I am a woman with wings,′ I once wrote and will revise these words again. ‘I am a woman with wings dancing with other women with wings.’ In a voiced community, we all flourish.
The story of the Utah prairie dog is the story of the range of our compassion. If we can extend our idea of community to include the lowliest of creatures, call them ‘the untouchables’, then we will indeed be closer to a path of peace and tolerance. if we cannot accommodate ‘the other’, the shadow we will see on our own home ground will be the forecast of our own species’ extended winter of the soul.
Our ability to travel is a privilege. But it is also a choice. Money is time. Where do we spend out time? Wilderness is not my leisure or my recreation. It is my sanity.
We hold the moon in our bellies and fire in our hearts. We bleed We give milk. We are the mothers of first words. These words grow. They are our children. They are our stores and poems.
Wilderness is an antidote to the war within ourselves.
I return to the wilderness to remember what I have forgotten, that the world can be wholesome and beautiful, that the harmony and integrity of ecosystems at peace is a mirror to what we have lost.
By definition, our national parks in all their particularity and peculiarity show us as much about ourselves as the landscapes they honor and protect. They can be seen as holograms of an America born of shadow and light; dimensional; full of contradictions and complexities. Our dreams, our generosities, our cruelties and crimes are absorbed into these parks like water. The poet Rumi says, “Water, stories, the.
I trace my genealogy back to the land. Human and wild, I can see myself whole, not isolated but integrated in time and place. Our genetic makeup is not so different from the collared lizard, the canyon wren now calling, or the great horned owl who watches from the cottonwood near the creek. Mountain lion is as mysterious a creature as any soul I know. Is not the tissue of family always a movement between harmony and distance?
Wilderness holds an original presence giving expression to that which we lack, the losses we long to recover, the absences we seek to fill. Wilderness revives the memory of unity. Through its protection we can find faith in our humanity.
There is comfort in keeping what is sacred inside us not as a secret, but as a prayer.
This is the Hour of Land, when our mistakes and shortcomings must be placed in the perspective of time. The Hour of Land is where we remember what we have forgotten: We are not the only species who lives and dreams on the planet. There is something enduring that circulates in the heart of nature that deserves our respect and attention.
Sorrow has a voice. It is the cold scream of silence turned inward.
Literature was life, and reading became an open door to a world beyond the familiar.
Every day, I walked. It was not a meditation, but survival, one foot in the front of the other, with my eyes focused down, trying to stay steady.
This is what we can promise the future: a legacy of care. That we will be good stewards and not take too much or give back too little, that we will recognize wild nature for what it is, in all its magnificent and complex history – an unfathomable wealth that should be consciously saved, not ruthlessly spent.
But what thrilled me most was the fact that millions of meteors burn up every day as they enter our atmosphere. As a result, Earth receives ten tons of dust from outer space. Not only do we take in the world with each breath, we are inhaling the universe. We are made of stardust.
A pencil is a wand and a weapon. Be careful. Protect yourself. It can be glorious.
These valleys, these rivers- creased, folded, and pushed. What wisdom mountains house. My God- they are Gods. My God has feet of Earth. We are flickering moths in migration.
The legacy of the Wilderness Act is a legacy of care. It is the act of loving beyond ourselves, beyond our own species, beyond our own time. To honor wildlands and wild lives that we may never see, much less understand, is to acknowledge the world does not revolve around us. The Wilderness Act is an act of respect that protects the land and ourselves from our own annihilation.
The difference between fear and awe is a matter of our eyes adjusting.