Miles-tones

5 Treehugging Tunes By Conservative Country Artists

Today is the Girl Scouts of America's annual World Thinking Day, which they celebrate each year by dedicating 24 hours of contemplation on the world and the people in it. Now, Rocks Off isn't a Girl Scout, but we keep a close eye on them because we've proven in the past they are in fact our own hope against several different apocalypses. With that in mind, we decided to join our little cookie-selling saviors and look up what this year's theme is to prepare a mixtape.

Turns out that the message being contemplated by the Scouts is an environmental one, "We Can Save Our Planet." Great, that means our playlist is going to be full of tambourine-banging, hippy treehugger music like... Johnny Cash? Really?

We actually found that a lot of the more conservative country set shares a love of the land with the more liberal groups you see handcuffing themselves to pine weasels. We'll be tipping our hat to such artists as...

5. John Anderson, "Seminole Wind": Seminole Wind was on constant rotation in our house as a kid, and we still consider it to be one of the best country albums ever. The title track is a sad, but immensely, catchy tune lamenting the damage done to the Florida Everglades and the traditional home of the Seminole Indians. Not exactly the kind of thing you'd expect out of the same conservative populist voice that teamed with John Rich on "Shuttin' Detroit Down," with its bitter remarks on government bailouts.

4. Johnny Cash, "Don't Go Near the Water":The song deals with the death of lake and river life at the hands of pollution. That's sweet, but it's also pretty ballsy of a guy who left his truck on fire in the Los Padres National Forest in central California. That act that led directly to the death of about half of the California condors on Earth. To be fair, Cash abandoned the truck to go fishing, so maybe he was just reminding us that he wants the water clean, even if, "I don't give a damn about your yellow buzzards."

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Jef Rouner (not cis, he/him) is a contributing writer who covers politics, pop culture, social justice, video games, and online behavior. He is often a professional annoyance to the ignorant and hurtful.
Contact: Jef Rouner