All the scientific concerns about a changing global climate was as inconvenient as a rattlesnake in a living room — not to mention those pesky rules and regulations that disallowed bold and rampant pollution and the raping of the earth’s forests.
Politics aside, my concern over the rollback of national monument designations is the potential (and likely) loss of history, environment and open space — open space that does not include the scars of mining, logging, and drilling.
We can’t stop a rip current. But we can heed the warnings, and we should learn how to get ourselves out of a rip current if we are sucked into one. And so it goes with our personal efforts at finding peace. A sudden world event can pull our peace away. Once caught in the current, we may become another casualty.
Do the kings and prince’s of Saudi Arabia spend time with the aborigines of Australia? Do the captains of industry in the western world hang with the indigenous of the American continents? Do the Russian oligarchs hang with the Aleuts and Inuits of the Arctic regions? And so on. Probably not.
Wealth and power can put heroin addiction to shame.
Wealth and power can correct social and planetary imbalances, or tip the balance to unsustainable levels.
This is a story of our times. It is a story of criminals, liars, gullibility, and faith.
This time last year I wanted to gather my own tribe around my dining room table. I craved their ways of thinking, experiences, wisdom, crafts and talents. But the problem with “my tribe” is we are not very tribal and gathering these folks at one time is akin to herding feral cats — which is why I love this weakly defined tribe.So, instead, I hiked the desert, wandered through the forests, listened to the rivers and ocean, bought mounds of books to read and ponder, and took to what I’ve always done at challenged life moments — threw words on paper in hopes of sorting it all out.
It can be lonely on these less traveled roads. Guideposts are few and far between. The silence, however, is magic. It puts a lid on the cauldron of word soup chatter (social media). With each blind curve, truth reveals itself like nakedness in the mirror. And it is not always pretty.
This is not meant to be a point of political argument as to what the purpose of government is in America. My intent is to challenge the use of the word compassion as a smokescreen for the removal of governmental programs that assist the disadvantaged on multiple levels.
I just returned to Yosemite National Park after decades of absence. It is magnificent, if you ignore the hordes of people crawling the valley like ants, and the over 66 million dead conifers in the Sierra Nevada, with the grey and brown bulk seen along the roads leading into Yosemite National Park through Mariposa County. I lost my breath seeing the death of these trees.
To believe that there are not those persons who do not respect the planet on which we live, is a sure path to living like fools. To believe that some one person can make your life good again, is a sure path to living like a fool. To believe that there is just one path to follow, is a sure path that ends at the edge of a deep crevice or brick wall.
