one of part of what has brought us to where we are now. If you want to know someone and understand them, you should know and understand their childhood, which is a really interesting idea to me that I hadn't thought of until I read that book.”
Elizabeth is a long-time Sierra Club volunteer and truly iconic member of the Angeles Chapter. With such deep roots in California, I began to wonder, where did she grow up?
“I grew up in Chatham, New Jersey. I lived in the same house for the first 18 years of my life, and I couldn't wait to get out of it.
When I was there, it was not a place where a young person wanted to be. The town ‘fathers’ - the town bigwigs - said they didn't want a movie theater. They didn't want a bowling alley. They didn't want anything that would bring in the so-called bad element. We lived in this sort of nothing town with a main street with four shops on the corner and that was pretty much it. We had a couple of soda fountains, but if you wanted to go to the movies or bowling or roller skating, you had to go to another town.
When I turned 18 I said, ‘I want to go to one of those square states out west.’ I wanted to meet people who were different from me.
I ended up going to the University of Denver. When I got there, I found that it was full of people from the east coast - just like me! I was surrounded by the kind of people I had grown up with, and I was very disappointed.
I did make a friend from Wyoming, which technically met my goal of getting to know someone who had a different background than I did – and she did have a very different background than I did, having killed a rattlesnake, and she knew how to change a tire. She was so interesting. I’ve never forgotten her.”
My guess is, Elizabeth’s friend from Wyoming has never forgotten about Elizabeth either. Because, isn’t it true that once you meet Elizabeth, she finds a forever place in your heart?
In terms of being interesting, Ms. Neat has indeed led an interesting life.
Picture this: it’s 1968. A young woman of 20 years old, curious about a changing world and itching to explore, jumps on a motorcycle with her new friend from Wyoming - and takes off for the adventure of a lifetime.
“It was in the summer of 1968, before I decided to take a year off university. My parents had a heart attack because they thought I was going to finish university in four years and get a teaching job.
The ‘60s were kind of a freewheeling decade and we were young and didn't worry about money, which seems ridiculous now.
I was 20. I rode a motorcycle with that same girlfriend from Wyoming. We rode from Denver down to Texas, across to Florida and up to New Jersey and then we went home across the Midwest. All on the motorcycle. Two of us on one. It was a 250, which is small. Anyone who knew about motorcycles told us we were crazy. We could never go faster than 55 miles an hour.”
Imagine the views she took in from the road, the people she encountered, the people who encountered her. So many of us dream of this kind of freedom to explore, but postpone such an adventure for later and never quite get back to that mindset. But, Elizabeth took to the road, full of spirit and just a few dollars in her pocket.
“It was a great adventure and we did it on a shoestring budget. $5 a night meant we could actually get a motel room - but like one level below Motel 6. One I remember was in Texas. It was called The Motel and Stateline Bar and Motel and that room cost $3.50. It was at the bottom of the barrel.”
No cell phones, no navigation systems. Elizabeth added, “I think we had maps.” I love that she thinks they might have had maps.
“My parents wanted me to call every day. But it's kind of like I was oblivious to my parents' concerns when I was 20. I was like, ‘my goodness I'm free. I'm really out there!’ It was quite a time.
Elizabeth has visited at least half of the states in the USA. She loves trees. Her favorite hike snack is trail mix with dried cranberries, chocolate chips, and nuts that she buys from Trader Joe's. She enjoys going to Malibu Creek State Park and Bolsa Chica. Her favorite local escape into nature is Averill Park in San Pedro.
“Averill Park is only a 20-minute walk or a five minute drive from my house. I'm sure it's been there for maybe a hundred years and it has beautiful trees - lots of different beautiful trees. I like to visit those trees and kind of say hello to some of them. The trees there are absolutely beautiful.
There's one tree where the bark and the roots look braided. I just enjoy the mystery of it. There are a lot of date palms there, which have those lovely big old roots that stand around. And there are sycamore trees in that park.
There's a little water feature with a human-made waterfall that comes down and kind of flows through the park and lots of ducks and egrets. Sometimes you can see a hawk in the trees.”
However, her love of the plants and animals at Averill Park stops cold at the redneck turtles. She hates them.
“Redneck turtles are an invasive species for which I have a great hatred.They don't belong here. They're driving out the native animals that should live here.”
Elizabeth’s 77 years are filled with treasured experiences, which are still shaping her incredible lifetime. I asked her if she could travel back in time for 77 seconds, without changing the experience, where would she time travel back to?
“I would like to go back to this one park in Manchester, England. Once, I had read a book, ‘The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge” by Carlos Castaneda that said you should find the place where you will fight your last battle on Earth. And I'm a literal person, so I took that very literally and I chose to go to this park in Manchester. It was so pretty and had this beautiful large lake in the middle of it. I said to myself that this is where I'm going to fight my last battle on Earth.
I think I'd like to go back for 77 minutes and see that park again and understand why I chose that to be the place where I would fight my last battle on Earth.
I'd also like to go back to a much more recent place from when I turned 60. That was a huge deal for me – kind of similar to the way turning 77 is, but I think even more so. When I turned 60, I said I was going to spend a year doing fun and physically challenging things that I had wanted to do for a long time. So I went snowshoeing with my son in Yosemite. It's the one and only time I've ever been snowshoeing. It was so much fun but not an easy thing to learn. Fairly frequently I would just fall over and I would just lie there in the snow laughing. And I would like to go back to that because It was so much fun to be with my son.
And then when I was 50, I bicycled the Pacific Coast along the Oregon Coast and through British Columbia. I didn't do it all at once; I did it in puzzle pieces. I'm not sure exactly which particular leg I would go back to, but any 77 minutes back to those days when I was bike packing would be pretty good.
It rained almost every day, and I spent a lot of time in laundromats getting everything dry. One day, I met this lady in the laundromat who said something like, "Yeah, that's something I would have done when I was young." And at 50 I didn't feel young but she thought I was!”
From early in her life, Elizabeth has been an avid book reader, drawing inspiration from authors and their stories - some of which have profoundly shaped her outlook on life.
If you have ever been on a Zoom call with Elizabeth, you will have noticed the shelves behind her all filled with books. She and her husband enjoy the library book sales where you can pick up a book for a dollar. Her husband often remarks, “I might read this someday!”
Elizabeth joined a book club about ten years ago. She really loves deep conversations about books and is curious about what you have to say about what you read.
“I often think about the book ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’ by Robin Wall Kimmerer. I love that book because the author, who got her PhD in botany, integrates a traditional understanding of nature and farming and plants - and weaves that understanding with science. Another book that keeps coming back to me is called ‘Chatter: the Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It” by Ethan Kross. It's about taming the voices in your head and making the voices in your head work for you instead of against you. How do you listen to the right voices and silence the negative voices?
Right now I am reading ‘Fifteen Cents on the Dollar: How Americans Made the Black-White Wealth Gap’ by Louise Story and Ebony Reed. The authors make a big point that wealth is not just your wage, it's not just your salary, it's your assets - and how the country has discriminated against Black wealth, going back to the Tulsa Race Massacre.”
Conservation and political action are very important to Elizabeth.
“I am genuinely worried about climate change and pollution for my own grandchildren for their future as well as for the future of all kids. I feel like we cannot leave them a huge mess. We should - at the very least - attempt to leave them an Earth which is healthier.”
I asked her, “If you were to attend a pro-climate rally, what would your protest sign say?” Without blinking she declared, “Do This For The Children.”
When Elizabeth moved to Los Angeles and was working as a teacher, somethings about the schools really bothered her: the blacktop playgrounds and the lack of opportunities for young students to visit natural places.
“A friend asked me to come along on a hike with Sierra Club ICO (Inspiring Connections Outdoors) because he needed an extra adult to help supervise on the field trip. He was a teacher. He asked me to go along and I loved it. I was blown away by this - that ICO takes kids to local parks and beaches.”
The Angeles Chapter’s ICO program and the Sierra Club’s motto to Explore, Enjoy, and Protect are what inspired Elizabeth to join the Sierra Club.
“The Sierra Club's motto means a lot to me. I want the kids to enjoy and explore because I think that way, when they become voters, they'll protect.
This is what ignited my passion and that's what still keeps me excited about volunteering.
I started taking my students on ICO hikes and then I opened it up to other classes. Mostly I took the kids who were on my grade level, which was seventh grade. I would take students on two or three day hikes and then a camping trip.
It's such a great program because the service we're giving valuable experiences to children - and not charging any money to take them hiking and camping. It just fills me with joy.
I think I've been with ICO for maybe 30 years. One of the ICO leaders calls me ‘ICO's Grandmother’ - and I really like that designation.”
Elizabeth wears many hats with the Angeles Chapter, including serving as the Fundraising Committee Chairperson.
“I feel like the Sierra Club has the reputation and power to really be heard by the general public. I think people trust the Sierra Club.
I'm enthusiastic about fundraising for the chapter's participation in local, state, and national elections. That's what really gets me going for fundraising.”
At the close of every Fundraising Committee meeting, Elizabeth will charm us with a joke or a riddle. She always stumps us and leaves us laughing. I asked her to share a favorite joke for this interview. She picked one of her longer ones.
“This is a joke that my father told me and it took me years to really appreciate it and now it is one of my favorite jokes.
Two workmen sit down to lunch and one workman opens up his lunch box and says, ‘Look what my wife made me. A ham and cheese sandwich with lettuce and tomato and potato salad on the side and a thermos of coffee. My wife is so good to me.’ The other dude opens up his lunchbox and he says, ‘Peanut butter and jelly! I hate peanut butter and jelly.’
The next day, the first guy opens up his lunch box and says, ‘Look at this. She put lasagna in a thermos for me and then she made a tossed salad to go with it. My wife is so good to me.’ The second dude opens up his lunchbox and says, ‘Peanut butter and jelly again! I hate peanut butter and jelly.’
And the third day, the same thing happens. One has a delicious lunch and the other opens up his lunch box and when he sees his peanut butter and jelly sandwich, he throws it on the ground and he stamps on it, yelling ‘I hate peanut butter and jelly!”
The first dude asks, ‘Why don't you ask your wife to make you something else for lunch?’
“Well, I can’t. I make my own lunch."
This year Elizabeth is turning 77 and she’s made it a point to celebrate all year long.
“Yeah, at this point, I feel like I’m having a great life. I've had fun. I've had excitement. I've had an adventure - and I’m still on an adventure!”
Her birthday wish is to have an ice cream party and raise money for the Angeles Chapter. So, we’re throwing a Sweet 77 Ice Cream party on March 9th from 2pm-4pm at the Parks Project Discovery Center in Culver City. What a sweet way to celebrate!
I asked Elizabeth why she wanted to do an ice cream party, and she led with this:
“I love ice cream cones. There's just something about licking an ice cream cone, it’s very sensual. I just love good ice cream. And I have no patience for cheap ice cream.”
We spent a few moments daydreaming about our favorite kind of ice cream, what makes a sundae extra delicious, and how the act of churning away for hours to make the best homemade ice cream is a priceless experience well worth the wait (and the tired arm!).
“We used to take the old wooden kind of hand-cranked ice cream makers on ICO trips so the kids could make homemade ice cream. The trick to make it smooth, the way I like it, is you have to crank continuously for about 20 or 30 minutes. If you know anything about homemade ice cream, if you stop during the cranking process, the ice cream gets too icy. I will always remember this one volunteer who committed to crank continuously until the ice cream was ready. To this day, that ice cream is the best ice cream I ever had.”
She added that it’s important to have really, really good cake with ice cream… “which is what we're going to have at my 77th birthday celebration.”
Everyone is welcome to the party!
We’d love to see you at the Ice Cream Party on March 9th. And if you can’t make it, please consider a donation to the Chapter, symbolic of a birthday gift that Elizabeth will surely appreciate.