Art Perlo, Outdoorsman

What makes up a life? The simple answer would be many parts. In this respect, Art Perlo was no different than the rest of us. In some people, those parts are synergized into a whole that is unique.

Art stood out with a firm working class outlook in a quiet kind of way that entered all aspects of life.

There was Art’s deep and abiding relationship with Joelle. There was his dedication to family and to his brother Stan. There was his many-sided comprehension of political economy. He practiced his deep understanding of Marxism in so many ways.

Art also loved the outdoors.

Art came into Waterbury, Connecticut, many times. Once, in the 1970s, we were planning to go on a hiking trip in the White Mountains, New Hampshire. When he arrived, I surprised him in that I wasn’t quite ready to leave.

There was a Daily World (One of the fore-runners to the People’s World.) route that needed to be completed. Art didn’t flinch. Doggedly, he focused on the task at hand and the route was completed before we left for our mini-vacation.

One of our first outdoor jaunts was in the mid-1970s. It was a steep decent into Dean’s Ravine in Cornwall. This area has one of Connecticut’s few remaining old growth forest stands.  It was beautiful in an eerie, daunting way as one slip could deliver you to the bottom of the ravine. We discussed the importance of applying science to society as we kept a keen eye on the narrow trail down and back.

Art initiated and helped organize the “Over The Hill Hiking Club.” We were members of the Young Workers Liberation League (YWLL) and the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) along with family and friends, mostly from New Haven and Waterbury.

On the whole it was a youthful group, never suspecting that our name would take on a different connotation as the song says, “As Time Goes By.”

On one summer trip in the White Mountains, we were benighted by a freezing rainstorm. We made the uneasy decision to camp in place on the ice-covered trail as night fell.

Art immediately locked into the situation. He started a fire in the rain as we sat on frozen boulders. He made a schedule of assignments e.g. who foraged for wood, who tended the fire, who slept, so everyone got to do a part and still got some sleep. We survived to do more memorable mountain hikes.

Like this one.

In 1977, New England got an abnormal amount of snow. Art and I always wanted to do Mt. Flume in the Franconia Notch range of the White Mountains. This would have the technical and physical challenges in a winter setting that we relished. It involved, not only snow shoes but also crampons - steel tipped claws to handle steep compacted snow and ice - ice axes, and rope for safety.

Off we went!

We charged into the level, bottom trail only to find the snow was so high that it buried the trail markers on the trees. We were temporarily  lost and had hardly started!

Art sized up the situation and suggested that we turn back lest we get lost in a more dangerous way. He proposed that we return in the summer and take compass/map readings. We did that with Art doing the higher math.

The following year, 1978, also yielded an extraordinary amount of snow. Undaunted, off we went.

Art’s calculations and map skills got us to the bottom of a very steep climb. This was exactly what we wanted. Snow and ice flew in all directions as we slogged upward, flailing away with our new, sharpened ice axes.

We reached a ridge leading to the summit. With hyper excitement, we changed our crampons for snowshoes and off we scampered toward the peak of Mt. Flume.

I noticed some small evergreens as we shot toward the peak. The wind swirled the snow around us, adding to our excitement. We went a bit further when Art called a halt. He declared, with a shake of his head side to side, those were not small evergreens I spotted. They were the tops of large conifer trees.

We had stumbled, or maybe I should say bumbled, into a very dangerous situation. We were on a cornice, a wave of snow and ice that curled under our feet. How thick with snow was the cornice and how much was plain air leading to the forest below? We had no way of knowing.

We could breakthrough at any moment, tumbling or free falling who knows how far? Adding to the precarious situation, in our excitement we had forgotten our safety rope at the top of the ridge. If one of us broke through the crust of the cornice, all the other person could do was watch in horror!

We separated out further from each other and slowly inched our way back to the top of the ridge without incident. Whew! We never made it to the top of Mount Flume and were just as happy as if we had!

On the way home, and solving most of the world’s political problems, we stayed distracted not to contemplate just how close we may have come to dropping into thin air.

In 1979, there was an unforgettable trip to the Balkan Mountains of then socialist Bulgaria. At one point, the driver of the van used to shuttle us around, cussed out the leader/guide of the trip. Why?His boss was late arriving.

Art deftly pointed out later that what we had just witnessed could never happen under capitalism without dire consequences for the driver. He emphasized that we were experiencing a small sample of how the working class in a socialist system empowers everyday people.

There would be many more mountain adventures. A winter hike in the Adirondack Mountains in upper New York state, various peaks along the Green Mountains of Vermont, and numerous hikes in the Taconic Range in the Northwest corner of Connecticut continued for years.

One incident in the late 1980s which we laughed about later, occurred on Mount Washington, the highest peak in New England with some of the nastiest weather in the world. Art took a picture of me reading the Daily World on a windy outcrop. We submitted it to the paper but they would not run it. We were told, “Where are the workers?”.

Fortunately, that stiffness in outlook has dissipated with the People’s World.  

Art knew that I had a great affinity for Scott Nearing. Scott was an active communist in the 1920s. Later he was seen as a guru of the going back to the land movement of the 1970s.

Art gently mentioned that such a movement wouldn’t solve food problems on a mass scale. I already knew that. Art was just making sure, so-to-speak.

Art was always making sure my thinking was based on the hard rock of reality. On that same idea, he wrote an important piece titled, “Not Your Grandfather’s Working Class” for Political Affairs. When class forces were changing, including within our class, he helped us adjust to that new reality.  https://archive.org/details/sim_political-affairs_2000-11_79_11/page/n7/

Fortunately, Art’s calm, even voice, helping to get us closer to that all people’s alliance against racism, war, and fascism, still occupies our ears. It will help us as we march over the next hill toward a warm, socialist sun.

Len Yannielli

Special thanks to Christine and Joe Yannielli for editing this march over the hill with Art. Thanks also to J. Yannielli for finding one of my favorite writings by Art, “Not Your Grandfather’s Working Class” which he wrote with Fred Gaboury.