I have eco-sinned. I have gone yahooing in and across Lake Auburn in a jet-powered watercraft. So far I have not succumbed to the evil temptation by joining friends on a golf course, I am not sure, though, if I can forever resist those undulating, chemically beautified fairways!

Questions of environmental responsibility have become a key ethical struggle of our age. Plenty of people have all the answers. A lot of them join efforts at Auburn’s chapter of the Sierra Club, which is also known as the Comprehensive Plan Update Committee. These folks, all volunteers, and others throughout our nation, with obvious loads of free time, trot out a litany of new “thou shalt nots” to modify our species’ recreational behavior, including a million prescriptions against the use of carbon-emitting fuels.

Somewhere between the exhaust-spewing, law-breaking gluttons who stampede over our protected natural resources and the neo-prohibitionists who would limit human existence to shallow breathing and organic tofu, there’s a sensible balance. I think Auburn’s CPUC needs to explore this balance.

I’m not sure if folks fully understand that the instinct to recreate is almost as strong as the instinct to procreate! In my case this jet-boat has the highest emission and safety ratings available. I have no eco-guilt; except I did borrow many of these words from Bob Sipchen of the real Sierra Club!

Free tours of Lake Auburn are available at auburnwatershed.org. People interested in the lake should take one.

Dan Bilodeau, Auburn