Canyon Country Zephyr | 2006-12-01 | Page 9

THE ZEPH YR/ DECEMBER 2006-JANUARY 2007 really turn it on. We need more people like Marian and Tom and Mac, and Brad and Grant, and Dave Love. And John Mionezynski, who knows goats and the Red. And Dick Randall, a predator trapper who quit to become an outspoken wordsmith and photographer in defense of that land. The more people out there the better, on foot, paying attention, getting accustomed, becoming part of it all. A very personal kind of knowledge happens when : - ip eal age Canoe Outfitting $ Tex S RIVERWAYS & and Rentals ShuHle Service 3-D RIVER VISIONS, INC. land and its animals penetrates our lives, yet it can reach to far horizons, into other lives, the lives of the world’s peoples and The Others. I call it knowledge because it is based on the gather and workings of personal experience. I shy away from words of the “spiritual enlightenment” genus that so often call up various paths leading almost anywhere, even into that ghostly country of abstract passivity. Jetboat SO...GRACE SLICK... WHAT BRINGS YOU Tours I'M ‘AMAZING GRACE’ pe “1 WAS LOST...NOW I'M FOUND:”.. Ly GET IT? The Red is under attack. It’s of the utmost importance to know that the attack began long before the Bush lords began their reign. Oil and methane, coal and oil shale, uranium and gold and silver have been mined in Wyoming and other western states for more than a century and a half, each boom-and-bust supported by whoever was in power. We often say that we love the land, and why not? But the land can be unreliable as well as reassuring and inspiring; it can do terrible things to us. Most of our species on this good earth are in the know about this. Drought in Africa and the west of this continent deals death; tornadoes do that too, and tsunamis and volcanoes. Another hurricane sea- son will soon be upon us. So, suppose we call love of the land a for better and for worse kind of thing. I can’t see that this is any more or any less mysterious than family or tribal or national attachments. Please, let’s not make another priesthood for it. Instead, let us = eS = ue be Te The Red is under attack. It’s of the utmost importance to know that the attack began um and gold and silver have been mined in Wyoming and other western states for more than a century and a half, each boom-and-bust supported by whoever was in power. The Moab, UT 84532 www.texsriverways.com aires’ second and third homes -- and let us stand there, two-footed, taking it all in and, in the words of our great Swans slogan, “Make Up Our Own Minds.” long before the Bush lords began their reign. Oil and methane, coal and oil shale, urani- : [e-mail] 435.259.5101. go now to open spaces, whether Central Park or Red Desert or the new frontier -- zillion- POTENTIAL OUT-OF-TOWN ADVERTISERS! re : : Don't let a little thing like distance come between us. Red Desert already has its full share of roads and pump stations and buried pipelines. More leases will be offered soon. Oregon Buttes, Pinnacles, Killpecker Sand Dunes, and the handful of other wilderness study areas are like small, besieged battlements, scenic, Be the first in your distant city or town to advertise in a public ation that is hundreds : spectacular and deliberately isolated, deprived of their sage-grassland connectivities. or thousands of miles away Sage grasslands do not come up to the standard image of lands worthy of respect or inspiration. You have to see it to believe it, the embarrassing reality of it all. Throughout the lands of our nation the whole enterprise, from National Environmen- [e-mail] tal Protection Act (NEPA) to on-the-ground parcelling, was designed with all of the above _ considerations in place, well-embedded givens, due care taken to avoid trespass on potential development sites. The usual excuses offered by public land managers is that there are few areas not already trammeled by the works of man:.road networks, old mineral diggings, ghost towns, forgotten infrastructure, prospectors’ pits and so on. The Wilderness Act specifies that designated wilderness areas cannot include such relics of human striving. That Act was inspired by a particular vision: people escaping from the rat race into pristine natural environments, a sort of medical treatment vision superceding eco- Back of Beyond logical reasoning. That is a serious flaw in the Act, an opening for excuses. (See Michael J. Vandeman, “What Is Homo Sapiens’ Place In Nature, From An Objective (Biocentric) Point Of View?” - May 22, 2006.) But there is'more to the story, more Acts to come, and one in particular requires our close inspection. May 11 was National Endangered Species Day. (Did anyone observe it?) I couldn’t help reflecting, again, on the red flag planted inside the Endangered Species Act. Did President Richard Nixon know what he was signing when he put pen to the ESA? Hard to imagine that he did. Did anyone? The flaming surprise buried in that law Bere AatT of the land is a Big Picture sketch, the interconnections of animals and plants and habiplaces tats. Recovering endangered species, the stated aim of the Act, means recovering DD mmly «bm wis Bookstore 3 eee OL aaa ral ee MOAB, UTAH 84532 as on the land and in the seas, plants and Hee have The ak for their ane no respect for rectilinear habitats currently and legally owned by members of our species. The ESA gives us an awesome mandate: ease up, share with The Others. Aside from the Bill of Rights and our half-hidden history of resistance in its name, is there anything more revolutionary? This was first published in SWANS COMMENTARY, of " [phone] June 5, 2006. <www.swans.com> “In this riveting work, the Peacocks convincingly show how America’s greatest carnivyore connects Americans to their culture, their history, their humanity, and the values we ‘most treasure. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. 800-700-2859 www.backofbeyondbooks.com [e-mail]