Song of the Sacred:

Harmonies of Earth, Self and

Community
By Norm Reynolds
email: nreynolds@shaw.ca
phone: 250-338-0155

Table of Contents
Foreword 1
Preface 4
# 1 A Time for Reflection 9
#2 Sunnydale 11
#3 Ode to a Disgruntled Friend 11
#4 The Bubble Effect 13
#5 To Linda 21
#6 A Sacred Star 25
#7 A War Story 36
#8 Stone, Ice and Storm 40
#9 Kokanee 44
#10 Working on the Railroad 51
#11 Epic Journey 74
#12 Mother Time 76
#13 Mt. St. Helens 81
#14 The Old Ford 83
#15 A Christmas Past 85
#16 Hello, Terrible Winter 91
#17 New Year's Morning 94
#18 A Child's Wonder 100
#19 Harmonies of Earth, Self and Community 102
Bibliography 145

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Foreword

Reading this book of meditations by my friend, Norm Reynolds, reminds once again how in our
most profoundly original statements we are conditioned by our forefathers. The voice in this
book is an American one--I say that in the best and largest sense of the word--in the tradition of
Thoreau and Emerson, Whitman and Guthrie. The best of what still is America grows out of this
tradition: the need for a directly personal response to the natural environment, the search for
spiritual justification outside of institutions, for self-reliance and independence from the in-
grained and forgetful habits of men in society, the profound desire to sing the song of self as a
metaphor or symbol for the song of everyman in his private soul.

The two strains of anarchist freedom and a socialist democracy of the spirit come together very
powerfully in the best of Norm's writing, and in his life; because these meditations grow directly
out of his felt relations to lived experience in much the same way that Walden or Leaves of Grass
were composed by his predecessors. I have a privileged insight into these pieces by my friend--in
many cases I knew the people or events of which he writes, and have lived through, in a
peripheral way, the issues of community and self which he has developed here so powerfully a
second time through memory.

The concepts of self, and of community are the terms which most consistently define the poles of
Norm' s thought, and social action. The solitary thinker in these pages, who speaks so eloquently
for the individual right to expression, for the rights to private meditation on the good and the
true, always finds a way back to the community in order to speak for the other half of experience
which can only realize itself through social commitment. In this sense Norm is a citizen, that
most precious, and most precariously maintained human achievement.

My favorite pieces among these meditations reflect concerns with human community, nature and
the flight of the spirit. I am thinking in particular of the chapters on Nature ( "A Time for
Reflection" and the latter portions of "Ode to a Disgruntled Friend"), of the lovely evocations of
the natural seasons which form a metaphor for humanity's spiritual life. A particularly beautiful
example of this is the meditation on the span of a leaf's falling in autumn, a thought which
translates into "one smiling moment [when the author himself] floats gently down between the
day of my birth and the day I shall be only the faint remembrance of these few passing thoughts."

These pages, too, reveal a deep (commitment to preserve a natural environment which we inherit
only briefly as caretakers, and an awareness of the meaningful connection between all things,
from the smallest seed and the greatest tree to the human imagination.

I am thinking also of Norm's conversations with a disgruntled friend, of his realization that it is
in human nature to swim against the current ( a nature which leaves one no choice), and his final
awareness that one must "be at home" with one's psyche, accept one's fate no matter how
difficult it may appear. Accepting his place in history, of the need to express what one is given to
express, Norm reflects: "No, I didn't choose to live here. I wasn't offered a choice. I have but one
choice. I can squeeze from these precious moments enough joy to defy the wind, the drought, the

2
meager nutrients, or I can despair of the harsh winter and stinging winds, surrender my will and
stand barren and ghost-like while life tries the ridge with some, more willing form." This is said
with the wisdom of his great American forebears. And like them, too, Norm is not (content to
rest with any easy vision of humanity's place in society. In reflecting on the Vietnam experience
of the 1960s, Norm speaks for a generation of young Americans who were (conscientious
objectors and at the same time traces the growth of a single consciousness. His own move to
Canada allowed him the necessary distance, both geographically and psychically, to reflect on
the meaning of his American existence.

In what is for me the most moving, chapter of this manuscript Norm reflects on history,
American mercantile materialism, and a state of existence which may be called pre-societal. We
learn of his fascination with the tramps who congregated near the railway yards where he worked
as a young man. And it does not take long before one realizes the essential kinship he feels with
these unfortunates, of the admiration he has for the decision to reject a suffocating materialism,
and of the commitment he has for the dispossessed of the earth (in a sense each one of us), as
they search for a path to freedom and self-expression. In this one is strongly reminded of another
of Norm's literary forebears. I am thinking of Woody Guthrie and the fecund, moving spirit of
humanity which exists on his freight train of hobos as they set out for points unknown: Bound
for Glory in whatever direction it may lie. This is a moving image of human solidarity, but it is
also a one-sided image, for, like Guthrie, Norm is aware that the ideal imagined future will
always escape and perhaps disappoint the designs of human intent. He ends this chapter with the
portrayal of an argument between two hobos, one a Negro, the other of Mexican descent; the
argument has racist overtones, the Mexican slyly appealing to the prejudices of the white railway
workers in order to cage a bit of change. Norm's illusions of solidarity within the hobo sub-
culture are chastened by reality; he is sick behind a railway shack. But then in a moment of
illumination, which I believe is both realistic and profoundly optimistic, he ends: "the future
would be different than the mess we are in today, but it wasn't going to be the utopia I had been
waiting for."

I urge everyone to read these meditations, as much for the self-portrait which emerges as for the
literary value.

Myler Wilkinson

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Preface
December 1967, I arrived at the Blaine border crossing just south of Vancouver, British
Columbia, my entire worldly belongings barely stretching across the back seat of a bug-eyed
little Volkswagen sedan. It was a strange thing this saying good-bye to all that was familiar, this
stepping forward into the unknown. And, as recounted in "A War Story" I knew nothing of what
waited for me across the border. I knew only the frightening dream which haunted my nights for
the previous three months. I was moving north...or ... yes, I considered the alternative carefully
and broke off an engagement with a college sweetheart to avoid any long, jail-side vigil.

That balmy day in December I had no way of knowing this first step across the border would be
only the beginning of a long and eventful journey home-a spiritual home whose foundations
would be laid in the experiences of living in a narrow mountain valley just below one of British
Columbia's largest glaciers and whose structures would eventually be constructed primarily of
the workings of the heart.

December 1986, I was returning to California as a middle-aged father. This one year there would
be no ice rink beside the house. Grandma's little polar bears would leave behind their snow hill
and run in the midwinter grasses of a sunnier clime. Delightedly I watched the boys toss the
football and romp over the lawn in shirtsleeves. Only slowly did I begin to realize we had come
south, but we were not returning to the home I so much wanted to share with my children.

Seven o'clock, one bright, warm, California morning; the first rays of the waking sun shone
gently through the bedroom window, soft drops of morning dew ran like glistening comet tails
over the ripe, globular oranges outside. My two sons danced on the floor and pounced on the
bed. "Get up" they ordered with the authority of a Master Sergeant. A barbecue had been
promised in the park where the fat, lazy ducks begged for a hand out. Most importantly to the
boys, we were going Christmas shopping in the BIG CITY.

As Grandmother said, there were hundreds of stores in just one place. You could park your car
and walk to them all, and no matter what you wanted it was sure to be there-somewhere.

By ten o'clock, as we headed out the drive, the sun-already a golden orb-burned brightly
overhead. Birds gathered seeds and sang the soft, gentle songs of lucky creatures that have never
seen the rivers freeze solid nor known seasons where only a hardy few find sustenance. In the
middle of December tomatoes could still be seen growing on unprotected vines behind some of
the houses. Out on the freeway we rolled down the windows to relieve the greenhouse effect
warming behind the windshield.

Further down the hill, valley vapors began wisping up to meet us. Windows were cranked up as
the billowing fog deepened. By the time we reached the intersection, what grandmother
described as fog turned to a dark smut, four lanes of bustling vehicles stampeded on in an endless
sea of traffic. Arrows, signs, cars, and thundering trucks flashed by dizzyingly. And the
intersection was not "an intersection." One ramp ran straight ahead, then dove down under the
freeway to San Francisco; two lanes diverged to the right then split into yet another two to
crossover, intersect, mingle, and commingle with a host of other ramps, exits, and thoroughfares.

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Once off the freeway, traffic on the boulevard became frenzied. With three lanes of jockeying
traffic moving one direction and crossroads, shopping centres, signs, and stoplights on all sides
my tenuous hold on sanity failed me entirely. Then the honking began. It was all my fault, of
course. I wasn't moving at the speed limit, and they were in a hurry.

It reminded me of an excursion earlier that week when I returned with the family to the place I
had run as a child. Hoping to find some remnant of the well worn path that once diverged from
the woods below my parent's cottage I discovered nothing familiar-only a long line of shops
surrounded by a huge black parking lot. Standing befuddled on the edge of the parking lot, I
managed to point where a small stream had meandered down to fill the intermittent pond. There,
under the drug store, as nearly as I could guess, had been the boathouse where I crept with
wormed hook to catch the blue gill. Where the pasture once grew among the stumps, only an
occasional forlorn, dwarfed tree sprouted out of a concrete box to remind one that anything
living ever occupied the land. You could get your haircut, buy new shoes, travel to Mexico, or
obtain a bottle of whiskey. But, you couldn't play in the unkempt grass. Whither I had come
alone through the willow thicket, a sea of cars now moved impatiently to the cadence of the
changing lights and parked between the yellow lines-pointing at an angle.

One other time I took the boys "home", but this had been very different from the one in
California. A hundred and twenty miles north of Vancouver at the northern boundary of the Mt.
Currie Indian Reserve the pavement crosses the British Columbia Rail line, climbs a short steep
hill and comes to an abrupt end. For another 17 miles beyond that a narrow ribbon of jarringly
bumpy road winds its way along the Birkenhead River before breaking into the open, shale
covered avalanche shoots above Gate's Lake. As the lake first comes into view I point sharply to
the right. The kids bound out of the car and run for a tall log structure (the ten year project of Dr.
Ansom McKim, the friend who sheltered me when I first arrived in Vancouver, and who owns
this long neglected 360 acre homestead). My own thoughts race before the boys, stop for a
moment to examine the familiar grey rails around the barn, then bound over the glacial silt
pasture like an anxious lover returning home from a long absence.

The old Mac stands more broken than ever, its long tendrils drooping to the ground. Only after
sliding back the slender rails of the pole gate barring the way to the back pasture, do I lift my
eyes fully above the tall grass to answer the question I so urgently seek. Yes, oh, yes, the darkly
greyed, heavy, hand squared logs still rest sturdily one on top of the other. The cedar shakes
which the froe turned from the block some 75 years earlier still cling securely to the steeply
pitched roof. The boys, who have dallied along the way, catch up at the gate, and with mounting
anticipation we walk closer. Below the matted grasses of ten unscythed years a thin, hand
shoveled trench still faintly twists its way along the contours of the land for a mile to the milky,
glacier fed waters of Place Creek. An old moisture corrupted ladder lies weathering on its side
against the western wall of the cabin. The windows, every one is broken; whether by vandals or
merely the entropic working of time I can't tell.

The door, entirely gape, still hangs to the casing as my oldest boy pokes his head inquisitively
inside. The horses have reclaimed an old stable and the place is as polluted and disheveled as
when I first came. "You lived here?" the oldest asks incredulously. "Yes, we lived here," his
mother replies. Smiling warmly, she begins to tell of the ermine who came to dinner and the old
wooden skis with the boots fixed to them that we left by the door during snowy nights because
the outhouse was over there in the bushes across the creek. She tells of the long winters when the

5
water on the stove froze and cracked in the night. She begins to tell of the twilight when the a
sun didn't come and the stacks of books that the conductor threw off for us at the railway shanty
across the lake, and the drifting snow (35' during the last winter). The firing eyes of the boys
dance over the disheveled scene and return to their Mom. But, my attention drifts. There is still
something I need to see alone.

Quietly I slip to the back, southern wall of the cabin. The ugly 90-pound asphalt roofing still
clings uneasily to the upper half of the roughly hewn log wall where it had been nailed to keep
out the driving winds. Here in the soft warm grass I came in the last days to sit for long hours
gazing at this rustic old cabin, etching some part of its gentle grace and the way of life I learned
to love into the windows of my soul. What could I tell them now? Would such attentive but still
inexperienced young minds understand what I meant if I told them...I was born here?

The poplar woods at the southern edge of the meadow shelter the last patches of glistening spring
snow. Already the robins have returned to hop over the warming soil-one hop, two hop, three
hop, stop; the attentive heads cock from side to side to catch the faintest hint of an unwary worm.
A spring breeze rustles quietly among the waking trees. Intertwining with the breeze the sound of
freshly melted snow, hurling down over Place Creek Falls, reverberates across the valley.
Interwoven with all of this a compelling silence penetrates the deepest reaches of this remote,
high mountain valley with an inexplicable sense of wonder.

"Yes, my sons, I was born here."

If as Myler Wilkinson states in the introduction, there is any "American tradition" to this book it
has nothing to do with the land of bustling cars and sprawling shopping centres to which I
returned in December of 1986. Nor has it come about by any intentional literary fraternity,
though I remember long nights in the cabin when the driving snow mounted over the fence posts
outside and the kerosene ran dry, burning the wick to the stem, while I sat by the puffing tin
stove, stoking the fire and reading with utter enchantment the fascinating works of Henry
Thoreau. Any perceived connection comes directly from the land itself and time spent sitting
beside a small mountain lake listening to the cadence of a different drummer lapping gently
against the shore as it beat out some small repertoire of the infinite hymns of Absolute Spirit.

For three summers I nourished a small garden on the swelling, mineral rich waters of Place
Creek. On warm summer days I swam in the crystalline waters of Gate's Lake or climbed one of
the mountains jutting up from this narrow trench of a valley. Once I followed the cascading
creek for three miles up to the abrupt, groaning ice walls of Place Glacier. From there I
scrambled across the scree and up a short heather covered slope to sit on the highest pinnacle of
land around. Below the western cliff the changing winds played a kaleidoscoping rhythm of
crystal patterns over the surface of Gate's Lake. A short distance to the south the glacier
grumbled a playful, mesmerizing complaint against the penetrating sun. To the northeast the
ragged rock faces mellowed parabolicly down into the borders of the Stein Wilderness so much
revered by the local natives. A crow catching the rising, western air looked down inquisitively
for a moment at my now sprawling body and, in another instant, was gone. A ptarmigan skirted
along the rock just beyond the heather. I dozed off to a deep, half conscious sleep. How long I
slept there I have never been able to figure, though the rest was greater than any nightly repose.

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"Baaaa. Baaaa." I awoke gently and crawled to the edge of the cliff. A band of mountain goats,
four adults and three young, balanced along a precipitous ledge in the rock face below.
Sometime later a Whiskey Jack drifted effortlessly by on the wings of the chilling, late afternoon
breeze. I shook myself in sudden recognition of the hour. How had it grown so late? I tried
unsuccessfully to recollect the day. Where had I been? Why was I still here? Slowly I began to
realize the trick that altitude, the groaning glacier, and changing winds played on my senses. I
had, at last, found what I sought so often on that towering ridge. I now knew well something of
the awing, intoxicating silence that I had been trying so hard to understand in the eye of a native
friend and of which Thoreau spoke, "A night in which the silence was audible, I heard the
unspeakable". I looked far across the glacier. With shadows already reaching the foot of the cliff
I remembered the border crossing, I remembered the blue gill and the boathouse, I saw the
spreading parking lot and the shimmering neon lights. What I wanted to know and be was born
here in this secluded valley that would always be home. In the gentle waves lapping against the
shores of Gate's Lake far below, I could hear a yet distant, but rising song of place whose
harmonies would blend for me a new understanding of the inextricable interconnectedness of
Earth, Self and Community.

This book remained on the shelf for at least twelve years as just a few notes on experiences that
had been transforming in my life. Only, and with the greatest reluctance, as I began to accept the
possibility that these experiences were the signposts of an evolving spiritual journey did I come
to see they had a relevance beyond the biographical notes of an unimportant, perennially
unemployed husband and father of two boys, living unobtrusively in the margins of our rapidly
advancing, industrialized culture of twentieth century North America.

I have written this book largely for my friends; for the environmentalists; for the environmental
at heart; especially for those who have lost heart; for those who, like myself for so long, have
yielded to despair believing there are just too many ways to poison the earth or use it up-too
many insatiable greeds to even hope there is yet time for us, as a species, to learn to love the
Earth rather than consume it.

While I must recognize the destructiveness of attitudes and practices that corrode our
atmosphere, pollute our seas and denude our forests, the melody to this song of place is most
clearly one of joy and hope. Joy because my spiritual journey has taught me, like the Buddhists,
that on a personal level joy is the love (compassion) arising from a deep felt sense of
connectedness. Regardless of what others do, joy/love/connectedness is the result of my own
decisions, actions, experiences. Hope, yes I see a great deal of hope, because I have come to
believe that the message that will save our planet and empower our lives is not so much in the
placards we carry or the logging trucks we stop or even in the legislation we manage to enact as
it is in the transformation of our own hearts and experience. If we can allow a deep sense of
compassionate embeddedness in the functioning of our living planet to transform our very
beingness into an expression of personal, cultural and environmental harmony, then we have
firmly established that kind of existence as a compelling potential for all humanity. If we can do
it with passion and commitment that wells up from within to find vital and creative expression of
our sense of connectedness in all our relationships, then the world will beat a path to our doors in
order to ask how they can go and do likewise. All my experiences teach me that the idea of
basing our social relations on the 17th century dream of isolated and greedy individuals is, at
least, as damaging to our essential human spirit as it is destructive of our communities and
natural systems

7
After spending a little over half of this book relating personal glimpses into the spiritual realm of
connectedness, I devote considerable effort in the final chapter to outlining the foundations of a
new, intuitive spirituality of place. Place here implies more a deeply felt sense of being at home
with one's self, one's community and one's earth rather than designating any particular locality.
While I call this spirituality of place new, it is, in reality, the reinterpretation of the values of a
large number of ancient teachings, and can be considered new only to the alienating and
consumptive perceptions of the modern era.

While there is a thread of argument running through the final chapter, even it is primarily
personal experience. I fundamentally believe that any residing spirituality of place must be
experienced; it is inherently experienced wisdom rather than knowing about, and-as I argue
passionately in this last chapter-the way we know-is what we know-is who we are.

My hope in relating these experiences is that the reader may go away with a heart more open to
and understanding of such experiences.

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Chapter 1

A TIME FOR REFLECTION

________________________________________________________________

When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what
my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his
beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds...and am free.

-Wendell Berry

Over the course of a year days, weeks, even months go by when the person we really are lays
hidden beneath layers of care and preparation- we prepare for winter, plant in the spring, labour
for the harvest. Then there are those few golden days when it all comes together. The cares and
preparations fade and we can withdraw into that inner heart from which we can again view the
world around with wonder and satisfaction.

Of all the seasons, Fall stands head and shoulders above the rest as the season of the heart.
Perhaps its greatest significance comes from the message written so indelibly in the fading
colours of the falling leaves. We, with our towering philosophies and mighty technologies, once
thought we could squeeze from nature her innermost secret or ride like a smoking snowmobile
over her winter strength. But the falling leaf tells another tale.

The grey hair today will have grown to three when the green leaf buds from the tree in the
spring. We are but a small part in the mortal succession called life, which we can appreciate but
not design.

For me there is something very special in the leaf that breaks from the tree and, drifting down to
earth, knows its short but golden season. For the entire time spent in the tree it is concerned with
growth, with the greater good of the whole. It drinks in the sun and draws up water and mineral
from the root. Its life is in service to the greater entity of the tree. Striking the ground it
immediately yields itself to the decay that will nourish the needs of another season.

But nature is generous to the leaf. Between the branch and the ground there is a season to be just
a leaf, to drift on the wind, to be detached from commitments. Nature has been generous to
human existence also. To us is given the power of choice. While we may not challenge the
message of the grey, nor add substantially to the length of our seasons, we are offered a great
deal of choice in the quality of our perception. We may choose the life of the ant. We may fritter
away our lives in detail, in constant fear of starving without ever tasting hunger. We may spend

9
our lives building bridges without ever crossing over to consider the why or wonder of our own
or any other creation. Or, he can choose to know some of the life of the falling leaf.

Once, on returning from one of my solitary hikes, I had a neighbour ask in the most incredulous
shock why I would spend a week alone in the woods with my only comforts derived from the
goods I could carry on my back. She simply could not understand that I am not alone, and my
comforts are not derived from the goods I carry. In fact, I have never felt so alone as standing in
a crowded arena. For one short week I chose the life of a leaf. I'm not alone; I'm merely at home
with myself. I take comfort in letting my thoughts drift like the falling leaf rather than from any
object pull from my pack.

I leave my watch behind on these reclusive hikes; its inane ticking is wholly out of sync with the
time I wish to experience. I entrust no urgent messages for those who stay behind, leave open the
day of my return. The night final passes overhead on silent, invisible waves that I have no desire
to intercept. I'm not intrigued to know which way interest rates are moving, whether the Israelis
have begun a final solution to their Palestinian problem, or what insignificant cabinet minister
has finally attained fame in some scandalous escapade. In the trembling leaf breaking from the
bough is the news I have been anxious to hear.' To the length of my years is subtracted yet
another golden summer. Under the chill morning breeze a small stream murmurs its quiet retreat
from the mountain. Deserted by the withdrawing sap, the autumn leaves rain quietly down to the
forest floor. A vast silence engulfs both woodland and meadow, mountain and valley.

There is something deeply relaxing about these solitary wanderings. What invigoration to feel
again the cool wind splashing against my face in the morning. How I love to savor the cold, clear
bite of a cascading, mountain stream on my lips. I lie stretched out on the warm, open hillsides
and am absorbed by the vast encompassing enormity of the universe. For one smiling moment I
float gently down between the day of my birth and the day I shall be only the faint remembrance
of these few passing thoughts.

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Chapter 2

SUNNYDALE

_______________________________________________________________

The times are changing. Today it's a matter of dollars and cents. That makes it tough on uses (of
the national forests) that don't produce much income, such as recreation.

-U.S. Regional Forester Craig Rupp (1983)

The comprehension of limits is a shatteringly experience; as shattering as the discovery that the
earth is not flat and not the centre of cosmos.

-John N. Cole

Once there was a lovely little town. All the people (about 10,000) loved the fine weather and
bright sun that shone down on them year after year, so they named their blessed little village
Sunnydale.

After people lived there for a long time they usually began to think that the sun had taken a
special liking to their town and saved all its brightest, most vibrantly mellow rays just for their
village.

Sunnydale was special for other reasons too. It was surrounded with lush green forests, broken
only by gentle meadows where long waving grasses mixed with the wildflowers in the most
delightful arrangements. The valley bottom was full of rich fertile soil and grew some of the
finest crops in the nation.

When the people first came to Sunnydale, they looked on the rich soil, the clean water, the bright
sunshine, and the tall forests. The land was good, so the people set about building houses,
planting gardens, and raising their families. They held dances to celebrate the goodness of the
land and the vigor of health that ran through their bodies.

Unfortunately, nothing stays the same, and over the years, things began to change. Oil was
pumped out of the ground far away and transported over great distances to Sunnydale, but still it
was very cheap. People no longer spoke to their horses as they worked the handles of the plow
and wiped the sweat from their brow.

11
Now, they sat on tractors and injected poison into the soil. At home the food came from fields in
Ontario, sealed in tin cans in Montreal. There was no need to go out to the school play;
professional actors portrayed the eccentricities of life in New York on the TV screen. The oil
heater kept the house at an even 70 degrees F.

It was definitely a softer life, and many called lit better. However, slouched down into the chair,
eyes fixed in a semidaze, belly spilling upward at the electric light and holding a can of beer
brewed in Vancouver, it became increasingly difficult to call this new way of life vigorous or
healthy.

Then one day some really big news flashed across the TV screen. The oil, which had been so
cheap and seemed to be in endless supply, was becoming scarce. The price was going up
dramatically. The people of Sunnydale turned down their thermostats to 68 degrees F. They
bought smaller cars which went further on less oil. Still the new oil costs snuck into their
pocketbooks. The people were not happy. They began to worry more and have less.

In order to be more competitive the local industries were allowed to put more of their costs
(poisons) into the air and water. At times the water tasted like a mix of oil and plastic. The air
began to smell like rotten eggs. Most importantly, the sun, which had given Sunnydale its name
and blessed its people, no longer smiled down through the bright blue sky. Now, the sun hung
like a smuggy bright spot over the hazy, grey-brown horizons of Sunnydale.

The soil was tired from over work. It no longer crumbled in the farmers hands. With all the salts
and poisons it no longer produced the kinds of crops it used to. The richest forests had long since
been cut down and sent off to distant markets. The meadows were rocky and deeply rutted with
the runoff from denuded forest land.

Some of the young people believed more oil would be found soon and everything would get
better. However, some of the folks who had lived under the bright sun and walked in the lovely
meadows began to wonder if more oil had ever brought a better life.

12
Chapter 3

ODE TO A DISGRUNTLED FRIEND

_______________________________________________________________

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to
them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach undeterred by
particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark , a thought, I am life form eternal life. ...I was
made to from and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail...I trust that God is in me I trust
that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live. -Herman Hesse

"You old fool!" These tirades begin the same way every time-a bright smile, a slap on the back;
but a tremulous shadow taunts uneasily at the strings of the blithely chiding face; and the words
convey more than just a greeting.

"Life, my friend, is no oversized chess game where you can see the end from the beginning, or
design strategies, or even take advantage of long, well-contemplated moves. Life, you shall see,
(another slap on the back and, for him, a breath grabbing pause); life is the Amazon River in
flood, and we are only confused ants caught on a dislodged tree drifting inexorable to the sea.
Just because the rest of us keep burrowing in the wood and building nests, quarreling with the
colony at the other end of the log; in general, living fairly normal lives-you think we don't know
what's happening. 'Help! Help!' you keep shouting and talking about swimming lessons and
pointing across to the banks we can't even see anymore.

(Another long breath and a forceful hand on my shoulder) You think we've forgotten, but we
haven't. No one forgets the dry earth homes, the territories our ancestors scouted and held for
generations, the rich succulent jungle vegetation. There's no one here that hasn't guessed the fate
waiting for us ants in the sea. But you, you old fool, (having seized on the handle he won't let go)
you think just because you know something you have to do something about it, so you keep
jumping into the flood swollen river and swimming like hell against the current until you get
exhausted and drift back with the current, and we pick you out.

Then, after you're warm and dry you start talking about the shore and the way it's supposed to be.
Another wink and you're back in swimming like you'll make it this time. Why in the name of
elementary good sense you choose to spend so much time fruitlessly swimming against the
current is entirely beyond me.

13
What's really so different on the bank anyway? Even if you somehow make it across all that
water (which you most certainly never will) what waits on the far shore other than eating,
sleeping, nest building, and dying? That's all there is here; that's all that waits on the far shore.
What possible reason could one have for voluntarily shouldering the unending labours of a
Sisyphus?

Once started, my disgruntled friend can stretch these tirades on for hours. For he has his own
streams to swim, and what is addressed to me on one day is, indeed, little more than a small part
of a long rancorous internal dialectic to which the old grouser's answers are as feeble as my own.
On another day he, too, will plunge into the stream and swim in confusion toward the distant
shore.

Tonight, with all the messy sacks of papers strewn over the table and spilling onto the floor,
many years since I have seen my friend or tried ineptly to turn aside his arguments, the old fool
label drives deep like an arrow finding its way through the armor. Why I struggle constantly to
swim against the stream I really don't know. I know only of the strange, aberrant dreams that
drifted for their own reasons across the dark horizons of my nights. In church the children sang
of a loving god that blessed the little ones; by night I saw the face of a wrathful god who tortured
the innocent children of unbelieving parents. At times, I cried to be free of the compelling
dreams, to be left to drift with the current, to settle comfortably into a dreamless sleep rather than
always see things so differently. Still the dreams came unhindered. The friendly voice on the
radio spoke eagerly of a patriotic duty, but I dreamed of helpless pawns sacrificed to the greed of
profit hungry corporations. I wondered aloud how many people would be called to die for an
unprofitable foreign war and nearly lost my job, offending my fellow employees by such strange
talk. I dreamed of a world moving to a different beat than the hammering spit-bang of our
frenzied industrial world and went to live for three years beyond the end of the road, beyond the
last power pole, where no telephone rang and where for whole winters no human step came to
blemish the changing patterns of the drifting snow.

"Old fool" I certainly am, and if I lack any in age, I'm foolish enough anyway, but the idea that
my foolishness is the consequence of some misadventurous decision to struggle against the
current sticks heavily in the craw. Swimming against the stream, yes, but there never been any
deciding to it-unless, like Sisyphus, after a long struggle I have learned to chose the going back
down, the submitting, the being at home with my own nature.

This most recent controversy over the Mt. Faith wilderness I certainly didn't choose. When first I
set foot in the fecund meadows I came to relax, to enjoy, to be at peace-not to stake a
battleground. When the pika shouted out its first shrill warning, what joy it was to soothe his
fears. I didn't come as a predator nor as a plunderer. I came to inhale the delicate scents of a
myriad flowers-warm and sun ripened. I came to laugh with the brook that danced happily down
aver the rocks. I came as an observer to see and know a world still unhurried by the ambitions of
humanity. But standing on the top of Mt. Faith, looking down the long verdant drainages of
Lynch Creek, I saw values clinging to the sloping hillsides which society held much higher than
any pristine beauty, and I knew the hungry eye of the local sawmill must not be far away.

I knew they would come; the heavy machinery would gouge into the side of the hills, and
crushed stone would be pressed into smooth roadbeds for the lumbering trucks. All day the
crying, racing saws would tear at the long ages of silence. The trees would fall to the ground and

14
be carried away. The blood of a less tumultuous age would drain from the veins of the
wilderness. As I sat for the first time on the soft, heather covered, shoulders of Mt. Faith, already
the mill was drawing the dark outlines of a mainhaul road along the contours of Lynch Creek.
That very summer helicopters flew grid patterns over all the fanning drainages of Lynch Creek,
but I knew only that they would come someday-not that road construction was scheduled to
begin in the fall, or that in government offices the living forest was already reduced to the dead
volumes of the cunnit.

Sitting on the soft heather in the middle of July, I turned my back on what was to come and
looked across the spreading valley of the Arrow Lakes to the Y shaped field of ice which is
Kokanee Glacier-a last vestigial reminder of the vast continental ice sheets that once covered and
shaped the mountains and valleys of the Selkirks. Flowing out from these highest heath ridges,
the glacier tilled alpine meadows begin a succession of flowers as soon as the snow melts in
early summer. Already the ubiquitous white and yellow heads of the Western Anemone have
turned into the furry mop heads that carpet the meadows. Among the anemone, the grasses and
sedges grow up to mix with the paintbrushes, lupines, daisies, and, columbines in an ever
changing array of colour. I feel an overwhelming magnanimity when looking on these whole
hillsides of flowers unplanted and untended by human hand. Out of the flowers an occasional
gaunt snag stands as an open armed perch of eagles, frozen into its silent vigil by the bewitching
spell of one of the periodic fires. Along the ridge tops sparse clumps of broken shrub-like trees
cling to a few cracks in the rock before all but the enduring lichens yield to the massive bluffs
springing up at the sun.

Here, apart from the noisy world of greed below, a silence begins to grow that spreads through
the wilderness. The ghost of vast continental sheets of ice have withdrawn to these high
mountain valleys to wait for another age, and they have brought with them a long haunting
silence. Perhaps the silence is merely the terror of knowing how delicately all life clings to the
indifferent whims of the changing seasons in this foreboding land. But the silence is a different
reality than just the absence of noise. From the top of the rock a pika lays out his grasses to dry
for the long winter and calls excitedly to a neighbour. The melting snow roars as it cascades from
the mountain. The whistler fills the valley with a waking summer song. But the awesome silence
of the meadow is no more broken by the call of the whistler or song of the cascading snow than
the reverend awe of a mighty cathedral is broken by the singing of hymns. Into this absorbing
silence the words of humanity sink like a lost sailor into the bowels of the sea.

Long before even the earliest human or his words the mountain stood broad shouldered and
conspired with the sun to nurture the teaming fields of life it raises as its own. And while it may
now seem that human culture comes as an end point, as plunderer/destroyer, the mountain
breathes a rhythm wholly out of sync with the harried moments of men. In an earlier age when
the half naked ape hid in dark caves clutching his heavy, ominous stick, already uttering the
guttural beginnings of an insatiable desire, the mountain lay beneath the long fields of ice
waiting patiently for the days to grow long and warm, for the ice to retreat, for the flowers to
return again to the meadows. In the chill summer breeze that blows over the ridge today there is
still a remembrance of long ages that knew only ice. One day the ice will again grow restless on
the mountain and crawl back down into the valley homes of the busy, grunting machines. Only
the enduring silence will remain.

15
Over the long winter, the mountain and sun will renew an ancient pact; seeds lost and preserved
in the ice will take root in the damp, fecund, finely tilled soil-the bright colours of spring will
once again play over the land, but no machines will roam the valley or tear at the mountain. The
ponderous words of humanity will be but a voiceless echo ebbing up from the deepening caverns
of time.

Even on the stillest days a gentle breeze stirs along the precipitous ridges running out from Mt.
Faith offering welcome respite from the ever present mosquito. Often I seek out the ridge, not
just to escape the pesty mosquito, but to unburden myself of some of the cares I bring up from
the valley. How easily such heavy concerns seem to waft off on the soaring breezes climbing up
from the meadows below. After sitting on the ridge for a long while I feel deeply touched being
so close to this creative well spring of life, I feel an intense restfulness I have never known in the
valley below.

After the stunning but inevitable news that, indeed, the local mill had plans extending to the very
edge of the Mt. Faith alpine, I returned again to these open ridges for solace. A question haunted
at the back of my mind and begged for an answer I couldn't give. "You old fool"' he had said,
"why do you choose to swim so constantly against the stream?" Now the Amazon on which my
friend's tiny ants drifted seemed immeasurably wide.

Sitting on the ridge my mind wanders to an even more fundamental question: considering the
kaleidoscoping patterns of existence over the boundless reaches of time, for what purpose would
one choose to resist anything? I cast my thoughts on the wind, but only the disconsolate silence
replies.

Beside me I notice a stunted alpine fir-broken, twisted, and dwarfed by its resistance to the wind
and snow, it clings relentlessly to the open ridge. Casting my own problems aside for a moment,
I wonder at the rash temerity of this stunted fir. Why should it struggle so hard to resist the wind,
to put down roots in such barren soil, to cling to life with such a desperate will? Why remain
here where its brothers have long since given their seed to the wind and left only a few dried and
broken branches to tell they were ever here?

The summer breeze stirs among the branches and straining my ear, I believe I hear a low
murmured reply. "The sun is warm in summer; the snow stores I-water for the drought; there is
soil below the rock; the view is lovely; life, of-itself, carries a joy and meaning beyond your
question." The heat of the afternoon sun draws the breath of the transpiring needles into a
ponderous, certain retort that says much but doesn't answer the longing that pries at my soul; so I
protest tauntingly. "The soil is deep in the meadow, the wind is gentle in the valley, your cousins
grow to aver 100 feet, their trunks are straight and their branches whorl in beautiful symmetries.
For what possible reason do you cling-to such an inhospitable ridge?

"My cousins do not know the full sun as I do; they see only the other trees; my vision extends to
the bluffs; a forest of flowers stretches out from this ridge every year."

Silence stretches between us again. The grass moves in the gentle breeze. A hawk soars
overhead. The air fills with the tiny pollen-seeds of the next season. Over the silence, cascading
water streams from the mountain playing a heralding paean song. The green fir needles transpire
another long, deep breath.

16
"I didn't choose to live here. Before me was the seed and the wind. The germ from which I grew
was borne here by the wind. Below the rock there was enough soil, warmth, and moisture that
my roots broke from the seed and I grew up to seek the sun. 'Grow down into the earth, reach up
to the sun' was the seeds only imperative. The rest I have learned for myself. Tree roots run
through the soil in search of richer even more secure nutrients. With my roots I cling to the rock.
Tree trunks spring up at the sun. I bend from the wind and build stunted, twisted defenses against
the winter. No, I didn't choose to live here. I wasn't offered a choice. I have but one choice. I can
squeeze from these precious moments enough joy to defy the wind, the drought, the meager
nutrients, or I can despair of the harsh winter and stinging winds, surrender my will and stand
barren and ghost- like while life tries the ridge with some more willing-form."

The sun burns down brightly overhead. My face grows flush and warm, but at my back there is a
chill edge to the breeze. There is more to be said, but I guess that perhaps this final sentence is
contained in the silence. I am absorbed by the growing silence. A whistler scurries below a rock.
Small patches of last year's snow warm and sink under the force of the summer sun. The grass
whispers the moods of the changing wind. The stone stands immutable. The day moves on, but
my thoughts are not on the movement of the day. Suddenly I shake my head and return from the
silence. The western ridge is aglow with the last, golden embers of the day. I look once more,
respectfully, to the stunted fir and turn from the mountain.

Back in the valley I needn't ask why for a while. Within me there is an imperative to reach up at
the sun to grow down into the earth. I have squeezed enough joy from the mountain. I will defy
the wind, swim against the stream to keep my view of the horizons. I will look up an old friend!

17
Chapter 4

THE BUBBLE EFFECT

_______________________________________________________________

I don't fret about TV because it is decadent or shortens your attention span or leads to murder. It
worries me because it alters perception. "TV, and the culture it anchors , masks and drowns out
the subtle and vital information contact with the real world once provided.

-Bill McKibben

This story begins on solid enough ground (wheels firmly on the road sort-of-thing). In fact, as it
begins, my two boys and I are on our way over the Blueberry-Paulsen Pass en route to our
summer hiking mecca, Kokanee Glacier Park. My youngest son is deep into one of his fanciful
tales of Rainbow Bears and Love and Bee-u-tee(he always spreads out his arms expansively
when he talks of beauty as though it has same intimate relation to the warming sun on a frosty
morning). My oldest, more down to earth son, is in a deep meditation over the last time he went
to Kokanee and learned to "glissade"-slide down the face of the glacier on the heels of one's
boots; he can hardly wait to get back up the mountain.

Everything seems quite normal and in the natural order of things. Well, there is a small problem
with the car ahead (truck actually-big tires, fancy paint job, camper on back, Manitoba plates).
Straight stretches are fine but corners are a problem. He seems to slow to a crawl for every kink
in the road. It's understandable though, I tend to grow short of breath when gazing across the vast
unbroken horizons of the prairie, so I can imagine how this flatlander must feel trying to peer
around a 90 degree curve.

Suddenly, about 100 m. ahead, I see a covey of six grouse marching single file, heads up,
directly onto the road. Whether they had just been to Arch Grousie's grand ball or had merely
made a down payment on one of the nicest nests in all of Grouseland's Sheep Creek I couldn't
tell, but they were undoubtedly fine and proud grouse-and mortally unmindful of the world
around them.

There is no on-coming traffic and I am well back from the camper. However, the driver ahead
neither brakes nor swerves. In a cloud of feathers three panic-stricken grouse head back to the
bushes; already the indifferent black earth is draining the warmth from the bodies of the other
three.

18
I'm stunned; for a moment I want to rage against the driver, but I cannot. He had no desire to hurt
the grouse or any other living thing. He was merely going home-probably listening to a sexy
voice on the radio telling him that, if he would just wipe his underarms with New Super Scent,
women would find him irresistible. The windows were rolled up and the motor humming, and he
was holding the steering wheel in his right hand and going home. I couldn't be mad at him. If the
grouse had been in the cab, he would have stopped to let them out. If the voice on the radio had
appealed for donations to the wildlife fund he might have given ten bucks.

But (still) there were angry tears wanting to fill my eyes. the whole bubble effect really bothers
me. I rolled down the window and stuck out my hand to direct the breeze against my face; I
wanted to hug a tree or jump in a lake. I wanted so much to FEEL the world around me. These
cars- no, it's not the cars; it's the forced air thermostats and domed stadiums and plastic spoons.
It's all those things which insulate us from knowing (really knowing with our lives and senses,
not just knowing about) the world around us.

I thought of the Titanic, so much in the news lately, perhaps it was the world's largest bubble.
Like many bubbles it gave the illusion of safety and comfort but produced exactly the opposite
effect. As the largest ship of its time its was supposed to be unsinkable. Eat, drink, be merry, and
let your senses grow dull for on the Titanic human existence is no longer subject to the canons of
nature-so the ill-fated passengers were told.

Perhaps what bothered me most about this whole scene with the grouse is that many times it
seems to me our whole technological view of the meaning of life is really little more than
another colossal bubble like the Titanic.

In order to keep warm and fuel our factories we build nuclear reactors that generate waste so
toxic we can't go near it for tens of thousands of years. But we believe we can just shove the
waste into a rock somewhere (in someone else's backyard) and it'll never bother us. We read of
fish kills and dead lakes but continue to believe it has little to do with us because we're going to
grow algal food tablets in sterile containers one day. Yet, there are sightings of a massive
environmental iceberg ahead.

I often wonder if the bubble doesn't keep out more than just the discomforts. Can those who have
never felt a chill really know anything of the warm inner fire that sustains them? If no tinge of
raw fear has run down one's spine can he ever guess the courage that courses through his veins?

I thought more pleasant thoughts. I remembered nights spent with friends in a small blue tent
pitched in a high alpine meadow. We all dreamed of Grizzly Bears, and when the wind changed
we sat up bug-eyed. In the morning we woke as such humble mortals, but the sun warmed our
trembling spirits. The pika called its shrill 'eek!" and scurried under a rock-it too was such a
mortal creature. We walked in the meadows and sat by the delicate, short seasoned flowers. All
of nature seemed so bountiful and filled with delight because for a moment we really felt
ourselves to be part of the whole coursing stream of life.

Heading down the hill to Castlegar I smiled, gave my boys a brief hug and decided, inscrutable
and persiflageous as it might seem to some, I'd write a story suggesting that instead of sailing off
on the technological Titanic, we might all do better learning to enjoy swimming a little more.

19
20
Chapter 5

TO LINDA

_______________________________________________________________

If could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it.

- Isadora Duncan

Standing erect, frothing white,

The wave breaks against the cliff

And washes life through the naked,

Sun drenched, pools of ebb tide.

The tide rises.

The tide falls.

The wave lashes against the reef,

Then returns timid

To spread debris laden sea foam

Over the alluvial sand.

Continents rupture and drift apart;

Mountains thrust up

And are washed down.

21
Waves beat a cadence against the shore-

Undiluted by the changing form of ages.

In warm primordial sea shelves

Matter squirms a quiet unconscious

Knowing.

Deoxyribonucleic Acids

Twine and untwine to a now living rhythm.

The tide rises.

The tide falls.

The sea teams with a budding consciousness.

From cresting waves

Anxious crowded forms spy greedily

The frontier-land niches.

Slimy green algae

Oozes out from the water.

Nucleic acids twine and untwine-

Imperfectly.

Sun and Storm stress algae into new forms.

Tenuous ferns bend in the breeze

22
And spread brown spores over green beds.

The tide rises.

The tide falls.

Huge tree ferns; Carboniferous forests.

Niches created; niches filled.

Insects.

Multicoloured flowers for winged kisses.

The pulsing sea;

The imperfect acids.

A naked ape imprints the sun

On a photographic plate,

And believes he's seen the Dawn.

Like a confused dog

In an empty rabbit hole,

Man measures his life in the broken

Moments of a ticking clock.

Never knowing the song of the sea,

Or the ancient rhythm that graces all things material

With an inner meaning.

23
One day the swelling sea will wash my last print

From the shore.

The tide will rise;

The tide will fall,

But, none will call my name over the land.

I will have forgotten the day

You gently plied the oars of a small boat

Against the crystalline waters of Slocan Lake,

And smiled so boldly back at the sun.

24
Chapter 6

A Sacred Star

________________________________________________________________

My discoveries) have satisfied me that it is possible to reach knowledge that will be of much
utility in this life; and that instead of the speculative philosophy now taught in the schools we
can find a practical one, by which, knowing the nature and behavior of fire, water, air, stars, the
heavens, and all the other bodies which surround us, as well as we now understand the different
skills of our workers, we can employ these entities for all the purposes for which they are suited,
and so make ourselves masters and possessors of nature.

-Rene'Descartes

The earth does not belong to man. Man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the
blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life. He is merely a strand in it. Whatever
he does to the web, he does to himself....Preserve the land for ALL children and love it, as God
loves us.

-Chief Seattle

Throughout the 5 billion years of earth's existence the sun has shone, bestowing its life
generating energy and warmth upon our small planet. In the primordial seas life quickened and
the diversity of life multiplied. Trees, flowering plants and animal life from starfish to humanity
slowly evolved and flourished under the sun's beneficent rays. Since the dawning of human
consciousness our ancestors have worshiped before the sun's vast power and life giving
properties.

In myth and celebrations as pervasive and diverse as the finest unit of social organization the all
embracing energy of the sun has been woven into the fundamental fabric of our cultures and
inspired our religious quests with dreams of the numinous. Beyond the limits of age, race,
gender, culture and even species creatures of every kind have sought the sun to rejuvenate, heal
and celebrate their lives.

Today, our scientific perchance for measurement, quantity and fact has done much to debunk the
essential mystery of this numinous life force. We may recognize that the sun still provides a
cornucopia of benefits; it drives the water cycles that form the foundation of agriculture, sustains
growth in forests and plantations, defines the seasons of our effort, empowers the tides and
inspires southern resorts with a profitable reason to be. But the perception of the sun today has

25
lost the earlier sense of wonder, reverence or even worshipful gratitude. We have lost the sense
of sacredness in our life-giving sun and the all-embracing natural world that existed in
civilizations prior to ours. William James has succinctly described our modern, desanctified,
technological view of nature,

Visible nature is all plasticity and indifference, a moral multiverse ... and not a moral universe.
To such a harlot we owe no allegiance; with her as a whole we can establish no moral
communion; and we are free in our dealing with her several parts to obey or to destroy and to
follow no law but that of prudence in coming to terms with such of her particular features as will
help us to our private ends".

Such grandiose pronouncements about the dominant place of humanity in the functioning of the
natural world were once considered to be mere corollaries of scientific fact. However as the
fragile protective layer of ozone continues to corrode and a more destructive/angry face of the
sun is revealed, the presumed scientific "fact" of an "indifferent" universe which humanity free
to destroy for private ends is becoming an increasingly tarnished myth.

Presented with irrefutable proof of industrial chemicals that are causing an escalating depletion
of ozone in earth's upper atmosphere which threatens the functioning of both aquatic and
terrestrial biotic communities, industrial society's first response has been to begin a desperate
search for ways to protect the ever expanding production of economic "goods" from any
profound reexamination. Yet, of all the problems confronting modern technological society, this
turning of the warm, life sustaining glow of the sun into potential rays of death most succinctly
symbolizes the fundamental and confounding error of a scientific mythology which teaches that
the intimate interlacing of value, meaning and knowledge can be sundered into separate and
isolated categories.

Ironically, knowledge of much of what is going on in the ozone layer comes from the
measurements of a science which spawned the very chemicals which are corroding it in much the
same way as US military experts are the foremost authority on human misery caused by
detonating an atomic bomb over the centre of a thriving city. It seems that, as philosopher,
writer-Ken Wilber-suggests the most valuable contributions of science are often the integrity of
some of its adherents who purse its methodology to the point of refuting its own inherent
principles. This may well be the case in the meteorology of the troposphere as well as the
epistemology of nuclear physics.

Scientists have long known of the existence of an enveloping layer of atmosphere, the
ozonosphere, which shields the earth from some of the most damaging rays of the sun. Ozone, a
molecule containing three oxygen atoms rather than the more common two, which is the oxygen
we breathe and sustains cellular respiration, has existed in a dynamic and fairly stable balance
with other gasses in the upper atmosphere since shortly after photosynthesizing plants caused the
build up of oxygen in earth's atmosphere billions of years ago. By shielding the most harmful
wavelengths of ultraviolet radiation, this thin layer of atmosphere, consisting of just a few parts
per million ozone some eleven to twenty four kilometres above the earth, has supported the
developing complexity of life in the seas and allowed the evolution of terrestrial life.

The first observations of Ozone destroying chemicals in the upper atmosphere were made in the
early 1970's. While no one knew whether or to what degree these chemicals would continue to

26
accumulate in this vulnerable layer, concerns were expressed that the catalytic nature of these
chemicals could cause considerable damage over time. It was established that increasing levels
of UV-B bands of ultraviolet radiation would lead to not just more leathered and wrinkled skin
but DNA, the most fundamental building block of life would be assaulted; disease-fighting
immune systems would be weakened; plant growth retarded and reproduction among plankton,
the foundation of the sea's ecosystems inhibited. In sharp contrast to the teachings of
anthropocentric value systems, human populations would not be exempted from this arrogant
disregard for the integrity of Mother Earth. For every one percent of ozone thinning there is a
two percent increase in skin cancer and the development of cataracts. Indeed skin cancer,
primarily a disease of the elderly, is increasingly common among younger people. Since 1935
the deadly melanoma cancer has increased by 1500 percent. The highest rate of increase is
among young people.

Once thought to epitomize industry's slogan of "A Better World Through Chemistry",
chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) provided an effective heat transfer for refrigerators and air
conditioners, propelled aerosol sprays, cleaned electronic contact points, sterilized medical
equipment and puffed up Styrofoam. Most beneficently they were nontoxic to humans,
nonflammable and stable. Convincing governments and industry of problems with such a
profitable and multifaceted chemical was exceedingly difficult. For over a decade researchers
sought to scientifically demonstrate the mechanism for ozone destruction while continuing to
monitor the increasing virility of the sun's deadly rays. Then in 1985, despite the banning of
CFCs in aerosol cans, two British scientists measured an "ozone hole" developing over the
continent of Antarctica. By 1987 ozone had virtually disappeared in the centre of the hole and
plummeted by 50 percent over an area the size of the United States. In 1988 researchers from the
American National Aeronautics and Space Administration published atmospheric measurements
indicating that ozone depletion was occurring at 2-3 times the expected rate. As it takes between
20 and 50 years for CFCs to reach the Ozonosphere, even if the production of all ozone eating
chemicals stopped today their effects would continue for at least a century.

The deterioration of the protective ozone layer as well as the global environmental degradation
did not just suddenly occur nor is it the isolated effect of engineering gone wrong. It is, most
pervasively, the direct result of a worldview, a paradigm, an essential myth, which not only
allows but promotes the manipulation and exploitation of the entire natural world for one
species: HUMANITY.

If this crumbling of some of life's most important support systems is just an aberrant and easily
adjusted side effect of modern technology, how asks feminist, Sandra Harding, can the uses

of science to create ecological disaster, support militarism, turn human labour into physically and
mentally mutilating work, develop ways of controlling 'others' -the colonized, the women, the
poor- be just misuses of applied science? Or does this kind of conceptualization of the character
and purposes of experimental method ensure that what is called bad science...will be...science as
usual?".

Scholar and advocate of a more people/environment science, Vandanta Shiva suggests a most
fitting retort to the question:

27
The controlled experiment and the laboratory are a central element of the methodology of
reductionist science. The object to study is arbitrarily isolated from its natural surroundings, from
its relationship with other objects and the observer. The context (the value framework) so
provided determines what properties are perceived, and leads to a particular set of beliefs. The
Baconian program of domination over nature was centrally based on the controlled experiment
which was formulated and conceived in the language and metaphor of rape, torture and
inquisition. It was assumed that the truth of nature was more accessible through violence, and it
was recognized that this truth is a basis of power...(thus) The removal of animistic, organic
assumptions about the cosmos constituted the death of nature-the most far-reaching effect of the
scientific revolution."

Historian of science, Morris Berman suggests that the most important epistemology of science
lies, not in its analytical or verificationist methodology, but in the modes of knowing which it has
chosen to ignore or decry. For Berman even a slight shift in the permitted foundations of our
knowing may produce profound changes in our perception of fact and the way we live our lives.
With all the factual confidence nuclear physicists place in the revelations flowing from the
collisions of high energy particles, Berman asserts:

What do I know in my heart, then? I know that in some relational sense, everything is alive; that
non-cognitive knowing, is indeed knowing; that societies, like human beings, are organic, and
the attempt to engineer either is destructive; and finally, that we are living on a dying planet, and
that without some radical shift in our politics and consciousness, our children's generation is
probably going to witness the planet's last days.

Technology, according to philosopher, Martin Heidigger, is not just a simple tool like the hoe in
the hand of a farmer, it is most fundamentally a statement about the way we believe things are.
Technology, he suggests, will continue to be employed in the ruthless conquest and degradation
of Nature for as long as modern humanity perceives no inherent worth in Nature; seeing it as raw
material, valuable only insofar as it contributes to the enhancement of human power.

Modern technological society finds the idea of any sense of sacredness in the natural world to be
incomprehensible when viewed in the light of scientific determinism and any suggestion of a
need to re-experience myths of a living and animate universe just so much nonsense. However,
the ever growing hole in the ozonosphere is only one of a number of reasons to reconsider our
most fundamental assumptions about the nature of our world and our relation to it.

The credibility of science to describe the function of the natural world and excise value from our
considerations of truth rests on the commonly held belief that science is the most absolute of
pursuits. We believe we are the culmination of a historical process whereby with a few
adjustments we will have penetrated to an absolute and unalterable objective description of a
mathematically bounded universe. However, historically, science has been a most volatile
pursuit. The most fundamental "truths" are regularly thrown out by the introduction of new
discoveries. Its theories are rewritten as much by philosophical insight as by the revelations of
the microscope or particle accelerator. Ultimately the penetrating wisdom of science is little
more than an epistemological slight of hand. Knowledge is equated with analytical thought.
Scientists publish articles on the intricate complexity of some isolated event like the various
pathways of cellular metabolism and marvel at the profound depths of understanding they have
attained. Humanity then willingly turns a blind eye to the fact that even the much studied and

28
lowly Drosophila, fruit fly, has long ago-without splitting an atom or even cracking a book-
comprehended and mastered all the vast and miraculous details of cellular respiration and great-
great deal more. For genetic researcher and science popularizer, David Suzuki, research on this
much studied fruit fly should inspire us with a reverence for the vast complexity of nature rather
than reinforce our arrogance. After tens of thousands of research hours and billions of dollars of
research money scientists have learned to clone fly cells, remove and insert genes, grow 12 legs
in the place of the normal 6 and sprout a leg in the place of a mouth but they are left to wonder
how this simple fly survives winter or how the fly egg goes about the awesome task of
transforming itself into a larva and later pupa. They can cause wings to bud from an eye socket
yet there is little understanding of how this uneducated fly actually senses and responds to its
environment.

My wife suffers from a particularly devastating illness. I remember most vividly the dismay I
experience when reading an article in a medical journal that a particular treatment was being
abandoned because those being treated showed little more improvement than another group
being given only a placebo. It was a matter of no significance that the placebo group experienced
considerable relief when compared to those received no attention at all. The improvements were
real and documented but insignificant because they had not been induced by a medical treatment.
No thought was given to why the health of the "control" group improved. It seems anyone
blessed with the slightest sprig of curiosity would want to know more about the potential and
incredible inherent wisdom that lies behind these "spontaneous" cases of self-healing. Can it be
that self-healing is simply not profitable and therefore not funded? Or, as Berman suggests, do
our epistemological blinders prevent us from seeing the wisdom of being that exists outside of
analytical thought?

Perhaps in this alliterate age of flash by, advertised reality we need a large, boldly lettered
billboard beside the highway to remind us of our true wisdom. "Genes-R-Us" it would proclaim
and the more expansive subtitle might suggest "We are all we are". While all the hereditary code
necessary for a human individual exists on 46 slender strands of DNA, this simple code of triplet
nucleotides contains a vast amount of information. Stretched end to end in a single strand, the
DNA from the cells of a single human being would reach to the moon and back roughly a million
times. And vast as that information may be, it must be considered in the context of the larger
message of all living humans; beyond that it extends to all humans that have lived and spreads
out from there to encompass the whole spectrum of life's development. Deeply embedded and
intermeshed in this orgasmic message is also all the natural environment which has nourished
and co-evolved with the ever-generative budding of life since the days when our adolescent sun
first shone on the conspiring acids. The General Systems Theory concept of a whole system
having emergent properties greater than and not predictable from the sum of its parts challenges
the most fundamental premise of reductionist science. Simple table salt, Sodium Chloride,
obviously has properties different from just the additive result of a Sodium and Chloride atom. A
cell has properties and contextual meanings different from, more complex and interrelated than
the varying arrangements of organic molecules.

Clearly a human being has qualities immeasurably different from an aggregation of cells or co-
operative functioning of a number of vital organs. Cannot we then surmise that life, the
intermeshed, interdependent, interactive sum of all of our creative earth, has many, interactive
meanings and values and needs outside the appetite of one greedy species or individual? AND if
we grant that, can we even think to attempt to describe the emergent properties of such a vast
system without some acknowledgment of the felt experience of the sacred?
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Although adaptations of Darwin's theory of natural selection are popularly believed to account
for the evolution of the vast diversity of life on earth, scientific opinion is deeply divided; being
unable to agree on even some of the most basic principles of form and change. Despite all this
scientific uncertainty, life has come a long way since the first primitive amino acids sloshed
around in the primordial tides.

Out of a chaotic mixture of wind and tide and sun and "soups" of unknowing bits of molecular
magic, selectively permeable membranes somehow formed around inanimate but self-replicating
hints of the life to come. Immensely complex metabolic pathways evolved. With this
revolutionary new idea of eating and directing the synthesis of new material came also the first
longing for life as an enduring form. Organelles formed and the miraculous concept of
cooperation sprung into being. Of all the changes wrought by evolving life this often skipped
over or ignored concept is by far the most profound. The parts exist and have mean because of
the functioning of the whole. There is here, even at these earliest beginnings of life, a
wondrously inherent creativity and wisdom which we may live and celebrate and dimly
appreciate, but our analytical minds simply cannot understand the vast complexity and (yes)
numinosity of its essential mystery.

I have been around so long now that my first college transcripts contain a .5 unit credit for the
study of the slide rule-a calibrated stick used in what would today be considered a most primitive
scientific calculator. By the time I returned to university for the fourth time I had begrudgingly
moved up to an already outmoded but inexpensive 128K Apple IIe computer. It couldn't hold
more than a few pages of text per file, barely functioned as a spreadsheet and ran a spell checker
so slowly I did better thumbing the pages of a rather monstrous Webster's, but without it I could
never have kept the pace for my last three years of academic life. Today I run a 486 DX2 with
8megs of RAM- (even the dinosaurs made some adaptations before they died out entirely). Now
suppose that in romantic confusion I felt I simply could not give up the old IIe so I converted all
of "Windows 95" onto 5 1/2" floppies and loaded them into the old Apple. I wouldn't compute. It
doesn't have the memory or processing power to do the job. Having stumbled and sputtered over
trying to load a few Kilo bytes of dictionary, the old Apple would be entirely confounded with
the many megabytes it takes to load the new windows. Continuing to force the programs on it
would soon lead to exhaustion and collapse. Machine language would, of course be utterly
unintelligible in the crude calibrations of the old stick-though it too served me well enough in a
distant era.

Thinking of this short history of calculation as metaphor for human understanding of the Natural
world, in its most exalted sense analytical knowledge may be compared to the IIe trying to load
the windows of nature. We simply don't have the hardware to run or even comprehend the vast
complexity of Nature's program. Compared to the workings of Nature, the descriptions of
humanity could be more accurately compared to the coarse estimations of the slide rule. We may
make some crude measurements and do some rough calculations, but we simply are not
calibrated to understand a program written in a language beyond our ability to even imagine. As
Heisenberg, one of the principle architects of quantum physics once said, "We do not have a
science of nature, we have a science of our descriptions of nature."

In the chapter Perception of Place in Earth, Self and Community I suggest that humanity's place
in the natural world is, perhaps, most accurately compare to the relation between the fetus and
womb. If the fetus deludedly comes to manipulate the womb as separate and exploitable other

30
then both the mother and fetus are in mortal danger. How well I remember those magical days of
pregnancy when my wife would come to me aglow with the pleasures of motherhood and ask me
to put my hand over her belly to feel with joy the restless movements of the budding life within.
Clearly we are Nature's child. In her we have been conceived, by her nourishing we live and
grow. Denying that sacredness has any meaning in the reality of objective fact, science suggests
that nature is a moral nullity; thus, blessed by superior intelligence, we can exploit and attack
her. Such delusions are as existentially pathological as they are environmentally suicidal. While
science has opened our eyes to the power locked in the atom, it has so clouded our vision that we
now regularly confuse the achievement of technical tasks with the experience of value.

Although I have been severely critical of the mythology of science, I am not asserting that we
should abandon the entire epistemology of science and adopt wholesale the methods and myths
of the past. Science served humanity well in dislodging the oppressive power of the church and
in opening our vision to new dimensions of understanding. The problem is that what is advanced
as an epistemology is, in fact and most pervasively, a mythology in need of careful
reexamination. The growing hole in earth's atmosphere is only the most recent and obvious
reason to reevaluate. As historian Sherwood Taylor suggests:

The transmutation of metals, has now been realized by science, and the alchemical vessel is the
uranium pile. Its success has had precisely the result that the alchemists feared and guarded
against, the placing of gigantic power in the hands of those who have not been fitted by spiritual
training to receive it. If science, philosophy, and religion had remained associated as they were in
alchemy, we might not today be confronted with this fearful problem".

While science describes the cause of the deadly rays beaming down on our Earth as the action of
catalytic molecules in the upper atmosphere, the following excerpt from an Iroquois address to
the UN Conference on Indigenous Peoples more accurately describes the cause of deteriorations
around the globe as well in the atmospheric gases:

The original instructions direct that we who walk about on Earth are to express a great respect,
an affection and gratitude toward all the spirits which create and support Life... When people
cease to respect and express gratitude for these many things, then all life will be destroyed and
human life on this planet will come to an end.

Rather than the splitting of the atom into ephemeral bits, the most penetrating and significant
insight of the western world may have been suggested by Dostoeysky over 100 years ago when
he pondered "What is hell, but the inability to love". While this love is commonly assumed to be
a love confined to human species, it rises to its full and most profound significance when applied
to the whole of our living Earth and creative universe. We pay a high price, indeed, imaging our
earth and ourselves to be inert bits of matter stuck together by a highly improbable but
indifferent accident. Poet, agriculturist, novelist and philosopher, Wendell Berry traces love of
the living land to a sense of the sacred without which our denuded spirits:

seem more and more to comfort themselves by buying things. No longer in need of the exalted
drama of grief and joy, they feed now on little shocks of greed, scandal and violence".

Leon Kass, in his intriguing and carefully weighed book, Toward a More Natural Science, traces
the interrelatedness of love for the natural world and respect for the inhering worth of the self:

31
(A natural science or healthy epistemology would) reawaken not only wonder and admiring
delight at the given world, but also respect, awe, and gratitude: respect for the powers of living
nature, awe before the mysteries of living nature, and gratitude for the unmerited-and, in the face
of evolution, simply miraculous-privilege of our being here to experience wonder and delight,
respect and awe. Finally these attitudes and sentiments toward nature will nurture a truer self-
respect, no longer one we simply manufacture for ourselves, but one that is ours by nature.

Though it is possible to imagine a more "natural" science, no epistemology of knowledge by

thought-however adjusted-will tell us even close to all we need to know about nature, or here
more specifically our Sun. The creative and original dancer, Isadora Duncan once wrote "If I
could tell you what I meant, I wouldn't have to dance it". Succinctly implied here is the argument
that matters of value and existence have inherent meanings beyond the description of analytical
thought. To attempt to describe them by analysis alone would so limit their possible meanings
that the description would come out false. Facets of reality which art (music, painting, drama,
dance, etc.) presents for incorporation into our field of knowing vastly deepens our experience
and provides new contexts for the perception of fact. All descriptions of value and existence
which approach understanding must contain the living experience of self-being a part of all I
know and paradoxically embrace the essential mystery beyound all our knowing.

Mythological speech is the attempt to convey with images and allegories something that can't be
said without them. Thus the many facetted explanations of myth and metaphor which speak of a
living truth infused with meaning and mystery, rather than outmoded epistemologies, must-in
fact-be recognized as the foundations of any comprehensive knowing.

All this attention to epistemology has been more than academic pedantry. How we know
determines on one level our allowed perception of an external reality, but on another equally
important level how we know also casts the reflective surface on which we see our own image
mirrored. If as a European clergymen of the 17th century I believed that celebrating the Great
Mother Goddess, which infused all of life and matter with a sense of the sacred, was really just
the action of demon possessed witches incanting evil into the realm of our social organization,
then by reflection I would see myself, not as mass murderer, but as defender of all that is good
and righteous as I helped ignite the flames which would eliminate millions of these women for
the sin of dancing to a tune unsanctioned by the church. More than just eliminating the theology
of earth based religions, the flames of these human torches would excise the very basis of an
ecological awareness from western consciousness. Matter would be separated from spirit and
decreed to be dead, inert. Released from the perceived constraints of a moral relation to the
natural world, humanity is free to see animals, plants and indigenous populations that western
civilization was not exploiting/developing as waste waiting for the transforming hand of
technology.

Today we believe the mysteries of the sun have been explained by our scientific instrumentation.
The sun is so many miles across and composed of so much helium and hydrogen. Nuclear fusion
fires the solar furnace. We measure a great deal but fail to comprehend the wondrous
complexity, the potent mystery, of our star. Thinking of the ever-growing hole in the
Ozonosphere, I am again haunted by the words of the Iroquois, "When people cease to respect
and express gratitude...life will be destroyed..." And the parallel consequence in human relations
is suggested in Wendell Berry's assertion that, stripped of this source of outwardly expressed
respect and gratitude, we-by reflection-become epistemologically stripped of our own inherent

32
worth and dignity finding what little meaning we can in "...little shocks of greed, scandal and
violence".

Perhaps if we were to re-learn the ancient dances of seasonal celebration (and dance them), if we
revitalized in our hearts the mythologies of our luminary radiance, if we learned once again to
bask in the ancient traditions of a life-givingly radiant orb, we would not only perceive new
dimensions to the sun, but-most importantly-we would see ourselves and our relation to the
natural world in a new light. We would see that living within the limits of the life-sustaining flow
of solar energy and learning to dance a step in harmony with the natural rhythms of a living earth
is not the sentence of a resource strapped environment. It is release (at last) from the struggle to
dominate and permission to be. Permitted to dance with the joy of existence, we need no longer
conspire to own what we can never possess. Having accepted a living, vital world as the grounds
of our beingness, we may open our hearts to the love so recommended by Dostoeysky and
experience the respect admonished by the Iroquois. Production and efficiency would, at last, take
second seat to joy and authencity.

Despite a festering disdain for the environmental activism we shared some 12 years ago, an old
friend who has become a very successful businessmen stopped by to visit me recently. After a
few feeble attempts at pleasant conversation, he turned to me with curled lip to proclaim
emphatically, "Profit is not a four letter word; you know!" Well I do agree; profit, and all he
implied by his sneered proclamation, is not a four-letter word-it is, most fundamentally, the
dogma of the religion of consumption. It is a way of rephrasing the consumptive values of the
17th century in a slightly altered rhetoric. Unfortunately for my friends argument and our
relationship, I responded to his assertion-not with analysis-but with the following allegory in
which he all-to-readily recognized a correspondence between some of the characters and persons
he knew well.

Suppose a person becomes very good at making a profit-so good that the company in which he
holds a large financial investment corners the market on the manufacture of a chemical which is
indispensable to the function of refrigerating machines and bubbling Styrofoam and cleaning
electrical contacts. Suppose the income from this investment makes him more money in a year
than I will accumulate in a lifetime. But suppose also he has three most beautiful and fair young
daughters. Now suppose the chemical from which he makes such a large profit floats up into the
upper atmosphere. Once in this atmosphere it begins to disable the other chemicals in this layer
which filter the most harmful rays of the Sun before they reach the earth. And, as a result,
people-more particularly his daughters-who are of a light complexion begin to get cancers all
over their exposed skin. They become scarred from repeated treatments. Some die from late
diagnosis or succumb to the more virulent-but still sun induced-cancers. What then can we say of
the value of all that profit? Or should be paraphrase an ancient wisdom and say, "What does it
benefit anyone to gain a great deal of profit but lose one's own skin?

My friend made no comment, but left abruptly after the tale.

Instead of the myth of profit as measure of value and domination as the meaning of our actions
we could chose to live by a myth of participation and celebration like the following Japanese tale
of the creation of the world:

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The miraculous being of living things began when Izanagi, parent of the world bathed his left
eye in a clear mountain stream. Sparkling with light, Amaterasu, the great Sun-Goddess rose
from the water as the sun rises in the east illuminating the sky with its radiance. Rejoicing in this
newly formed luminosity, Izanagi took a necklace of jewels to place around the neck of this
radiant goddess and said "Rule thou over the Plains of High Heaven". Amaterasu thus became
the source of all life and light. The glory of her being continues to warm and comfort all
humankind and inspires a sense of the sacred in all humans to this day.

This Japanese creation myth is not a statement of positivist fact. It is a metaphor about the inner
meaning things every bit as important, real and meaningful as the analysis of data coming from
accelerated atomic bits or cloud chambers.

Gregory Bateson contrasts the following two syllogisms as a way of seeing some of the
important differences between analytical and metaphorical thinking.

Analytical syllogism (equation of subjects)

Men die.

Socrates is a man.

Socrates will die.-

Metaphorical syllogism (equation of predicates)

Grass dies,

Men die.

Men are Grass

According to Bateson, until 100,000 years ago there was only the equation of predicates and

still organisms got along all right. They managed to organize themselves in their evolution. They
managed to organize themselves in their embryology to have two eyes, one on each side of a
nose. So there were shared predicates between horse and humanity, which zoologists today call
homology. And it became evident that metaphor was not just pretty poetry, it was not either good
or bad logic, but was in fact the logic upon which the biological world had been built, the main
characteristic and organizing glue of this world of mental process".

If we listened more carefully to the wisdom of living myth such as this Japanese tale, and
responded to our kinship with all living things expressed in the Men are grass metaphor, the
upper atmosphere would not be crumbling and we would not see the sun which purifies our
water, cleans and renews the air we breathe, builds rain clouds, grows our crops and inspires our
poets as a Death Star. We would experience, celebrate and use the sustaining flow of solar
power, like all other beings, as the most productive force in both our private and social lives. We
would immediately recognize the value of this creative energy which sparked the evolution of
life and arrives free on every doorstep every day. In contrast to resources that are mined, bottled

34
and owned by a few large corporations, solar power neither spills nor leaks nor concentrates
power in the hands of a few of the world's most greedy. And, as Jacques Yves Cousteau points
out, "It does nothing more to the airspaces above our cities than brighten them". Our Cartesian
blinders would be removed and we would see clearly the wisdom of Chief Seattle and know that
our sun is, in deed, a most sacred star.

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Chapter 7

A WAR STORY

_______________________________________________________________

Earth has heard too long of battle, heard the trumpet's voice too long.

Hail with song that glorious era, when the sword shall gather rust, and the helmet, lance and
falcon sleep at last in silent dust.

-Adin Ballou

March 1975, the Vietnam War came to a sudden and dramatic end. The bodies were brought
home and the books closed on an era. A US weary with war turned its attention momentarily
aside to consider some of the other concerns which pressed in upon it. For me the final chapter
was still a few years off.

Finally, in the Fall of 1977, Jimmy Carter granted a general amnesty to Vietnam war resisters.
After ten years, I could once more go home to visit my family. While driving south through the
deserts of Nevada, memories drifted across my thoughts like itinerant tumbleweed before a
restless wind. I thought of the notice still pinned to my wall; "Greetings", it begins. But they
didn't mean greetings as in "Seasons Greetings," and they quickly threw off the cordial mask.
"You are hereby ordered to report for induction." A dark line slashes across the address. In the
margin a short note suggests, "Moved-try Roseville". But the motherly hand which scribbled the
hesitant message well knew I wasn't in Roseville. Some months before, I drove into her yard, all
my possessions in the back seat of the Volkswagen, to break as gently as possible the bonds of
family and place before heading off to a new land of which I knew little. Indeed, I knew nothing
of Canada.

Borne on the effusive dreams of a youthful idealism, I was heading north. "If I must hover before
a smudgy fire and work raw caribou skin with my teeth, then-at least-I shall live out my days in
peace," I penned a last romantic note to a friend.

Vancouver:-paved roads, high rise office towers, and shopping malls; so much for the chimerical
dreams of youth. The resistance issued their standard warning, "Get an umbrella!" and put me up
with the West Vancouver family of Dr. Ansom McKim, physician by profession and philosopher
by inclination. No son returning home after years abroad would have been welcomed with more
generosity and warmth than I received from this Unitarian family. Having settled into my room
overlooking Vancouver harbour, I usually rose early to go in search of the job I needed before

36
applying for immigrant status. However, one can withstand only a limited number of rejections
in a day, so-most days-I returned shortly after noon to read and reflect in the large reading room.
I pondered my way through the collected works of Bertrand Russell, marveled at Orwell's
account of the Spanish Civil War, and developed an interest in ontological speculation which
delighted the doctor's disputatious hankerings. But these were merely distractions from the one
question brooding across all my thoughts-how had I come to this place?

Only a short year before I had been at the draft board office inquiring about how soon I could be
in the Army. For two weeks my college roommate and I lived on noodles and butter; then we ran
out of butter. After that I didn't much care what else the Army might do with my body, as long as
they fed it three times a day. "Sorry, we won't be sending another group of draftees for six
weeks," the secretary politely replied. Six weeks! if the flesh still clung to my bones in four
weeks I'd be back working for the forest service.

Could I have changed so much in a year? Is human nature so inconsistent that a person can spend
20 years becoming one thing, then in his 21st year become something entirely different? The
thought hung over me like a dark cloud. My interviews went badly; I returned early to lie on my
bed and think. I began to realize the change hadn't came so suddenly. Even as a young adolescent
I could remember standing in an auditorium listening to a crowd singing wholeheartedly how
"amid the rockets' red glare and bombs bursting in air" the flag was so gallantly streaming.
Looking around at all the blithe faces I realized no one thought or cared much for the bodies
strewn dead and motionless at the foot of this much sung pole.

Nevertheless, for twenty years I lived a most unexceptional life. I dressed like most of my peers,
arrived promptly for appointments, and (except for occasional bouts of college hooliganism) was
a generally law abiding citizen. I didn't like the war but would have done "my duty" if called on.
But that was changing dramatically. One day, late in the Spring of 1967, I sat in the college
library casually thumbing a book of verse when it fell open to a poem by Thomas Hardy called
The Man He Killed. After reading the poem, I put down the book stunned. Something I had
occasionally surmised but never considered jumped out land grabbed me. There, in front of me,
was the essential injustice of war. It wasn't that people die or that all standards of human decency
are chucked out the window; the real injustice is that in war, a gun is put in your hand and you
are asked to go out and kill someone you have absolutely nothing against. In a bar you would
have bought him a drink and toasted to friendship. I put down the book and went home to think.

That night I had a dream that would radically change my life. In the dream a scorching sun burns
through the dust of an intense battle and blazes muddy trails of sweat down the faces of men too
intent on the moment to be aware of either the heat or the probable fate that awaits them. The
battle holds for some time. Long whistling sounds streak across the horizon, then-boom! Small
pieces of lead tear whirring holes through the air. The veterans know how not to hear the muffled
moan of lead entering flesh. In a shallow trench a young soldier hovers, then hurriedly writhes to
the top of the burm to fire several bursts from an automatic weapon. Life still dimly moves
though the body of his companion, but the ponderous movements and resignation in his eyes
make it clear he will neither rush forward with the advance nor heed the call to retreat.

A balance of terror has held for some time. Each side has suffered losses but holds its ground.
Yet somewhere, from a safe distance, someone has read a strategic advantage in the bloods news
from the front. A general decisively moves a small piece on the board before him and the sound

37
of advance echoes through the trenches. Wisdom (or a limited form of it) is often generous to
those living near death. And, in the dry timorous fear of the young soldier's eye it is clear he
knows well the meaning of the advance. He hesitates, looks to his buddy around whom the
greedy flies have already begun to gather. A tremor shakes his body as he fastens his bayonet to
the end of his gun. The enemy is not far off; there may not be time to reload. Already some of his
compatriots are rising humpbacked from their trenches. He forces courage into abandon and
springs forward stabbing angrily at the dense bush as he goes. The bush parts slightly as he
strains forward over the uneven, parched earth. Automatic weapons rattle like popcorn in hot oil,
and the booming of larger weapons draws near to a cadence with his heartbeat. He stumbles
along, trance-like, amid the heat and noise.

I am now the soldier. Only a singular "I" looks mounts a sweeping ridge. Breaking over the crest,
an enemy soldier appears suddenly a few paces off. The enemy and I stand frozen for a moment,
but I lunge first. Gasping, choking for the air that won't come he falls back. Frothing, bright
blood pulses up from between the punctured ribs. Then as the blood ceases to flow up so boldly
along the knife, a low guttural sound inexorably draws my attention down to the fallen soldier.
The hands are the hands of youth; the uniform bears few medals. My attention wanders
distractedly over the body, then freezes in abject terror. There helplessly yielding to the contorted
mask of death is the face of my closest friend. I had never asked just who I was supposed to kill-
only some faceless enemy. I break into uncontrollable tears and sob out broken fragments of
condolences. The precious blood sinks into the drought-stricken land and makes no reply.

I woke from the dream, tears streaming down my cheek. For days I tried to talk to my friend, but
he could never understand. I contacted a Quaker group that counseled for draft resistance. My
parents were religious objectors to war, perhaps I could still get Conscientious Objector status.
However, there were hitches in that idea-religious and otherwise. COs are required to patch up
bodies so they can go back and fight. I couldn't do that-it'd only be fueling the fire I now wished
to extinguish. That summer I took a job on the railway. One day at lunch I told some of my
fellow workers that it seemed ridiculous to conscript labour first and leave the profits of war to
the wealthy. For that remark I was nearly fired. I needed to so something soon. My hearing is
poor in my left ear but certainly not poor enough for a deferment. Finally an irate friend of the
family blurted at me, "If you don't like it here, you should dam well go somewhere else." I knew
what I would do right then.

I had heard Canada was welcoming "peace loving" citizens into the country; the problem for me
was time. Already I had been for a first physical. The overgrown officer with the cigar smiled as
he said, "See ya soon!" Home from the induction centre, I worked feverishly. I took the
Volkswagen for much needed repairs, gave away an abused record collection, and packed the
rest of my meager possessions into a couple of boxes. Anxiously I called a girlfriend for what I
believed was a last visit (we've been married for 27 years now).

Barely out of California the red generator light began to flicker off and on. By Medford, Oregon
the light was on steady and the engine was beginning to miss. My poor vehicle, unused to abuse,
responded marvelously to a frustrated thump on the generator. By the time I reached Eugene, I
was stopping every 10 miles to apply the proper stimulus to the rear end. A few miles north of
Portland the exhausted bug crawled to the side of the road and refused to budge. I turned nuts,
wiggled wires, and cast spells to no avail. Just as I was about to hike back to town to arrange for
an expensive road call, a highway patrolman pulled in behind me. I'm paranoid at the best of

38
times; someone had informed on me, for sure. Why'd I have such a loud voice? Someone
probably overheard me in the college lounge. Why couldn't I do even one important thing
quietly? Speaking to that draftee at the induction centre was absolutely insane. I shuddered and
faked a smile. "What's the problem?" (at least he didn't ask for my draft card straight off).
"Uh...oh ... nothing," I stammered. Then why was I parked beside the freeway? "Well ... oh ... oh,
yea, my ... my generator quit working." "Do ya have a 12 millimetre wrench? It's probably just
your brushes. My son has a car just like this. Owning a Volkswagen means either becoming a
mechanic or going broke," he beamed back at me. "There that should get ya to Seattle," he
assured. And beyond, I hoped desperately. I took a deep breath and uttered a stream of
gratitudes.

The border crossing was tedious, but in the end my brightly beaming, college educated shave
won the day. Once over the initial shock of not finding any Eskimos, Vancouver was utterly
delightful. I ran down the darkest paths of Stanley Park shouting at the trees, "I'm free, I'm free,
I'm free!" I wrote letters home with small Canadian flags pinned to the upper right-hand margins.
Below the flags I inscribed a jestful but taunting, "From the land of the free, and the brave
enough to go there." It was December 1967.

For eight more long years the war dragged on. Occasionally I would hear from friends who came
home disillusioned. Sometimes they -would mention those who in some inscrutable way would
never be the same; sometimes they gave the names of those who would never come home.
Jimmy Carter closed the final chapter on a war that defined a generation. June 1978 I returned to
the land of my childhood as a stranger. I no longer asked "why me?" The war presented only one
further question I couldn't answer, "Why them?" Why does a man take up a gun to kill someone
who has done him no harm? Or, why does he risk his life for a fight in which he has no stake?

39
Chapter 8

STONE, ICE AND STORM

______________________________________________________________

The Mountaintop offers different information- there some grand order seems both manifest and
enormous, far larger than the purely human world.

-Bill McKibben

In the parking lot we struggle against inertia and pile heavy awkward packs into the back of the
truck. We smile broadly, exchange warm greetings, and dive down immediately into stories of
past hikes. Tales of sun and ice, of gentle meadows and violent storms, of small fragile flowers
and immense spires of stone urge us on to the trail ahead.

But even in the parking lot, in quiet moments, between stories, our eyes turn to the weather. We
reassure each other. "There has to be more than a mere two weeks to summer. The weatherman
has been wrong before." We pat each other on the back and climb into the truck. Even then we
wonder. Will we really hide behind a screen of PABA and wear dark lenses over our eyes to
protect us from the twice strong sun beaming down through a thinning atmosphere and reflecting
up from the mirroring ice? Or, will our bodies run with small tremors of cold as we huddle over a
smudgy fire and try to guess the next turn of the wind?

Seven o'clock that evening four of the most determined members of our small mountaineering
club arrive at the end of Hoder Creek Road-the beginning of the Trail into the Gwillim Lakes
basin of British Columbia's newly created Valhalla Wilderness Park. Behind us small streams
come together and pool their strength as they run from the mountain. Mosquitoes fly out from
the shadows. We slap at our bodies and watch the fading light on the tops of the peaks. Our
imaginations play on the mountain. We carve human forms in the rock. A stone lion towers over
the ridge ahead and guards the entrance to an enchanted land. Below the peaks, snow still clings
to small concave hollows resting just above the tree line. We remember the gigantic sheet of ice
which once gouged out the valley floor, then melted down slowly, leaving only the headwall
ahead to mark the end of an age. A deepening awe settles over us as we pitch small tents to wait
the morning.

A few drops of rain fall in the night, but by 4:30 the next morning the sun is already playing a
bright promise across the top of the western peaks. The mosquitoes compel us to break camp
quickly and consume a hurried cup of Java. Linda, newest member of the club, raises a few
eyebrows when she swings the heaviest pack of all onto her back before striking out for the head

40
of the trail. The trail crosses a small stream and continues a short distance into the bush before it
disappears into a tangle of undergrowth. From there on a broken limb or trampled weed indicates
the passing of other hikers, but occasional patches of light through the bush and the knowledge
that we must go "up" is our only real guide. Balancing our way along a fallen tree provides relief
from forcing our feet through the tangle. On the open steep slopes we test each step and listen
intently. "Rock!" A warning is shouted hurriedly-we look quickly up and dash to one side. The
day warms. The way ahead steepens. We shed layers of clothing and rest frequently. Still, the
sweat forms heavy beads on our foreheads.

It takes two hours to gain the headwall. From the bottom it looked a long way up. However, the
effort of the climb quickly dims behind the euphoria of being on top. Drinnon Lake is tucked in
close behind the headwall. A small stream flows out a few gentle yards from the lake, then
cascades wildly over the edge. Above, the clouds are beginning to mass and boil. Between the
clouds the sun shines down warmly on the meadow ahead. The hiking becomes easy and we
break into long swinging strides. Covering ground quickly, we pass two more small lakes.
Behind the lakes, crumbled slopes of talus sweep up to the foot of immense rock bluffs.

We stop on a ridge and look across to the Gwillim lakes basin. With our fingers we draw lines
across the land and pick a route through the drainage below. Once off the ridge we are forced to
backtrack twice, but we keep moving just slightly west of north. A broken splintered tree
reminds us that nature is not always gentle in this land of delicate flowers. We scramble up one
last ridge. Ahead the land lies evenly divided between grass and water. Over the knolls the lush
green grass is broken by the furry grey heads of Western Anemone and occasional large stones
left by the retreating ice. Grass and water conspire together in intricate, almost conscious design.

We seek higher ground and pick our way over soggy bridges. The mosquitoes are delighted and
send out a series of welcoming parties. At the outflow to lower Gwillim Lake we find a dry flat
spot with wood for a fire nearby. The weather becomes ominous, and we pitch our tents quickly
to beat the rain. The rain holds for a time. Linda finds a small pond which drains only the
warmer surface water form the lake. It is suitable for the Alpine Two Stroke (one stroke out and
one stroke back). Above 6500 feet we call that swimming. Bruno, who planned his holidays for
this hike, puts his foot in the lake and decides a hasty sponge bath will serve his purposes just
fine.

After dinner the storm front draws closer. The smoke moves in circles about the fire. There is
just time for a short fireside tale before the first smattering drops of rain begin to fall. We run for
the tents before great crashes of thunder join the flashing light and pouring rain. The velocity of
the rain increases twofold and reaches a crescendo against the roof of the tent. Lightning strobes
the tent walls into a blue translucency. A rarely seen ball of lightning runs along the northern
ridge. The small dome overhead shifts first east then west. The wind calms for a moment, then
the tent suddenly begins to move in from all sides at once. Jim's ridge pole breaks from its
mooring. Bruno prepares to go out, but Jim, our 67-year-old hiking companion and charter
member of the club, says he can hold on for a while yet. Eventually the rain slackens; the thunder
withdraws over the ridge. The tent pole is replanted. Calm returns to the valley and we drift off
to an exhausted sleep.

We awake early the next morning; the sun is breaking over the mountain to the east. Far below,
the valley twists its way down toward Slocan in a typical high country drainage. Between the

41
hyperbolic sides of sparsely treed rock, long avalanche chutes drip their tales of winter might
down to the valley floor. Just before the last visible bend a small lake reflects the morning sun
through a foggy night blanket. Small tufts of cloud stretch in the expanding morning air and
crawl up the sides of the mountain. Heavy-bottomed clouds hang limply impaled over the
highest peaks. In places small pinholes of light burn their way down through the mist in laser like
beams to light a single rock on a hillside. Turbulent winds twisted by the mountains draw the
valley fog into long crab like arms that claw at the peaks. Belying the violent storms of the day
before, an intense serenity washes across the land.

After breakfast we climb a scree slope to the shoulder of Mt. Lucifer. From the top we can see
still another little turquoise lake gouged into the valley bottom. Falling water rings in our ears as
recently melted snow plummets down the mountain side. We pull downy tufts of white goat hair
from wind dwarfed trees on the edge of a cliff. Bruno and Jim apprehensively eye the brooding
clouds and opt to return to the fire. For a moment the warming fire and unfinished story call to
Linda and I also, but another fire burning somewhere inside is fueling our desire to press on. We
are under no delusions. The air smells of change. Already it is raining over in Mulvey Basin. We
put on our raincoats and continue. Out on the talus the water runs over the rocks and the rain
splashes in our eyes. My pants are getting wet; small body tremors tell me my core temperature
is cooling. Linda has a full rain suit, but even that doesn't make her immune to the plunging
temperatures. We see smoke still rising up from our camp below and are about to turn down
when suddenly we notice a small cave at the head of a narrow chute we are just entering. We
scramble up to the entrance. Five feet deep, three feet wide, and four feet high, this tiny niche in
the rock face is perfect for the occasion. Our discussion ranges with some humility across the
philosophies of mortal men, then turns to marvel over the irony of this windswept, inhospitable
land where any soil is a luxury and only an occasional stone stands fully erect; yet it is also a
land of the most compelling beauty. Glacial lilies and anemonies seldom wait a full retreat of the
snow before they burst through the last of the ice crystals to smile back at the yellow, warm
goodness of the sun. Buttercups follow shortly after and as the earth wakes from its long sleep
the meadow below fills with a swarming array of Colour and texture. Lupines, paintbrushes,
columbines, heather, moss campion, and field daisies mix their colours with the delicate green
textures of Solomon's Seal, worts, sedge, and grass. Into all this, water and stone carve the
interacting patterns of the changing seasons.

Later the rain eases to a mist, and we crawl from the cave. The light is waning; we must turn
from the mountain hurriedly. Tea, soup, and some much-relieved friends are waiting for us in
camp. That night Jim brings out his mouth harp and plays gay highland songs which blend well
with the moorish land of the Gwillim Lakes basin.

Wednesday promises to be another day of mixed weather. But we have learned a lot about the
surrounding hills. We climb in the good weather and find caves or overhanging rock to hide from
the rain and snow when the weather turns foul. We climb the square shouldered mountain to the
east which the Slocan scouts want to name "Scout Mountain." The going is easy and we cross
over onto the last ridge of Black Prince before we are forced into a cave for potluck mountain
mix. We glissade from the mountain on our return to camp. A pika calls out an anxious 'eek!" as
heavy boots smash through his delicate domain. The grizzlies have cultivated a hillside in trying
to unearth the marmot from his home.

42
Next morning, we eat a hurried breakfast and strike camp. Before turning toward the valley we
give the camp one last check to make sure the hastily constructed rain gutters are the only marks
left after our visit. Down at the truck we toss off our now steaming packs, remove our heavy wet
boots, delight over the comfort of dry warm socks, and pass a sacramental can of beer.

Civilized life waits just around the corner. Forced air thermostats will protect us from the cold.
The wonders of the internal combustion engine will speed us over distances we could never cross
on foot. Yet, for a moment, the wilderness calls us back. The wind roars, the light flashes across
the sky, the earth trembles in resonance to the taunts of the thunder gods. The rain lashes against
our faces. A raw, wild joy pulses once again through our veins.

43
Chapter 9

Kokanee

_______________________________________________________________

That the self advances and confirms the

myriad things is called delusion.

That the myriad things advance and confirm

the self is enlightenment.

-Genjokoan

I think, therefore, I am.

The philosopher ponderously proposed.

Can a passing thought establish

the Grounds of Being?

I think not!

In damp fecund earth the seed germinates.

Roots seek security and nurture in the darkness below,

Green arms stretch out under

The warm transforming powers of the sun.

Robins sing of the nesting season,

44
And pull soft lichens from the tree.

Swallows pack mud under the eves.

Insects crawl from dark earth holes,

Cast off sleepy winter forms,

And dart about joyously in the light.

The sun kindles a new compulsion in the waking plant;

The season swells with fertility;

The flower unfolds sweet scents

And delicate, bright colours.

Pollens mix and drift in the gusting winds.

The breeze sings a vibrant insect song

Of rapidly beating wings.

The warmth of spring bends to the heat of summer.

The bright colour of the flower fades

Into the ripening fullness of the fruit.

Birds sing of the harvest.

The earth dries;

Virulent green turns to golden shades of brown

To wait the frost.

Inside the seed an ancient will burns quietly

With restless dreams of the waking season.

45
I am of the same ancient will as the seed;

Therefore-I eat, I breathe, I sleep.

Out of a dark sleep I woke

To suckle strength from my mother's breast.

I made unsteady plans against gravity,

And climbed on my father's knee.

My legs grew strong.

I ran after the neighbourhood boys,

And sang sweetly the songs of childhood.

I stretched further toward the sun,

Stumbled on the stair,

And felt a strange longing grow in my heart.

In the summer I sat on the mountain,

And laughed a long hearty laugh

Which bubbled up through my spine.

But, an echo returns carrying a new voice

Hidden beneath the contented resonance.

In my heart I carried a new longing

Down from the mountain.

In the spring, I looked full into the eyes

Of my new born child.

46
The grounds of my being trembled,

And I gave him a poet's name.

I stand before the mirror in the morning

And cannot comb the thin spots from my hair.

I run from the darkness,

And hide from the mirror.

But, the darkness waits,

In quiet moments inside my head.

My son's eyes laugh as he runs after the dog.

The bright yellow flower fades,

And the mirror will not lie.

I hold my second son

And am dissolved in bitter/sweet tears.

The darkness waits unmeasured by time,

Unaltered by the ways of Man.

I wake shaking;

I dream of a dam with no overflow,

And know I must face the dark.

Behind the mirror the void waits.

47
I grope toward it.

The light goes out behind me;

I am lost in the dark ether.

Darkness-the timeless, intangible, enveloping dark.

I sink helplessly.

Dust to dust.

But even the dust falls away.

Fear seizes me;

I thrash out at the dark,

but the pathless void leads only to the centre.

Heavy sinuous fibres of being unravel.

Hard lines of care, frozen in my brow, soften.

I no longer cascade into the dark.

The centre draws near.

At the centre, light returns-or vision.

I see a mountain lake.

unmoved by the afternoon breezes,

Its mirror surface reflects perfectly the tall mountains

With snow streaking down from the peaks

Like hair over their shoulders.

The meadows rise up from the shore

and lie green across its surface.

48
Bright flowers smile gently back out at the land.

Tall spruce trees stand like ancient guards

Over this mirror land.

I stand on the edge of the lake;

Lean far out and look into the crystal waters.

The bright yellow-white face of an anemone smiles back.

The mountain stream babbles

A gentle summer song,

But the green remains unmoved.

No shadow moves over the surface of the lake.

A pika sits on a rock

And calls to his neighbour.

I bend beside the lake,

Drink deeply from its cold clear water,

and know its calm tranquillity.

Dad! Dad! Hey, Dad!

I shake myself,

And look down into a pair of impish eyes.

"This is the kind of wax for snow when it's really, really cold!"

He beams up at me.

That's right, I assure him.

"Next winter you'll take me on Almond Mountain with you and Peter;

49
I'm a good skier now."

He says, stretching out his arms

To demonstrate how far he can ski,

Or indicate the immensity of his proposition.

We lock thumbs,

And he shuffles off in the size ten ski boots

He just dug out of the basement.

I put my hand to the top of my head,

Give the bare patch a little pat,

And the mirror smiles broadly back.

I am; therefore, the ancient will of life courses through my body.

I think; therefore, I worship the flower and the lake.

Descartes was all mixed up!

50
Chapter 10

WORKING ON THE RAILROAD

____________________________________________________________

Epiphany: a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of
something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace experience.

-Random House

Ethics thus consists in this, that I experience the necessity of practicing the same reverence for
life toward all will-to-live, as toward my own. therein I have already the needed fundamental
principle of morality. It is good to maintain and cherish life; it is evil to destroy and check life.

-Albert Schweitzer

It is now nearly twenty years since I crawled down between rows of boxcars so hot under the sun
that even the metal seemed to be vaporizing in undulating waves of heat. For the sake of my
education, I indentured myself to the Southern Pacific Railroad for a summer to switch boxcars
(make up trains) in the sprawling railyards of Roseville, California. Though the vast sorting
yards of Houston, Texas were already under construction many of the old time railroaders still
boasted proudly that they worked in the largest railyard west of the Mississippi River. To a
young enthusiastic college student, restless after a year of sitting before a desk messed with
stacks of half done papers, many of the jobs at the yards seemed more like a day off for sports
than any serious undertaking. But, as the summer wore on and the relentless sun burned ever
more fiercely I began to wonder if I had not been hired as the guinea pig in some fiendish
experiment.

Perhaps some brooding extra terrestrial force needed to know how high to turn the fires of hell
before even the most hardened mortals would crack. To the heat, which could boil the blood and
stifle the spirit, was added the wailing sound of metal drawn against metal as trainloads of
boxcars were dropped over "the hump".

After a seasoned railroader gives up hearing for the misery of such sounds he is still not set free
of its screeching. The sound sneaks in through his flesh and rattles his being by setting up a
resonance in his bones. Add to this again the confusion of a sea of trains arriving, departing,
making up, and breaking apart, and it is little wonder that accidents are accepted as routine, and
men seek relief in icy spirits which numb the senses.

51
One day I was called to work unexpectedly. A switch had been left carelessly open and an
eastbound freight of fruit and chickens had jumped the track and collided with a westbound
freight of scrap aluminum. Extra "herders" were needed to try to get as many trains through the
open tracks as possible. When I arrived many of the chickens were still squawking. Bananas,
cantaloupes, tomatoes, and scrap aluminum were all mixed. Out of that odorous mess great
ribbons of railway steel twisted up toward the sky. Boxcars lay on their sides everywhere. Out of
the middle there was an occasional crane, its boom lifted high, already trying to separate some of
the pieces. My job was to run before the trains, madly throwing switches, finding the few tracks
which remained open.

At noon I sought out a "herders shanty" as far from the mess as possible. There I heard an
interesting tale going around among the switchmen. Apparently, when the West bound freight
was sideswiped, the front end of the train was far enough past the switch that the "lead units"
(engines) remained standing. However, under the pressure of the collision the rail itself had been
forced forward under the train and then bowed like a roller-coaster track in front of the engines.
The hogger (engineer), confused by the din of the collision, became wholly disoriented. When
railway officials climbed into the cab to see how he was doing they found him clutching the
throttle and concentrating on the track ahead. Eventually he recognized the presence of the
officials and looking up without breaking his concentration he calmly reassured them, "If I can
just get over this little hump I think we'll be all right."

Twenty years later I sit before my desk on a cold snowy day. I look back across the years and a
thousand miles to the south. The sun is not so awesome, and I chuckle at the antics of the
intoxicated hogger whose job was spared by an understanding yardmaster. However, I'm in the
middle of another mess which I am sure will not be straightened out as easily the tangle in front
of the Roseville yard offices. And our current economic tangle has just about everybody
squawking. The whole thing is daily made worse by the pervading philosophy-if we can just get
over this little hump, everything will be fine. Some say pegging down interest rates is a panacea
to all our problems. Others feel we should give tax breaks to the rich so they can afford to be
generous to the poor. Still others suggest that if the taxpayer would pick up the tab for a few
more blundering banks and corporations we could return to a vibrant economy. Few seem to be
able to see clearly enough through all the self serving rhetorical garbage and twisted political
philosophies to recognize the track is out. It's time to get down and have a good look around.

The problem is not just interest rates or feeding the rich or throwing more slop in the corporate
trough. The problem is persistent throughout society. We have come to the end of a rainbow only
to watch a pipe dream go up in smoke. Some still believe if we keep our foot on the gas a little
longer we'll be over the hump and out of the slump, but that only races the wheels; consuming
energy without doing, anything about cleaning up the mess. Many, however, are now realizing
that the illusion of unbridled, forever expanding demand has been utterly shattered as a possible
end and thoroughly discredited as a means. The goods we thought would make us happy have
buried any true us beneath the weight of having to care for them. The machines we made to do
our slave labour have enslaved us.

Three thousand years ago the ancient mystics of India said, "Thinking of sense objects, a person
becomes attached thereto. From attachments longing and from longing anger is born. From anger
arises delusion; from delusion, loss of memory is caused. From loss of memory, the
discriminative faculty is ruined, and from the ruin of discrimination, he perishes." Today, in our

52
quantifying age, we would say the same thing more precisely though less eloquently; "In a
consumer society the rate of increase of demand will always outstrip supply even though the
results are inevitably disastrous."

With our time saving machine we sought to create time, but in the mad rush to construct the
machine we have killed our ability to perceive of time as anything other than the inane
intermeshing of metallic parts. And whether we perish by the extinction of environmental
disasters or whether we perish only symbolically because the inner light of our creative, spiritual
selves that guided us on our long journey away from the ape flickers and goes out, it matters
little-we perish.

In the billiard ball world of the eighteenth century it was easy enough to believe in the magic of
the dawning mechanical age. Between humanity and material objects there was some
preternatural force of attraction. Some of the most ardent prophets of the new age proclaimed
this humanity/material glue to be as fundamental a law of the universe as the newly discovered
gravity. But for humanity gravity had a hitch, John Locke argued. Men attracted not mass but
value. And value only existed under the transforming power of man's labour, or more
importantly-by extension-of technology. "Land (and we can safely include all of nature) that is
left wholly to nature... is called as indeed it is, waste." So the fetters to greed were unleashed and
humanity's rampage through the natural world began.

All this megalomanic philosophy sounded convincing in the 1700s. But we have been on this
track long enough now to have a lot better idea where it is actually going-rush hour madness,
Cherenobyl, Love Canal, ashen skies, and fouled waters. Instead of turning waste to value we
have succeeded in turning value to waste-mountains of unmanageable waste. The "fundamental"
law of Locke has been thoroughly refuted, and we are left with the axiom of Dr. Bruce Fraser,
hauntingly reminiscent of the words of the ancient Indian mystics, Humanity's inability to let
things be may be Earth's last comment on an arrogant species."

It's a good thing, I believe, this mess we're in-this derailing of our ambitions, the staggering
governmental deficits, the intolerable unemployment the presaging appearance of environmental
disasters. When you're on a runaway engine and the track leads directly into the abyss a
derailment can be a very welcome event as long as you take the opportunity to get down and
have a good look at where you're bound. The problem is where do we go from here. Mesmerized
by the somnolently miasmatic rationales of the passing age must we succumb to the hypnotic old
adage, "You can't go back," and lumber on into the abysm beyond?

Having a rather skewed sense of direction, I have often followed my specious nose to the edge of
a precipice. I stand for a moment admiring the grand but dangerous view ahead then turn back-
steadfastly thankful there is no stampede to carry me forward. I'm not ready for the abyss yet.
Life is still invigorating to me. I have sunsets to see, trails to walk, The delicate beauty of a
spring flower still awakens a deep satisfaction with life. Perhaps another day I'll return to the
cliff, decrepitation in my bones; the soft beauty of the flower will no longer stir so brightly the
numinous fires of life, and I will step forward into the night. No it's not the end I complain of
here. The end will surely come to the individual, to societies, to species, and-indeed-there must
come an end to Earth. Beyond that there is only wild speculation as to whether the universe will
end or merely pulse on forever the myriad faces of the restless but Unchanging One. Or, perhaps
time itself is merely a small ripple in a vast sea of silence that will once again engulf all of this

53
ephemeral existence. It's this mad rush to such a sudden and inappropriate end that seems so
insensible.

For two hundred million years the giant reptiles roamed the earth and gave form and meaning to
life. Plant an animal, spore and egg, the many forms of life defined themselves in relation to the
reptiles. But the changing environment ruled a reshuffling of the cards. Their era came to an end;
nothing needed to be done. The future presented itself and an age ended. Compared to the long
ages given to the reptiles, the days of humanity have a long way to go. We may reset the track
and dash off the stage of life prematurely, but the pages of human history are still open, like a
book half-written.

Bacon, Locke, Adams mesmerized by the paradigms of the mechanical age, dismissed the
wisdom of the mystics as frivolous patter, "Give me extension and motion, and I will construct
the universe," Descartes pompously proclaimed-and there'd be no place for the naive ethers or
essences of the mystics. But, looking out from the tangle today, it seems more likely the
materialists who mistook the form for the content, the shell for the source. Today we can easily
guess that if we could put a television in every room and a car dealership in every yard, the
human soul would cry out all the louder, "Is this all?! Where is that something that will, at last,
satisfy my inner longing?" The materialists scoffed at the thoughts of the mystics because "the
dreamers" failed to confine, define, or most importantly, to rearrange nature. What they sought-
the materialists stubbornly believed could never exist-an inner code, a primordial, archetypal
image of what the human soul or essence was to be.

While the materialist looked on the outer shell and saw the whirling, gravitating patterns of an
insensitive mechanical world, the mystics pried into the fleshy inner world of human existence
and found at the core, kept hidden, but carried and cared for, a pearl of existence. Humanity in its
innermost was a looker not a plunderer. Nature in its constant drive to fill all existence with its
many and varied forms chose to fill the air with the paean song of the birds, and the grace of
their flight. The waters she filled with the many shaped, coloured, lifestyled forms of the fish. To
the land belonged the beauty of the flowering plants along with the speed and dexterous agility
of the mammal. And still there was room for something more so to humanity was given the
realm of self-reflective consciousness to explore, to hunger after an embracing pattern, to colour
with a myriad forms, to know and love; to let be.

One late night shift I was sent out to shunt a switch engine in and out of the repair tracks just off
the long "horn" that ran around the main part of the yard. A light steady rain fell all day so even
the oil soaked gravels of the repair yards smelled more of the relaxed rejuvenating smell of a
summer rain than the usually effusive pungent odors of diesel and creosote mixed. Work in the
repair tracks is generally considered a "gold bricking" job on the railroad as there is none of the
hectic pressures of marshaling the in coming and out going freights in the main yards. On this
particular night I was standing by a switch into one of the storage tracks when I heard the
panicking voice of the yardmaster on the squawk box (radios weren't allowed then so these stand
pipes with hard to understand squawky speakers were dotted all over the yards). "Head end, 709!
Headend, 709!" He called frantically. I rushed over to push the speak button and ball back at
him. "Are you guys still using the horn lead? Well, duck into the spur and line all the switches
for the lead; quick!" Obviously relieved, he took a moment to explain. "I've got a heavy drag,
100 potash loads, already moving around the horn, and with that kind of weight we couldn't stop

54
it now even if we wanted to. Once moving, a train like that 'll make it a mile out of town on its
side."

I flashed my lantern to the foreman in a hurriedly improvised combination of railway signals for
"Stop, go like hell, two, tie up!" which he correctly interpreted as "You better get those two cabs
off the lead in a big hurry." After grabbing the ailing cabs and dashing into the repair spur there
was just enough time to break open the coffee before the roving light of the heavy Reno bound
drag began to appear around the most distant arch of the horn. It was heavy. You could hear that.
A normal freight strains against the load as it slowly eases out of town gaining speed for the
mainline run. But, amid the straining, the engines still hum a gentle almost restful drone that says
everything's ok. "It's just us pulling out of town on our regular run." But a truly heavy drag is
entirely different. With the heavy trains you can almost see the head of the engines bowed low as
they strain to shoulder the load. The draw bars stretch tight with tension filling the air around
with an uneasy foreboding. Instead of the gentle continuous hum there is the long uneven
shuddering as the ground itself trembles beneath the load then rests uneasily while the engines
draw in a strenuous gasp of strength before shuddering again like some mighty dragon straining
to draw all of Hades into its lair.

Just as the lead engines drew along side our spur I looked for a panic stricken moment down the
lead and saw the yellow target of a switch lined for the siding. I saw the steel buckling. I saw the
potash hoppers skidding on their sides, spilling their contents, catapulting over each other in the
twisting, crumpling mess. I saw my own dismembered body an insignificant dot in the scrambled
wreckage. But the engines went straining by undisturbed. From such an obtuse angle it's hard to
tell which way a switch is actually lined. Feeling deeply relaxed, I stood to watch the seemingly
endless row of hoppers roll by. The long ribbon of steel bent and rebounded beneath the weight
of the passing wheels, and each time the wheels struck a joint in the rail there was the familiar
click quickening to a rising tempo as the train picked up speed. With the speed, tension on the
drawbars eased and the cars rolled by in soporific regularity. For a moment I stood in awe with
the materialists at what human ingenuity had done. So much power, so much control. Nature
itself could be remade to suit the fancy of the naked, plains ape. Then I saw the car stalled at the
crossing and the abyss waiting beyond. The words of the yardmaster were still warm in my ear,
"We couldn't stop it now-even if we wanted to." I heard the air run out suddenly seizing the
brakes. I saw the hardened steel wheels grind flat. I stood by watching an age and the intentions
of human conquest skidding helplessly into the dark night.

Seventy million years ago in the dusky evening of the late Mesozoic Era the giant reptiles still
bathed in the shallow seas and satisfied their tremendous appetites on the verdant growth of
warm primordial swamps. 225 million years after the small clumsy thycodont made its first
tenuous entrance into the spore bearing fern and naked-seeded forests of the early Triassic
period, reptiles were the absolute masters of a way of life and age. The tiny thycodont still
trembling in the margins of the forest was but a small atavistic vestige of the humble beginnings
of an age of giants. The reptiles had become masters of the massive, specialists in size and
armour. For 200 million years this strategy had secured for them the front seat in the theatre of
life, but the scene was changing. The shallow continental seas retreated, the warm swamp lands
dried. Except for the relict conifers, the archaic gymnosperms withdrew before the exploding
forms of the flowering plants. Heavy sheets of ice began moving out form the poles in the first of
a long series of glacial and interglacial periods. The curtains fell on an age leaving only a few
bones and vestigial reminders of the once mighty Age of Reptiles. There were no brakes to
apply, no alternative paths to tread. These giant reptiles had become specialists in an age that was
55
passing. The weight of 225 million years of specialization carried them inexorably forward into
the dark night of extinction. It was a violent end to an era this changing of the sets. Some claim
all terrestrial animals over nine kilograms died in the violent upheavals of the incipient hours of
our Cenozoic Era.

The candle of life flickered and grew dim but didn't go out. In the changing forest the arboreal
tree shrew ran along the branches feeding on the ubiquitous insects that suffered little from the
convulsions of the passing age. Occasionally he ran down a trunk to feast on an unguarded egg
of one of the moribund reptiles, but his life remained in the trees- an insignificant speck of life
throughout the long ages of the Mesozoic. Having branched from the vertebrate tree in the
Triassic Period of the first dinosaurs, this tiny insectivore was not just a miniscular vestige of the
evanescent giants. He didn't lay in the sun and draw warmth from an indifferent and increasingly
inhospitable environment. He carried in his cells a secret inner fire that would warm him in the
cold nights ahead. He was warm blooded, and the inner fire did more than just warm, his nights;
it quickened his pace so he escaped more often from, the claws of the hungry meat eaters. The
respiring cells fueled his thoughts with ideas that could never occur to his sluggish, desuetude
reptilian ancestors. While some of the reptiles, progenitors to the birds, may have developed a
homeothermic inner fire, what-more than anything else-set the shrew apart and propelled his
progeny into the spotlight of the Cenozoic was it kept its vulnerable embryo wrapped in a warm,
safe internal pouch until giving birth to live young that nursed strength and succor from the
breast of the mother. In the warm maternal bond developing between the mother and the nursing
young was the beginning of a way of life that would be the harbinger of a new age.

Not that the new age was contained in the living codes of the humble tree shrew like the mighty
oak is contained in the tiny seed. Life in its many changing forms is not so direct as the seed.
But, nonetheless, in the small shrew running in the shadows of a passing age there was already
the embryonic foreboding of what was to be. No longer would life be impelled and measured by
the Mesozoic imperative to grow large or come well protected.

In the late hours of the Cretaceous Period the warm swamps dried, the vast, shallow continental
seas withdrew from the land, the air turned chill; the paradigm of the new age required a smaller
body with a larger brain, it demanded that one stay alert and carry an inner warmth, the image of
an embracing mother loomed ever larger in the minds of the burgeoning mammals. Some
seventy million years later the naked ape would stand before his religious shrines in the deepest
awe of values he believed were passed from the heavens and given only to him, but already in
the respiring brain of the tiny shrew at this mother's breast a primordial archetype was forming
which, extended across the years, was not so different from the hallowed Mother. Humanity
might one day turn again to the Mesozoic ethos of size and armour, but that was not the future
implied by the shrew and the shrine.

65 million years after the last dinosaur, after the passing of four long ages of ice, the arrogant
philosophies of a few overweening hominids ignored the maternal image and professed to have
discovered a more fundamental law of nature. Grow large, accumulate mass they said, seal in
your self-interest and prepare to defend your accumulations against the detached, indifferent,
consuming world of the other. The visions of the Buddha or Christ were merely the hankerings
of a primitive past, they believed. A full century would pass after the pompous philosophies of
Bacon and Descartes before enough of the fossilized bones of the archaic giant reptiles would be
found to show there was hardly a less fitting or tried and failed ethic for the living world than

56
enormity. Massiveness like the age of reptiles, like the brooding, over-weight train ran
irresistibly on into the dark. To the age of the mammal was given the sign of the mother.

This developing archetype of the mother was the unique imperative of the age of mammals. And
I believe that if the track is out and we have drawn so close to the abyss, it is because we have
passed our dreams to those who have forgotten the mother. While the transition away from the
mother image may have roots going back to the clannish squabbling of various competing social
forces, the archetype of maternal providence was most deeply buried or replaced in the wee
hours of the material dawn. To grow large to accumulate wealth vastly beyond need, to live by
the territorial imperative, were claimed by the materialists to be the future toward which this
billiard ball world of competition without care, entirely disconnected from any sense of a
numinous antecedent, without the mother was marching. Even now with the track out they point
ahead with mechanical fingers and say we can't go back. But, what is "back"? In the small brain
of the ancient reptile the colossus was the future and the measure of existence, but that age has
passed. We are well into the age of the mammals and, despite the direction our overweight ship
of state may have been heading, the new image is of the mother. The material age is only a side
track to which we have come to an end. Unlike the dinosaur we needn't yet step forward into the
night. There is still time to rediscover the mother image, to find a connectedness, rather than roll
like inane billiard balls into the dark pockets of time believing we can consume the earth without
destroying ourselves.

The Roseville yards are a long, twisting, commingling affair built by accretion as the yards
slowly became a major east/west and north/south crossing of the roads. With the intertwining
directions came the need for ever larger storage and sorting yards. the fruit and vegetable yards,
once the disquieting troop yards, have become only a distant after thought, still they have their
intertwining arteries running into and out of the main traffic flows. The old East end yard with its
disused, antiquated passenger station wraps like a defensive crescent around the anachronistic ice
plant. Beyond the ice plant the piggy back ramps commingle with this confusing muddle of
tracks. Old spur lines, cross tracks, and remnants of the old mainline thread their way through the
poorly thought tangle. Above all this and to the west are the new bowl shaped catching yards for
cars dropped over the labour saving, electrically switched "hump" Even these new yards have
their leads running down into a bewildering maze in front of the yard offices.

All of this might have worked well enough in the huffing-puffing but sluggish day of the steam
locomotive when 30 car drags laboured over the mountain passes beneath a blanket of cinder and
ash. But, in the grinding powerful age of the diesel locomotive, a single train might consist of
120 cars stretching out along the track for nearly two miles. To the problem of space is added the
even more difficult problem of communication. In the mid sixties radio communication had not
yet come to the Roseville yard so the trains of the diesel had to be made with the hand signals of
the steam generation. Making such long serpentine trains was far too great a task for the regular
three man yard crew, so the SP kept a couple of "herders" in the yard office switchmen's shanty
just for passing signals. These extra hand jobs almost always went to the junior employees as
few of the "Whiskers" had any inclination to spend the day climbing up and down the sides of
boxcars, or stand on the swaying catwalks on the top of the boxcars in the glaring sun, straining
to see a distant signal being passed through the undulating waves of heat. As a young college
student I regarded the signal herder jobs as among the best. Standing out from the monotonous
tedium of making endless rows of trains, the herder jobs had an air of adventure and enthusiasm
about them. Except for the prying eyes of the yard office towers I would have gladly stood naked
on the rocking boxcars riding like a wild eyed cowboy on the fiery daemons of Hades. Also,
57
there was something deeply awing about these long drags stretching all the way from the western
hump-yard bowls down through the centre yards and out into the east end. At times one seemed
to move through a turbulent sea of metal. Rows of metal cars moved west and east on either side.
Occasionally a long freight on one of the outside tracks would crossover to a mainline spur and
diverge from the pack, still the spreading sea of boxcars moved in countercurrents all around so
one could never be sure by looking whether his own drag was moving east to west or moving at
all for that matter. To judge absolute motion one had to crawl to the edge of the catwalk and peer
down between the menacing tracks to see which way the ties were disappearing beneath the car.

Except for the pigeons that left their long white streaks down the sides of the ice plant, there was
absolutely no sign of any nonhuman organic life-no trees, no blade of grass, not even the
ubiquitous rats managed to venture out into the main part of the oil soaked, lifeless centre yards.
Seemingly all this metal, this burgeoning machine age had, at last, come to its own. Only an
occasional human left here or there to serve the impatient, restless ethos of a mechanical world.
Like the coarsing blood of a giant mechanical monster the cars full of goods flowed on and on.
The veritable dream of the early industrialists, the yards seemed the epitome of the material
paragon. The shared vision of Adams, Locke, and Bacon became corporealized as a living
wraith; knowledge became utility; the meaning of experience yielded to the "productive" work of
transforming nature into a mechanical ideal. The yards, the trains, the ideas seemed to move of
their own internal inertia, to flow on of their own reasons-reasons so erudite, so self contained,
so utterly beyond question; the age of the mammal passed; the age of the machine arrived. the
future lay with the machine.

For a season I enjoyed the work, the sense of being so close to the heartbeat of a great industrial
nation. But, at times, it troubled me deeply, standing amidst a flood tide of moving metal,
looking out on a moving but lifeless metallic sea. It troubled me most when, at a low angle, the
sun burned through the haze only bright enough to enhance the quivering waves of heat. In the
suffocating heat one looked forward and back and could find neither head nor tail of it all. For a
few terrifying moments one could feel a terrible foreboding remembrance of man's most feared
science fiction nightmare-the machine had, indeed, come to life. The undulating waves of heat
were merely the long breath of metallic sentience. The machine would be the ultimate servant of
humanity, we were assured two centuries earlier. But, now, standing on the boxcar like Guliver
on his travels, the machine seemed to breathe a fiery longing to be master itself. Must it finally
come to this, that humankind should be the yahoo and serve the machine in blithe, squalid
servility? Such terrifying thoughts came not just on boxcars, but, also, sitting in the herder
shanties, having my first real contact with the world of men, I often found myself wondering at
the meaning hidden not so well between the lines of the droning conversations-the railway this,
the railway that, the union wage settlements, seniority problems, the car broken down, a new
boat purchased. Only occasionally among the summer students did one hear anything of a
historical perspective, the natural world didn't exist outside the boundaries of a few trying days
spent in a well-managed campground. These men seemed more attached to the coursing veins of
industrial life than water leeches to the flesh-they had no life outside of it. Nothing existed
outside the railroad and the consumer items that flowed from it.

Some years later, working for the Canadian Pacific Railroad on the barge slips, wheat yards, and
industrial sidings of Vancouver harbour, I was there when the lay off notices came and grown
men went home weeping. "Can a simple radio be worth more than 17 years of service?" The
rhetorical question was asked and left hanging-no one wanted to admit the obvious, baleful
answer.
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The employees were not the only men associated with the steel labyrinth of the railroad. And
these others lived an entirely different relation to the road. They used it but were not PART OF
IT. Seldom seen in the daylight, they preferred to spend the diurnal hours in the shadows,
avoiding the prying eyes of the railway police, not trusting the fiery breath of the great metallic
monster. But they were there. Occasionally I saw one pulling the cardboard liner from a boxcar
to make a home or running beside an outbound freight, throwing on a small satchel, making a
final adroit leap for the platform. Even the old men seemed amazingly supple in this regard, so
different from the stiff old switchmen that lumbered across the yard like half-desiccated snails.

Often I would wonder at these others, so much a world apart. Like a glitch in existence, like a
parallel world they didn't belong-a shadow here or there, running beside the train, pulling the
liner from a boxcar, disappearing down the long trenches leading to the creek and jungle beyond.
What made them so different? Like paint missing some essential ingredient that would never
stick to the wall, the bummies lacked some inner mechanism-that set them apart, they just could
not adhere to the established pattern. The yardmen often grumbled about their lot; some
occasionally rose to a vitriolic denunciation, but they went the way they were expected. They
showed up at 8, 4, or 12 as expected-always. They could be counted on; they were part of the
pattern. Some had more, some less; some did more; some stepped high, some bowed low. But
one never questioned that we all shared the same inner vision. We weren't all the same, but that
was only part of the inconstancy of fate-we all wanted the same. The bummies were entirely
different; not that they didn't have the same, that wasn't the problem, that could be understood.
They were fundamentally different because they didn't want a regular job, or charge card. They
didn't want a well kept yard or swimming pool. Most importantly, they didn't need the approval,
the pats on the back, the unspoken nod of endorsement from others to let them know they were
doing what they should be doing. They were just different, neither for nor against anything the
rest of the world was doing, simply not a PART OF IT, They were, as Thoreau said so well,
"stepping to another drummer." I often imagined they sailed the seas of life on tiny dingys with
magic sails, catching ephemeral winds drifting across waters I neither saw nor felt. Toward what
distant shore they sailed, to what beat they moved, I could never guess though I strongly
surmised they were none the same.

Being possessed of an insatiable curiosity, I took whatever opportunity I could to make inquiries
of these peculiar people. Most often I might encounter one while working as a herder stepping
out along the tracks with the bright green highball lantern to give the long heavy freights the
twirling lantern sign that the mainline was open and it was time to begin gearing up for the road.
Out of the shadows one would step hesitantly into the light. "Is that the Gridley turn or the
summit grind? When's the next freight to Frisco?", they'd ask timorously. If they weren't catching
the departing freight, they often stopped to talk, fascinated at this crossing of the cultural worlds.
"Where are you going?", I'd ask. then, after hearing the place name, I'd ask again the question
that was really on my mind. "Where are you going? Toward what shore do you move; what
meaning brings you so far from home; what brings you here,, what takes you on?" The answers
were as varied as those I asked. Only this one common theme arose among them all; I am
restless, I need to drift. Sometimes it just came blurting out, the often used but hard to
understand/enigmatic; I need to be free--like they knew what they were saying. Free? The
skeptic in me sneered. Free, perhaps from a mortgage or the need to please one's neighbours. But
"Free?" My, god, what a word.

59
W-H-A-T a word! Could someone constrained to the shadows, thrown in jail because they wore
the wrong clothes, suspect because of irregular shaving patterns, be truly free to do anything
other than take what no one else wanted?

These thoughts troubled me for a long time. How could someone of such limited choices believe
so ardently they are free? Then suddenly, I realized they are free. If anyone is free, they are, in
fact, free-not for what they could choose, but for what they chose. For a moment I saw the
distant shore; I felt the ephemeral wind blowing against my face; I heard the faint beat of a
different drummer. They chose a whole different way of relating to the world. They chose not to
resist-to be watchers not changers, to let life run through their hands like beach sand through the
playful hands of a child. The one thing that set them all apart was they had no desire to build
empires, to leave a lasting mark. They were here to look, to feel, to be gone.

I remember being shocked to the point of distraction one day when an older, deeply bronzed and
wizened faced Chicano approached the shanty to inquire whether the departing freight was
headed for Reno. "No this freight is headed for Chico," I informed him regretfully. "Oh, great! I
have a brother there also," he exclaimed gleefully and promptly jumped an empty gondola. It
was a fundamentally different way of viewing life, as different from the way of ordinary men as
the way of the tiny tree shrew, with its expanding brain, small size, inner fire, and mother image
had been from that of the hulking dinosaur.

Over the years my views have changed. Back then the bummies seemed like mere glitches in
time and custom, rare and interesting aberrations, quaint reminders of a way of life on the fringe.
But now I sometimes wonder if the analogy to the shrew might not extend further than I thought.
Perhaps the bummies with their different perspective contain some unknowing, incipient hint of
what is to be. With Chernobyl, Love Canal, the consumption of the earth's resources, gassing of
the skies, and incessant stockpiling of arms, as people despair to have any say in the course of
this giant mechanical age, as our age skids by helplessly into the night; I can't help wondering if
the way of the bummy may not be the way of the future.

Perhaps, if the species is to survive, the men of the future will be those who are a little more
content to look; to let be; to accept what comes without having to fight; to let some raw wildness
seep back into our natures rather than buffer all contact with life in bubble; to enjoy coffee and
not immediately need the newest under counter percolator; to know time as a less desperate
imperative; to leave some corners of human activity unorganized.

Though I seldom saw these timid nocturnal creatures by day it was easy enough to pick out their
fires along the river at night. The lead running from the yard office where the switchmen began
their shifts, out to the hump-yard bowls stretches along the ridge above the "jungles". Often, at
night, I'd stand on the front catwalk of the engines to watch the small fires burning along the
river. In the warm summer weather there were only a few small scattered fires along the
riverbank. Warm weather, it seemed, was a time for solitude. But when the heavy rains came the
fires grew in size and shrank in number-a time for sharing. Sometimes on specially cold evenings
or when someone managed to bum a few extra dollars for wine, the fires burned brightly enough
to see an assortment of characters sitting in the open beside the fire, passing a bottle from hand to
hand, like an ancient tribal ritual. In the foulest weather the fires were ringed with broken sticks
over which plastic or cardboard was draped. Most often, these feckless vagabonds paid little
heed to the weather preferring to sit in the open a short distance from the fire during the

60
infrequent summer rains. In the morning returning from a night of sending boxcars of scissors to
Portland or Styrofoam cups to Reno or from listening to the dread awe that fell over the yards as
the high priority troop trains sandwiching the secretive "Class A Explosive" cars of mega death
went skirting the long leads around the yard, I'd see the slumbering bummies fallen in the sand
exactly where they had been at the beginning of the shift.

Most interestingly, none of the bummies I spoke to chose this way of life. They weren't like the
hermit or monk that thinks about life and rejects the pleasures of the flesh or decides on some
solitary communion with god. That wasn't the way of the bummy. He didn't chose; he was
simply impelled by some irresistible inner direction. Many remember the old way; some with
regret, some disgust, some regard the past with a deep affection, but they all felt the bridge was
burned to a world they would never know again. The way of the brothers and sisters left behind
could never again be their way.

While the bummies were a unique and occasionally quarrelsome assortment of humanity, they
did have a sense of brotherhood among themselves-distant though it might, at times, seem. One
day working the east end herders job, waving the straining, Reno bound, freights over the hill, I
heard a great commotion coming from the ditch that lead off down to the jungles. Suddenly a tall
Negro came scrambling up the bank, looking over his shoulder with a great consternation as he
ran. A rock curled up from the ditch followed directly by a grizzled, unkempt Chicano bearing a
slight grin despite the seriousness of the rest of his demeanor. Dancing his way across a few sets
of fanning tracks, the lanky Negro stopped to look back plaintively at the scruffy Mexican.
"Wach wrong wis you, man?" he said in a whinny, harassed, incredulous voice. "Wach," he
started to repeat, but the Mexican stooped to pick a handful of rocks, so on they ran-the rocks
falling considerably wide of any possible injury. When the Negro stopped the Mexican stopped
as though coupled to a common braking system. Finally, gaining considerable distance on the
Mexican whose interest in the game was obviously lagging, the Negro halted stubbornly and
shouted with a resolute, if still harried and confused, voice across the tracks. "Watch wrong is
you, man?" he repeated shaking his head. "You ain't no whiteman; youls jus a Mexican!" then he
turned and sauntered off across the tracks. The Mexican didn't follow. "No whiteman," he said
obviously referring to the racial monopoly of jobs on the railroad, but I believe he meant much
more, he meant-you're one of us; what's wrong?; we don't live by this code.

The old Mexican turned back across the tracks heading directly for the amused
yardmen/spectators standing by the shanty. Approaching the shack, he shook his grizzled head
from side to side disgustedly, "Them niggers," he said, judging his audience carefully and
holding out his hand. While the other yardmen dug in their pockets I went behind the herder's
shack to get sick. I saw the tiny shrew running in the lengthening shadows of the Mesozoic
times. I heard Francis Bacon telling us that all of nature is waste until we transform it to value. I
saw the heavy freight skidding into the night and the tangled mess before the yard office. I
remembered the nights of anticipation waiting to see the lights of the bummies along the river
edge. And I felt horribly sick. The future would be different from the mess we're in today, but it
wasn't going to be the utopia I had been expecting.

. That night I went home to an uneasy sleep. Turning restlessly from side to side, my thoughts
raced ahead dizzyingly, while I tried desperately to replace the anxiety that ran through my body
with whatever snippets of pop music I could remember. Marty Robbins seemed to have an
especially mesmerizing voice, so I chanted along with my internal tapes of "Sweet, Sweet, Sweet

61
love I want you to be." The words held no intrinsic meaning to my life at the time, but the sound
and the cadence was mesmerizing. I had done it before-replayed these sound clips over and over
until my mind stilled and I drifted off to a restful sleep. Marty Robbins didn't work so I tried the
powerful, overshadowing voice of Ray Charles. And still I clutched at the sheets and turned
restlessly in my bed. At 2:30 am I rose disquietly and finished off the bottom third of a bottle of
scotch, and still the sleep I now so desperately sought would not come.

Images of various bummies I had observed or talked to in the yards began to parade across my
mind. At first I welcomed this new development. Perhaps if I could just watch the procession,
they would lead-like the proverbial sheep-to dreamland and rest. But this was not a procession of
sheeplike faces. Each face was different. There were whites and Chicanos and blacks and old
faces and young ones. Some faces seemed hardened under the strain of a difficult life; others still
beamed of innocence through the dirt; some smiled, some seemed deeply hurt, others appeared
taught beneath the tension of anger constrained. But regardless of the differing features, every
face seemed to turn anxiously form side to as though it was looking for something crucially
important that was missing.

Just as I was becoming accustomed to this succession of faces that I had seem emerging from the
margins of the railway yards, I noticed that with increasing frequency the parade of bummies
was becoming mixed with visages of the switchmen as well. Some were laughing, others turned
their lip up in anger, while many carried that pale of indifference which had so shaken me when I
first observed it. But all, like the bummies, turned their heads interrogatingly from side to side.
Something incredibly important but utterly evanescent was happening.

Whether I spent the remaining wee hours of the morning watching this ever-changing, distraught
procession of faces or whether I may have drifted off into the margins of an uneasy sleep, I
couldn't tell, but around 9:30 I arose exhausted. Busying myself with long neglected housework
and then inventing a series of meaningless tasks, I managed to remain distracted from the
haunting procession of the night before. At 3:00 o'clock I phoned the dispatcher. No I wouldn't
be called to work that day. With the engrossing vision of the night before seeming to haunt every
room in the apartment, I decided to go for a drive.

At first the feeling of being behind the wheel, the wind across my face, the changing scenery
seemed refreshing-so I drove on. I came to a stop sign but my foot remained frozen to the gas
pedal. Having never before received so much as a parking ticket my conscience trembled
querulously, I drove on running the next stop sign and the next. I glanced at the gas gauge, the
tank was 1/2 full. Feeling simultaneously relieved and disquieted, I drove on. What if I ran out of
gas? What if I were caught running a stop sign? What if I stopped for any reason? I couldn't stop,
I knew I couldn't stop.

The dream/vision/spectre loomed behind me, I had to keep driving. I came to a long corridor of
walnut trees. Their arching branches and full summer foliage formed a shadowy tunnel and still I
drove on not knowing whether I went. These many years later I have no recollection of how long
I spent in the tunnel or how long I drove or where I went or whether I did stop along the way. I
know only that around dusk that evening I became aware of sitting in the Volkswagen, the palms
of my hands sweatily griping the steering wheel. I was pulling over onto a dusty shoulder of the
road.

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A tire-squished pop can lay half-covered in the dust. Litter, mostly from a hamburger stand three
blocks away, lay scattered among the manzanita bush that densely hedged the side of the road.
An oak tree with its deeply rutted bark and spreading branches, grew up from a short distance
down the rather steep embankment. Next to the oak I could make out a narrow break in the
otherwise impenetrable manzanita. Unmindfully I got out of the car and walked to the small
opening beside the oak. Standing on the edge of the bank-next to the oak, I could see that this
gap in the bush was the beginning of a deeply worn path snaking its way down to a large sandbar
along the river below.

Suddenly I could discern the yet distant rumble of an approaching freight train. Immediately the
air around wrenched with the piercing screech of metallic brakes being applied for entry to the
switchyards ahead. The warm light of recognition spread across my shoulders. I knew where I
was and more importantly I was beginning to guess why I had come here. I was on the town side
of the bummy jungles. The trail ahead lead directly down into the heart of the encampments.
Without stopping to think out a plan, I started down the winding path. Already my anguished
mind had begun to relax.

Even the faintest recognition of some meaning behind the tortuous vision of the night before
brought a most welcome sense of respite. A person cannot live forever in the stream of life with
one foot squarely on one mighty barge while the other stretches out so insistently to plant itself
in another small raft drifting by in an entirely different current.. Sanity won't permit it. I
remembered the faces with increasing clarity; the commingling of bummies and yardmen; the
insatiable casting about for answers to yet unstated, embryonic questions-Yes! A strange mixture
of joy tinged with resignation seemed to swell in my belly; I felt taunted by a rising flood of
laughter or perhaps tears. Yes! I was questioning; who are these people? Why are they so
enigmatic?

These derelicts camped by the river so often seemed to live what I was only beginning to
understand. For them "instant" anything appeared more a measure of how soon the
unquenchable, anguished longing for satisfactions that do not come in a can would return than
any indication of how quickly it could be prepared. Was this foreboding of a different way of
knowing and being just an idealized fantasy? Were the bummies simply incapable of stepping to
the thundering beat of our consumer and consumed society, though they were listening wistfully
to the same tune as the yardmen?

I remembered being so utterly sick behind the shanty the day before. Could it be that the
bummies themselves knew of no peace, no inner contentment beyond the humped, pebble-strewn
sandbar stretching for nearly twice the length of a football field from the rocky abutment just
ahead down to the distant bend in the river. Being the end of August the evening air was already
cooling though the sand remained warm even through my running shoes. At first the sandbar and
surrounding bushes seemed entirely deserted. A few vacant, rubble heaped fire pits along with
bits of torn cardboard indicated the living quarters of residents who were probably still out on the
streets of Roseville. Then coming to the top of the mounded sandbar, I saw a small fire burning
down by the edge of the river.

A lone, exceedingly tall and bony Black man sat unmovingly by the fire with his thin, rigidly
upright bare back toward me. Slowly I skirted the fire in a wide arch to ensure that I did not
startle this solitary camper. The bummies and the yardmen had long ago struck a truce-a fragile

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one; one that was maintained by a great deal of formality and ritualized posturing. Circling
nearly 3/4 of the way around the fire, I could begin to make out the features in the long, hollow-
cheeked face. He was siting cross-legged, staring meditatively into the fire and did not notice me
or look up.

My gaze lingered over the unusual facial features and then marveled at how long and thin the
torso appeared without looking emaciated at all. In all my time on the railway I had never seen
any of the yardmen sit with such an erect spine; in fact I had never seen anyone sit so utterly
erect. I knew this man! Well, I had met him in the yards several times. The other yardmen call
him "Solomon."

At first I believed this name had been applied haughtily. I had heard other such terms like the
boxer, the dancer, the bull, the king, but this once I had been surprised to learn that the name
actually reflected a most incongruous kind of respect. I could see it in the body language and in
the faces. This Solomon had a most inexplicable effect on almost all of the yardmen. I could see
it in the unsolicited money they handed him-five to ten, sometimes twenty dollars at a time. Any
other handouts seldom amounted to more than a few quarters.

I could see the respect in the way his hand was never extended to beech and I could see it in the
acknowledging exchange of glances with no spoken gratitude. I heard this unusual respect in the
restrained inflections in the words of a yardforeman one night. "Solomon is back", he told the
crew obviously restraining a welling emotion. I heard a rumour once that this tall black man
sitting before the fire with all his belongings in a worn pack embedded upright in the sand had at
one time held an important position at a Eastern university. Some said he had been an eminent
scholar of religious studies.

Solomon's gaze jolted slightly and moved away from the fire to meet my eye.

"You're one of the yardmen. (?)" He obviously knew I was a yardmen; the questioning in his
voice was asking frankly but not entirely unwelcomingly:

Why are you here in my home where you don't belong?

The questions well up and got so jumbled in the rush to get out I remained standing in a stunned
silence.

"Have a seat."

His expression softened and I moved to rest on a rock directly across the fire from Solomon. The
fire crackled. I looked down into the glowing embers which seemed to dance so mezmerizingly
that for a time the questions melted away, the spectre retreated, I rested at peace with the world
and within myself. After what seemed a long while two middle-aged, white vagrants scrambled
to the top of the sandy berm and looked down on the fire. They hesitated for a few moments then
I heard them retreating to one of the fire rings back by the rock bluff. I didn't look up from the
embers.

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"You seem troubled?" Solomon spoke with a deep almost musical voice that augured of ancient
troubles long settled. The inflection suggested the time and willingness to listen, though it gave
no hint of any indulgent desire to provide answers or take on anyone else's troubles.

As I had no idea of how to frame the questions that burdened my mind, I began with the story of
the car stalled at the crossing and the freight train skidding by in the night. I went on to my
studies and the tree shrew and hulking dinosaur.

Eventually I came around to the bummies. I glanced up from the coals. He was still listening, I
saw no judgments on his face. I looked back into the coals and went on-the bummies; the way
time seemed to have no hold on them; the way they seemed to enjoy cheap coffee boiled in a tin
can with more sensuous delight than I had ever seen in any of the finer coffee shops downtown;
the way they passed the bottle by the fire; the way they seemed to be able to get on and off the
trains-to use them without becoming enslaved to their overpowering urgency; that word; that
enigmatic, puzzling, utterly enchanting word they so easily and frequently used-free. Ah, yes.
Yes, I was now ready to ask the question. I look up into the eyes of Solomon and felt permitted
to go on.

"These bummies...you...them (I pointed to the fire at the other end of the sandbar) why do they
come here? Why do those who once had almost all of what the rest of our human community
desires so imperatively, give it up and never come back? Are they really any freer than fleas
jumping from the back of a hog in a mud hole? What does it mean to be "free"? Finally, if these
people really see how destructive our culture is of both planet and people, why don't they tell
someone; why don't they try to make it better-to maybe save the rest of us?

The tall black man still sitting cross-legged on the opposite side of the fire began to laugh.
Perhaps it was more of an effervescent chuckle that chortled rhythmically up along his spine. I
didn't feel laughed at or embarrassed, in deed, while the laughter conveyed some deep sense of
merriment, it also seemed to carry an internal rhythm that hinted of understanding or perhaps
empathy. After a long bout of this rather curious form of laughter, Solomon directed his gaze
intently across the fire fully absorbing my attention. With a smile still clinging to his face we
began what has for me the most fascinating conversation of a lifetime.

"You are, in deed, a most curious yardmen!" he said, pausing for another effervescent chortle
before continuing in a more serious tone of voice.

In all my years I have met few people suffering such a tormented sense of existential angst,
though I remember being sharply upbraided for similar feelings though based on different
thoughts when I so shocked my peers by leaving academic life to live in the monastery. But that
was a long time ago, I wonder what they would or could say now?" he chortled more ebulliently
than before.

"My name is David Sloss, I know the other yardmen have labeled me as "Solomon" but you may
call me David.

I do not know your name, but you have come to the river, perhaps to me with all these troubling
questions for which I have no answers." David tossed another large round of wood on the fire

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and in he dancing flames I could see that despite the more serious turn in the conversation, he
was still smiling contentedly.

"While I cannot answer your perplexing questions with my words, I can perhaps help you to
open your ears to the voices of the fire and river which for the past four years have provided me
with the antidotes I need to my own often disconsolate searching."

Drawing in a long breath David thrust his lanky fingers deep into the sand. Then drawing up a
hand full sand he said, "Take a hand full of this river sand, then let it drain out slowly between
your fingers. Try to feel each grain as it passes between your fingers and back to the sand bar.
Now take up another handful and with your eyes closed let it drain even more slowly through
your hand. Keep doing this until you can feel the movement of every grain."

I lifted handful after handful of sand and let it drain through my fingers. After a few handfuls I
began to see the parade of distraught faces in the haunting vision f the night before, I felt the age
of dinosaurs slipping through my fingers, I lifted up a handful of mammals and they too slipped
effortlessly one by one back to the sandy floor; I lifted a yard full of trains and they too drained
away; I lifted humanity in my hand and when it was half gone I closed my fist tight around it and
held on tightly. "Let go" I heard the soft voice of David instructing me to let go of even this. I
released my grip and the sand slid down between my fingers and was gone. I grabbed for a
handful of my own life and felt every grain as it slipped playfully away.

"Now," I heard David's voice clearly but it sounded like it came from behind a wall.

"Now, put your hand down in the sand and hold it there. Dune some more sand up against it.
Imagine this is the river. Imagine you are the very hand of humanity you so distrust. You want to
dam the river to hold it back, to use it, to hoard and contain it, to stop it in its natural cycle. Bad
stuff -what humanity does" he taunted.

But now what happens to the dam and the river?

I felt the chilly waters lapping against my hand; I wanted to dam it up to extract its power. Sitting
there with my hand in the river, I saw the water hesitate; I saw it back up then come again this
time spilling around my fingers and over my arm.

"You can't stop the river!" I exclaimed in utter delight.

"No, you can't stop the river." the voice from behind the curtain said with foreboding. "But you
can poison it"

My hand felt sticky and the ends of my fingers tingled like they were being corroded. I looked
down into the murky water and the old angst crept over me. I felt nauseated.

"But what happens when the river inexorably reaches the sea" the voice from behind the curtain
whispered with a hint of hope.

I saw the estuaries, I saw the polluted rivers commingling with the salt water, I saw the toxic
chemicals sinking to the bottom of the sea. Suddenly I felt the warm Sun; I saw the vapours

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rising from the sea; I saw the rivers running down to the sea, the vapours rising to make clouds,
the rain over the land replenishing the rivers. A purifying, ever renewing cycle. I was content.
Nature, the untiring mother was in deed a most incomprehensibly wonderful thing.

"But what about the skies?" the voice from behind the curtain had yet another punch to throw.
"What about the sky?" the voice became insistent as I sat refusing to go further with this thought.
"What about the chemicals that humanity tosses into the sky so even the rain water comes down
toxic and corrosive?"

That was it. I wanted out. Too many judgment to make. Too many elated highs of satisfaction to
reach, to many valleys of despair to roll down. I wanted out of this game. I opened my eyes. The
fire had burned down to a rich bed of embers. It was amazing the way the waves of light moved
over the coals, flaring up, dying down, moving, always moving across the log toward the water,
then from the water side back toward town.

Two waves started from opposite ends moved toward the centre then effortlessly interpenetrated
for a moment then moved on like wisps of cloud caught in countercurrents. As I looked into the
fire the warm reds, dancing oranges and deep blues increasingly occupied my perceptions like
the fiery horizons of a stormy sunset. I looked up slightly from the embers to a large stone on the
far side of the fire pit. Like an oversized sun in an enveloping summer sunset this stone seemed
to have grown in stature becoming all out of proportion to its surroundings.

Though it was already dark out, my vision-blurred perhaps form the sleepless night, the panic
stricken drive and the protracted interrogation-filled with the deep hues of an intensely hazy and
vaporous sunset. The rock from the fire ring became deeply embedded in the night sky and grew
to the size of a high rise building. Most curiously, cast against the background of the deeply
coloured sky a grasshopper sat perched on the now towering rock. Perfectly proportioned in
every way, this grasshopper was an exceedingly strange in that while it rested on the high-rise
sized rock it was also nearly half the size of the rock.

While I felt present in the scene, I didn't, feel at all frightened of this immense grasshopper
because I seemed to be only an observer with no real or corporeal presence. As I watched
transfixedly, the rock continued to grow until it was fully the size of the largest mountainous
abutment I had ever seen. The grasshopper too had grown, appearing now to be about seven
times the size of a 747 jumbo passenger plane.

This hulking insect, resting with its front feet n the edge of the precipice which fell off shearly to
the valley bottom far below appeared to be a pale but slightly iridescent green over the entire
length of its roughly textured body. Suddenly one of the gigantic hind wings fanned out over the
ridge. He (maybe she as I know little of gender in grasshoppers) was just stretching with no
intention of flying away. The delicate folds in the textures of the wing membrane were a
translucent royal claret. For a moment I thought I saw a pattern like a Tibetan mandella inscribed
on the underside of the wing, but already the wing was retracting. There was in the air a feeling
of contentment.

The giant mandibles began grinding slowly back and forth like the creature was ruminating on
something, though I had the strange foreboding that this something might be something more
ethereal than any plant material. What kind of a plant would it take to satisfy the hunger of such

67
an awing appetite, I wondered. Suddenly I noticed the massive legs were beginning to crouch
down. Perhaps it was going to fly. However having stooped down to nearly the level of the rock
surface the grasshopper began to rock forward and up. This it continued to do in a slow circling
motion three times then stretched fully up to the full extent of its gnarly legs. The back arched up
even higher into the evening sky, then a great wind, seeming to shake even the massive rock,
exhausted from a series of portals all along the body.

After a moments rest the colossal head began to twist from side to side. Continuing to feel in no
danger or unbearable shock from beholding the gargantuan presence of this being, my
scientifically trained mind was beginning to wonder whether this colossus was a single aberrant
individual or whether there was a whole species of these gigantic grasshoppers, when suddenly I
noticed the eye.

These were not the eyes of an otherwise normal, though unspeakably oversized grasshopper.
Superficially there were similarities. The eyes occupied symmetrical locations on the upper side
of the forehead and massively dominated the face just like the tiny field grasshoppers that I
regularly chased out of my garden. And like the compound eye of all orthopterans, the lens-
rather than a uniformly arched surface-was divided into a myriad hexagonal facets.

As I looked on in utter fascination, light from the setting sun fell across these enormous, roving
eyes breaking prism like into dancing beams of euphonious colour. Observing this play of
colour, I began to notice the distant mountains more carefully. Clearly the mountainous abutment
on which this hulking grasshopper stood was by far the tallest peak around. Spreading out from
the base of the precipice ahead a dense magnetic smog seethed up vaporously in vast spumes set
afire by the setting sun.

Even the air above the level of the smog seemed dense and blown by wisps of sulfurous ether.
Occasionally a rocky peak jutted above the smog--gathering, momentarily, the wafting haze. I
could see nothing of the valleys below and with my eyesight clouded by the heavy air. I could
not make out whether any of the distant peaks shouldered other living creatures. In the distance a
blazing red orb half the size of the horizon settled into the landscape with all the force of our
primordial Sun.

Feeling present but entirely ethereal, I began to notice that as various facets of one of these
gigantic eyes passed perpendicular across my line of sight I could see for some depth into the
translucent single segment. Unlike a common field grasshopper, no one lens of this colossal eye
was exactly like any other lens. Indeed as I examined each of the various facets, I began to feel
that I was, myself, being examined. Examined not for hair colour, gender, height or other
physical characteristics such as taste (!), but examined for who I am. I felt like the very essence
of me, perhaps my soul, was being examined very carefully and every new lens probed in ever-
unique dimensions. I felt in time that even aspects of myself which I did not know/had no
possible awareness of were being meticulously scrutinized.

Suddenly the dancing, penetrating light of the great eyes dimmed to a warm ambient pink light.
A torrent of wind rushed in through the portholes along the side of the grasshopper, hesitated for
a moment, then came rushing back out in a long even sigh. I began to feel a deep, though
jubilant/meditative, sense of well-being which I had never experienced before. The vast gem-like
eyes grew still/calm/reflective. I heard a voice seeming to come from the depths of my being.

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No. It wasn't mine and it wasn't a voice. It was a thought coming from the cavernous interior
depths beyond the now glowing eyeball. I was reading the very thoughts of this awing creature.

"Awwweeee!" It yawned in obvious satisfaction.

"Awwweeee!" And another rush of incoming and receding air.

"How wonderful and full of blessing. Today I vividly remember humankind. Though their once
ubiquitous record is now almost entirely lost even in the most ancient rock formations,. today I
remember with thanksgiving and clarity those distant times. How wonderful that our creative
earth employed its most troubled species to turn all that noxious oxygen gas into to this exquisite
blend of carbon, nitrogen and sulfur oxides, so that truly sentient beings such as ourselves might
come along to fully comprehend the spiritual mysteries of a living planet!"

Feeling shocked and sweaty, I sensed the flicker of a flame near by. Opening my eyes, there was
the stone rim and the embers dancing beneath the weight of a fresh log. Up from the fire David
sat smiling.

"You've been away for a long time."

Too stunned to speak, I sat in silence for a long time before attempting to put my experience to
words.

"Do you have any idea where I've been or what I've seen tonight?" I said trepeditiously-still
trying to bridge between where I was and where I had been and how I got here.

"I can see clearly that your own troubled thoughts, our meditation in the sand and the
mesmerizing fire have led you to a powerful vision . I see that you sit more easily beside the
fire."

David was being coy, having come this far I had to believe that he knew more than he let on.
Sensing some willingness to continue the conversation in the playfulness of his last words, I
began to tell of the stone grown to the size of a mountain. of the giant grasshopper and the
sustaining oxides. I struggled to explain how terror-stricken I felt at the passing of the torch of
consciousness to a "more advanced" species than humanity.

Yet even this unthinkable horror seemed to mellow into a strange perception of relief before a
deepening sense of awe at the immanent creativity of our earth. With the touch of a momentous
wisdom seeming to be almost within grasp, I felt momentarily the strain of the ancients striving
to capture some fleeting remembrance of the ineffable gods in their mythological stories. Yet
even in the reaching out the meaning seemed to vaporize and drift away down a questioning
labyrinth of thought.

If humanity, like the hulking dinosaur and tiny tree shrew is only a passing fancy, a slightly
passionate backdrop to the incomprehensibly creative play of life, if right and wrong/ good and
evil are merely the self-referring, pitiful assertions of a pompous and deludedly arrogant species,
if freedom means little more than the ability to choreograph a few aberrant steps to a score
written in metre and meaning dimly heard and impalpably beyond even the possibility of

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understanding, what then can be the meaning of an individual human life?-of my life? Is it then
of no consequence that the track of humanity leads directly to the cliff of extinction looming
ahead while the captains of industry continue to stoke the shuttering hoppers of our all-
consuming locomotive?

I turned questioningly to David.

Again this strange laughter, that seemed to race in circles around his belly gaining momentum
for a bubbling run up along his spine to emerge with a message of gentle understanding.

"My friend, your wisdom recedes ahead of you and chasing it so frantically you will never catch
up. Perhaps one day when you are ready your grasshopper will speak more clearly. In my own
experience, I have found there are questions which have no reply. Some of the questions you
have been asking appear to you now as rough stones on the dance floor of life that you stumble
over leaving you bruised and bleeding. Ignore the stones for a moment, just let the music-the
living of your life-flow through you animating your movements by its own internal rhythm.
Perhaps then you will begin to see the stones as more the elaborating props to a high stepping
dance than obstacles to your understanding."

. I was beginning to feel uncomfortable-somewhat chastised for my ignorance, though I was also
beginning to feel a sense of reverence before this man whose experience seemed so much deeper
than my own.

"Forgive my laughter if it offends you, I certainly mean no ridicule. In deed, it strangely pleases
me to hear once again reflections so similar to my own troubled thoughts. In deepest despair I
too, once shocked by my peers by giving up a prestigious position at the university to live at the
monastery ruminating over the meaning of words and concepts like good and evil. Who am I?
Why am I here? If there is a boundlessly creative and all knowing presence, what can I, such a
limited being, actually know of that being so utterly beyond myself? Could such an illimitable
presence actually underhand the life, needs, aspirations and torments of a being as finitely
bounded as myself?

The fire crackled but a heavy silence filled the damp night air.

I was beginning to consider questions I could never have formed before this evening. Had I come
here seeking just this man? Could I have known something-somehow which I had no way of
knowing that I knew?

"But you didn't remain at the monastery either?" I probed with the easiest question I could think
of in order to keep the conversation going while a series of dimly remembered dreams drifted
across my thoughts.

"Yes", David continued while stirring the fire so the entire sandbar glowed with a soft
yellow/orange luminescence, "for seven years I pondered such seemingly momentous questions.
And every time I felt I was drawing close to the threshold of any kind of realization, some
implacable nuance would arise wasting the entire edifice of my understanding like a
painstakingly, elaborate sand castle washed back to the sea by the rising tide. Then one day I sat
in meditation beside the river that flowed by the monastery, I put my hand distractedly into the

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chilly water and fell into speculations similar to the one I led you through in the sand. I saw no
giant insects but when the meditation ended, I knew the monastery was now no more my home
than the university had been.

"But why did you, at least seemingly. give up every sense of security, every semblance of culture
and almost all social contact to sit beside these various rivers along the railway line?" I spoke the
words, but I could barely distinguish whether they were words or merely an internal dialogue.
My own polluting humanity vs rejuvenating river judgements had led only to an anguished
despair. Unless one has extensive experience in stepping lightly through a quagmire, one should
be very careful about examining one's judgements, I had learned. But while such thoughts might
have led me away from a life of metaphysical speculation at a monastery, I could not see how
they would have drawn me to the river.

David sat quietly. I grew uneasy. This tall dark man sitting across the fire was the only person I
had ever met who spoke to me of the things which taunted at the deepest reaches of my thoughts.
After what seemed a long time I began to worry that in my eagerness to understand all of what
this most mysterious man had to say I had probed too deeply/become too assuming of his willing
to share/given an insult.

"Forgive me if I have asked too much." I began in a halting and apologetic voice.

" I am not insulted. You have raised questions which I have not considered for a long time."
David looked up indicating a willingness or readiness to continue. In the deep breath that he
drew in, there was the hint that he had perhaps, at last, come to his own understanding of a
deeply troubling question.

"I saw that the river had something to tell me that was not taught at the university and which was
impenetrable to the metaphysical speculations of a monk. I saw that the river neither judges the
actions of humanity nor does it need to question much its connection to the ineffable source of
creativity. In tiny rivulets the river dances and sprays and splashes down the side of the
mountain, in powerful, quiet currents it moves through the valley floor to be reborn in the mists
rising from the sea. In "aberrant" (to use your words) moods it may change course slightly or
splash more jubilant down the rock face. In years of heavy rain it floods the valley and in another
dryer season it may run entirely underground.

Seeming to mock the human belief that a single species can own, license or control the
inexorable movement of the waters the river trusts that the ever cycling water and the changing
rhythms, the testing of dams, the washing down of mountains, and the building up of the deltas-
all occurring beneath the irresistible force of its relentless yielding to the flow-is the dance of
ineffable creation. The river needs no words to know or eyes to see that its own ever-renewing
currents are but a faint reflection of this unremittingly restive flow of creative energy through all
things. As your grasshopper knew, long after the Age of Humanity the river will still be dancing
to the primordial cadence as it splashes down the side of some newly risen mountain on its way
out to the seas uncharted by human cartography.

After sitting by the river for a very long time, I began to feel that I too have some of the nature of
a river. And for me, there is more joy, more wisdom than I got from fourteen years of academic
life and seven years in a monastery."

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"Yes, but..." I shouted with abandon before stopping to consider what it was that I actually had to
say. "Yes, I hear and perhaps I even understand a little of what you are saying, but what about
the rest of us who need help to see what you have seen? What about consuming the earth in
search of a satisfaction we bury beneath our trinkets? What if all these polluted waters, these
smutty skies, these disappearing species are ineffaceable signs that the track ahead leads directly
over the bluff?

"While I can understand your concerns about our destructive technology, I must confess it does
not trouble me greatly that riding our consuming freight of material culture humanity may arrive
at the bluffs of extinction a little prematurely. It does, however pain me greatly that we may go to
our individual graves or collective extinction never knowing the wisdom of the river nor caring
much for the host of innocent species we take with us.

Although at one time I expended a great deal of energy thinking about such questions, I have not
yet come up with even the faintest hints of how one might teach an understanding of something
that is so beyond our words and concepts to express. This preeminent delusion of our age
suggesting that all of nature is waste until converted into value by the transforming hand of
humanity haunts my dreams. It is a preposterous notion, yet it remains the hallmark, the
irrefutable hysteria of our age. Even here among my river friends I have begun to hear echoes of
a speculation that our vast knowledge compels us to become managers or as so arrogantly
envisioned a few centuries ago "masters and possessors" of nature".

I decided to change the topic. While I was concerned about humanity, I had come, however
unconsciously, seeking answers to personal problems that troubled me deeply.

"What about the grasshopper? I can see that for some reason it meant a great deal to you also. Do
you think it is possible that a species more reflective, more fully 'human' might one day inhabit
the Earth?" No this wasn't the real question, I wanted to ask, but the real question-when I formed
it in my mind-seemed silly, banally obvious, or ridiculously irrelevant. Still I had to ask.
"What...What does it mean to our lives if we are just pawns on the chess board of life, played by
a consciousness and meanings far beyond our own? Can your wise old river answer a question
like that?"

"This grasshopper vision of yours interests me greatly for it speaks playfully of a pain that still
burns deeply in my heart. While I have resigned many attachments, my own part in constructing
some of these insane rationalizations still occasionally returns to haunt my dreams. What I once
called knowledge and more pompously wisdom is, in reality, both a colossal foolish
misunderstanding of Earth's ever evolving, dynamically interrelated natural systems and an
utterly self-destructive vision of human destiny. While you were describing the grasshopper and
his thoughts, I began to wonder whether you had come here to solve your problems or to answer
mine. You were right when you questioned whether the river could teach all I desired to know.
Perhaps it brought you here so we might learn from each other."

I bristled at this strange idea, but David was so deeply immersed in his thought he continued
right on without looking up.

"While I feel in the depth of me an understanding of the river or even a river nature, I remain a
human with human needs, short comings and my own existential problems to solve. Until tonight

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I could argue that yes, the river is wise and I can learn many things from it, but it does not have
consciousness of its wisdom or freedom to act

As who or whatever scripted your grasshopper dream knew so well, nature, itself, is not so
greatly endangered by the actions of humanity no matter how powerful we may consider
ourselves. Nor does it see our precious consciousness as a unique or especially irreplaceable gift.
Perhaps humanity is no freer than the scripted actors of a Shakespearean tragedy written on a
colossal scale by some orthopteran playwright, where blinded by our arrogance, this precious gift
of our consciousness has become a veil of our own words, judgments and concepts which we
shall never penetrate.

Continuing to believe in the myth of control and our misconceived notion of meaning in
ownership, we may never experience the knowledge of our ultimate connection to the ineffably
creative energy flowing so easily through our being. When I think of our industry dominated
culture I see a dog burying with its diggings the very bone it so frantically searches, we seek
meaning, and joy in what we what we can consume and command not realizing it is our vain
attempts to possess and control which hides from our minds the wisdom of the river and our
bodies-we are by the blessing of our existence, filled with an inherent meaning and we need only
allow the song of this living connection to flow through us to know in the deepest fibres of our
being the dance of ecstasy."

Though streams of understanding tears continued to flow down my face, perhaps I nodded
slightly for David stopped speaking abruptly. I attempted to focus my attention, but it was clear
David had no interest in going on. "So you left the monastery?" I tried clumsily to reopen the
conversation. In the stillness of the night I could hear the river lapping gently over the short
rapids below. David sat in silence for some time before beginning again hesitantly.

Yes, I left the monastery to live beside the river. Unlike most of the others that I meet down here
I chose to come here. I have decided that what I need to know is spoken in the language of the
river rather than in the books and words I have left behind. I am thankful for whatever has
brought you here. We have shared a great deal more than a few words by the fire tonight."
Another long silence. Already the eastern horizon was beginning to glow with the dawning of the
new day.

Several times that fall I forsook the joking entertainment of the other yardmen to take my break
along the river, but David had already caught his south bound freight for the winter. By
December the American military was becoming desperate over its inability to prop up a corrupt
regime in Vietnam, and the local draft board noted carefully that I had not returned to my own
academic studies. The new Canadian Prime Minister spoke of welcoming "peace-loving"
citizens. Having listened to the incessant banter in the herder shanties over how those who didn't
like what the U.S. was doing in Southeast Asia should go somewhere else, I packed my few
belongings into the Volkswagen and left.

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Chapter 11

EPIC JOURNEY

________________________________________________________________

...And I have felt

a presence that disturbs me with the joy

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean and the living lair,

And the blue shy....

-William Woodsworth

I want to go soon and live away by the pond, where I shall hear only the wind whispering among
the reeds . It will be a success if I shall have left myself behind.

-Henry David Thoreau

It rained on our Mt. Faith hike. Of course, it did; I'd planned this hike with the Katimavik youth
group(federal government sponsored recovery/independence program) for two months, so-of
course, it rained! But that's not all it did. Over the past year the trails grew twice as steep,
somehow the distance stretched out double its normal length, the trail ran with water from the
longest, wettest spring I can remember, and the bridges all washed out.

Add to that the fact that, this year, I took twice as many people along on the hike as ever before,
and I'm sure you will not object too much if I call our modest twenty-two mile trek into the
wilderness an epic journey. "Epic Journey", the words flashed like a neon light across my mind
and settled ominously over my consciousness as I watched all the bright beaming young bodies
piling out of the Katimavik van. Behind the smiling faces and light talk there were images they
all carried as clearly as though they were cast on a screen. Baked beans, campfire,
marshmallows, hot dogs, long nights of laughter among friends-only a few, busy pulling heavy

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packs from the back of the van, had any thought of the long trail ahead. To those who believe in
destiny I'd say the hike had already begun to develop a character before the first stride was taken.
For the others let's say there was a character or flavor to the hike that seemed to grow with every
step.

At the beginning, the trail is gently rolling and well marked. It's a good time to roll along in your
own individual pace-a time for bird song and idle chatter. Most importantly it is a time to relax
and prepare for the orienteering and steep slopes ahead. But this hike was different. Ten minutes
into the hike there was a silence that seemed to creep up from the rear of the group. Ahead twigs
snapped under foot and long peals of laughter penetrated through the bush. But behind, silence
settled over the trail like the clouds that had begun to droop over the western ridges.

I called ahead for a halt, and we sat to wait. But only the silence came up from behind.
Eventually I went back to find there had been an accident with a knife-a finger cut deeply. The
Katimavik leader went back with the injured girl. Rain began to fall. Still there was 20 miles to
go into the heart of the wilderness with a group of young people some of whom had never been
on a hike before. Already we had lost the group leader.

I took the Katimavik section of the group aside to test their will, but it was clear the rain had
failed to dampen their spirits so , having two nurses with us, we went on. Two miles ahead the
trail turned to shale, and the slope turned up sharply. Yet spirits remained high.

At Morrell Creek the river had grown tired of its traditional course, and now the bridge limply
spanned the only dry ground. We balanced across a small log, built a temporary bridge out of
driftwood, and made it to the other side-miraculously dry. From there the trail turns relentlessly
up. Visions of hot dogs began to fade as the reality of heavy packs began to bite into unseasoned
shoulders. By the time we made camp for the first night there were those who knew they
wouldn't go on the next day. But most importantly, there was a new light beaming in the eyes of
those who strode out of camp the next morning. Canned beans were traded for corn bread.
Already the indomitable will of the wilderness was becoming infectious. We climbed, rested, and
climbed on. On the steep slopes a myriad freshets splashed over the rock and down the trail. On
the little flatland the ground oozed marsh-like under our feet. Wet boots make blistered feet, but
still we hiked on.

At the top, the rain came laced with ice. Concerned about morale I looked about anxiously for
signs of sagging spirits, but found only the smiles of accomplishment beaming back. We tied
down crude tarp shelters and cut dry wood from the lonely larch snags. Later when the storm
broke we steamed ourselves in our drying clothes, told long tales and made promises to return to
this enchanted land where faith in a life filled with joy and adventure still grows tall like a
mountain.

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Chapter 12

MOTHER TIME

___________________________________________________________

There are lessons - small lessons , enormous lessons, lessons that may be crucial to the planet's
persistence as a green and diverse place and also to the happiness of its inhabitants-that nature
teaches and TV can't. Subversive ideas about how much you need, or what comfort is or
Autumn, or time ....

-Bill McKibben

E=MC2. My first year professor scribbled the enigmatic equation on the board and proceeded to
explain the transmutation of mass and energy. From the many facetted forms of the cosmos
Einstein had proclaimed a simple yet cryptic message that would forever change the views of
science. The mechanically driven, Newtonian world of impassive billiard balls exploded before
the dancing, ever changing relations of the relativistic universe.

The remainder of the hour was occupied with various measures and corollaries of Einstein's
sublime meditations. Energy is activated matter; a few grams of matter transmogrifying to its
energetic state can vaporize entire cities along with it. My own thoughts drifted away form the
lecture hall and missed entirely the derivations that would be so important in the following exam.
"E=MC2 " I mused. Living in the post Hiroshima world, the transposition of matter and energy
seemed an obvious, if still dangerously foreboding, truism. But C2? How sublimely simple yet
utterly incomprehensible; the square of the speed of light is the ultimate cosmological constant
balancing the ever vacillating forms of substance and ether. At the end of the hour my stolidly
formal professor slammed his notes shut, and I pried my thoughts back form the distant mists
long enough to drift up the stairs with the retreating swarm of students. Yet my thoughts
remained unflinchingly fastened to the bewildering why of C2. Why the speed of light? Or, more
querulously, what is the speed of light? How can a simple velocity express the unchanging
balance of matter and energy?

What else was said or done that day I can't recall. I remained absorbed with the velocity of light.
Why C2? I went home and wrestled with the abstruse C2 until I drifted off to an uneasy sleep.
Still the inexorable velocity/cosmic constant followed me into a restless dream. A wizen faced,
frizzy, white haired old man stands before a classroom, pointer in hand. On the board, chalked in
full length letters, is the vexingly mysterious E=MC2. The old man stares intently at the class
and taps the inscrutable velocity emphatically with his pointer. Various guesses of his intention
come from the class; 186,000 ft./sec.? The old man shakes his head and taps the C2 more

76
impatiently. Matter and energy are interchangeable? He shakes his head again and keeps tapping.
Sitting among the class, I feel the day's worth of frustrated speculation flooding back over me.
Suddenly I remember another man who, like Einstein, spent his life trying to resolve the chaos of
perception into the clarifying patterns of underlying form.

According to the creation myths of Plato, the creator first subdued chaos into order. Then,
wanting to leave some reminder of the greater unity behind the changing forms of the universe;
the creator, in Plato's words," ... resolved to make a moving image of eternity, and as he set in
order the heavens he made this eternal image have a motion according to number, while eternity
rested in unity; and this is what we call time." Motion represents time, Therefore, the Platonic
dialectic argues, time and the universe must coexist. Centuries later the pompous, demystifying
philosophy of the materialists would claim that time was a detached, absolute measure unrelated
to motion or anything else; marked only by its own inexorable rhythm. But, this philosophy of
the absolute is exactly what Einstein sought to refute. E=MC2 reasserts the interrelatedness of
time. E=MC2 is-a triad-of matter, energy, and time!" I shout dreamily, beginning a long train of
thought. C2= E/M is more than a mere physical relation or simple numerical statement. C is not
just the speed of light, or 186,000 ft./sec., or any metric conversion. C is the runic like sign from
a man who spent his life underscoring the numinous with his mathematics.

Matter and energy can be transmuted, but the force that fires all existence with a living breath is
Time! The old man of my dream smiles broadly, puts down his stick, and the dream fades. I
awake suddenly, feeling I have come to a deep, precipitous canyon and crossed over. The next
day my philosophy professor (I never mentioned a word of these nebulous musings in physics)
will smile condescendingly and hand me a stack of expositions on time and motion, but already
the dream has sparked a life long fascination with Time.

Elated I lay quietly while my half waking thoughts race on with this enthralling new discovery.
E=MC2 is most importantly a statement of ontology. Time is the Mother. Time-ubiquitous,
immutable, infinite time; dark primordial force; ineffable source of our most profound myths;
impenetrable truth beyond the grasp of our most perceptive science; hiding/moving between the
stars; veil to the swirling rhythms of eternity-is, at last, The Mother of existence.

Since then it has always interested me that humanity, not even a twinkle in the eye of time,
believes it can disembowel ephemeral hunks of time from eternity and own them for itself-that it
can tear some small fragment from the flesh of time and contain its meaning in the picayune
ticking of a clock. Time is considers to be a currency which individuals can horde or draw on in
need, never realizing the only time anyone really gets is the moments of his experience which
cannot be exchanged. Indeed it seems the only temporal transactions allotted to humanity are
withdrawals, and the faster one moves, the more labour saving devices one employs, the less
time one will ever actually experience or enjoy. Like Plato and his metaphysical cave, we will
never really know time and will most certainly never "have" time. "At best, we can occasionally
catch some tiny convoluted image of time and enjoy it for a moment.

Only occasionally in what seems an otherwise harried life have I glimpsed that greater time
hiding just beyond the horizon like an orchestrating wizard behind the curtains of eternity. One
dark evening I lay in a high alpine meadow of British Columbia's coastal mountains with a friend
following the cadence of the aurora borealis as it played its gigantic rhythms across the sky. The
first lights of the evening were the tall sentinel like pillars of green and red light that perched on

77
the northern ridges. Then long, diffuse, amorphous pluses of pure white light trickled into all the
stellar spaces and withdrew into a fervid ball of energy that strobed out dancing beams of light,
searching as though someone or something were lost in the darkest reaches of space. Suddenly,
boom, boom, boom, the heavens pounded with great balls of light as though heralding some
enormously grandeurous or cataclysmic event.

Lying in the valley, gazing awestruck into the splashing, moving lights of this beautiful summer
night, I understood well the emotions that caused primitive people to postulate powers far
beyond his own and fall in worship before the splendor of such powerful natural events. For
Plato time, the faint image of eternity, could be seen most clearly in the circulating planets, but
for a brief moment that summer I felt the shadow of the great One smiling through the patterns of
the ever shifting lights. I felt much closer to Mother Time then than I have ever been. Time is not
the ephemeral interfacing of a few metallic parts, nor is it merely the dull measure of the rise and
fall of ages. Time is the multifarious, ever changing Mother. Like an orphan child returned to his
mother's knee I lay in the meadow watching the changing lights, enchanted with this small
glimpse of nature's most primordial force as it danced out some tiny repertoire of the vast
rhythms it infuses into all things material.

Late in the evening the lights dimmed and the throbbing light seemed to ebb out slowly like the
faint and weakening pulse of a dying man. Hours later I looked long into the spaces between the
stars. Always before I had seen the spreading stars as measures of the real substance of the
universe striving in its luminosity to fill with some meaning the cavernous depths of nothing
which surround us. But on this night I looked most intently between the stars and after staring for
some time I began to see stars as only small flagposts staking in some feeble way the vast
reaches of time.

One other occasion on a hike with friends into the Mulvey basin area of Canada's Valhalla
wilderness I had a fleeting glimpse of the dancing marionette of time moving to a rhythm wholly
unsynchronized with the whirring of our time saving machines or whistle of our all too punctual
factories.

We began our journey with something less than explicit instructions. Turn below Slocan Lake.
Travel long past the dwellings of those who live in the valley. Go beyond where the trees thin
and the plants that remain keep close to the earth; then begin looking for the mountain of two
equals (Prestly). Press through the dense bush between Prestly and the great gate (Gimli) and you
will come to a path cleared by the snows. Follow this path past the last maimed trees; past the
last of the stubborn bushes; through the fields of flowers which annually give back their warm
smiles to the sun that sires them.

Climb high beyond where the last of the hearty heathers eke out a meagre living. higher yet you
will come to a pass where that which lives grows only as a film on mighty stones forged and
thrown up from the depths of the earth long before the dawn of the age of humanity. From this
high pass you can look north over "The Valhallas" (Noregian for Garden of the Gods).

Despite the rather vague instructions we made it. Not on the first try nor on the first day, nor by
the most direct route, but we made it. What a thoroughly enchanted land to look down upon.
Judging by the records of others who have been there all seem to agree, the Valhallas bear their
name well. Sitting on the Midguard col, gazing down into the valley it is easy to imagine that the

78
peaks surrounding the basin are, indeed, the stone visages of high born Norwegian gods
bewitched into their stony outlooks by the alchemical vapours of this stunning basin. Dag, Gimli,
Gladsheim, Asguard, Midguard stand transfixed, holding their silent, unending vigil.

Silent and unmoving they stand, but after sitting long enough one's imagination begins to drift
and a different picture of these stony crags may arise. Mulvey glacier moans softly in the
background, a gentle groaning which tells only of its acceptance of the ages but nothing of the
power which it holds frozen in its depths. A careful ear may hear the murmur of the wind as it
moves gently across the basin and flashes broken mirror images of light from the face of the
turquoise lakes. It whispers quietly today, but on another day it returns in a different mood and
lashes out savagely leaving only the stony gods above and the blowing snow below. Look down
on the flowing heather glens and the warm greens speak softly of the coming night's sleep. Only
the height of the stunted growth below tells of the fierce strength with which life here must cling
to the earth in order to have another season in this valley.

The sun dances brightly on the water, radiates its warmth from the rock bluffs and filters softly
down into the heather. In another season the sun will have lost its power in the valley and even
when the clouds momentarily part allowing some of the light through it will not move the ice
crystals. Seasons come seasons go. The marmot runs happily over the heather, sings his shrill
song in one season and burrows deeply beneath the snows in another. And the stone-faced gods
remain unmoved. How long they have stood there. How long they will stand is an expanse of
time unfathomable in terms of the short lives of human experience. Yet hidden in the crystalline
structure of these ancient rocks are hints that the land stretching out before one's eye today is not
entirely unchanging. Within the structure of the crystal is written the fragmentary story of an
even older sea. In an age when all of the land was only a barren, naked faced desert and life was
little more than timorous fragments of existence warmed and buffeted in shallow seas these
mighty stone gods were mere grains of sand rocking aimlessly to the rhythm of primordial tides.

Mother Time changed step slightly and gigantic crustal plates collided thrusting whole ranges of
metamorphosed sea sand up to tower above the land. The barren land greens as life breaks from
the shell of its ocean-borne, embryonic nurture. While the mountains are still shaking the
placental remains of their sea bed birth the dawning light of the age of reptiles appears on the
horizon. Written somewhere on the mighty shoulders of these now towering peaks is recorded
the cataclysmic events that brought on the mass extinctions leaving only a few bones to tell of
the great monsters that once roamed over the earth. Mixed with the sedimentary story of these
extinctions is also the record of an insectivorous tree shrew, progenitor to the mammals, that
bore live young and nourished them on the milk of its own breast.

Suddenly, like the changing lights of an aurora, the primordial fires fade to a flicker. The
galloping spread of life slows to a few hesitant steps. A large brained ape stand on his hind legs
contemplatively holding a stone and looking anxiously about over the African savanna. Ice-the
metre of the coming ages-grows ever deeper in the high mountain valleys. The earth breathes out
a long sigh and great fingers of ice begin to move over the land freezing old forms into
crystalline structures. the earth breathes in and the ice retreats, leaving behind new faces on a
changed earth. The Norse gods, Dag, Gmili, Gladshiem, Midgruard, Asguard are now carved as
wizened visages in the grizzled stone bluffs of the Valhallas. As the ice melts back even further
dwarf spruce grow on the wet mineral soil. Heather and wildflowers return to the valley bottom.
Birds pull the dried remains of the previous year's grasses preparing for the nesting season.

79
The ice crawls out and withdraws to a long, sonorous, nearly sermpiternal rhythm. Yet even
within this ancient rhythm there is the changing metres of the years to which is added the
dancing brightness of the seasons. The seasons in turn are splashed with the changing days and
their variations. Within the days there are hours and moments. And within a moment I feel an
eternity stretch out before me as I sit on this mountain col contemplating this beautiful valley still
moving to a tune untouched by the screeching tires and bustling life on the other side of the
ridge.

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Chapter 13

MT. ST. HELLENS

_______________________________________________________________

Dissipative structures far from equilibrium such as cells of complexity forming in heated fluids
argue for a inexorable force pushing life and humanity to further evolution and complexity not
decay and death.

-Ilya Prigogine

May 18, 1980, the top of Mt. St. Helens spontaneously vaporized itself. The media filled with
pictures of volcanic dust violently billowing into the atmosphere. Such a grandiose display of the
forces of nature struck awe and terror in the hearts of those who usually go about their lives
blissfully unaware of the incipient power of nature. Events such as volcanoes, earthquakes, giant
tidal waves, and the thundering strength of cascading snow all cause us to stop and consider the
tenuous peace which we have struck with the forces of earth.

Equally ponderous, though more quietly undertaken, are the subtle, constructive acts with which
nature balances these violently destructive forces. Stop for a moment, draw in a deep breath hold
it briefly, then slowly release the exhausted air. You have just participated in a miracle, the
strength of which easily rivals the intensity of exploding volcanoes. The oxygen itself, which is
osmotically exchanged between the tissues of your lungs, is the invisible dust of a quiet but
revolutionary explosion which has shaped the face of the earth.

If we were to crawl down the tunnel of time, past the age of unknowing giant reptiles, past the
silent world of giant unmoving Carboniferous swamps, past the ancient sleepy world of a billion
and a half years ago, we would eventually come to a very empty earth moved only by the blind
forces of lifeless tides, the shifting forces of an unstable crust, the angry spewing of volcanic
debris, and the driving winds which grate against barren, twisted formations of rock. If, for a
moment, you were permitted to stand on a crest and survey this awesome wasteland you would
soon appreciate the miraculous nature of our refreshing, oxygen-rich breath. In the world of 2 1/2
billion B.C.E. there was, in fact, no free oxygen to inhale.

While the molten mass out of which the substance of Earth congealed is believed to have been
born in the heralding explosions of a disintegrating star, it is our, come-lately, enveloping layer
of oxygen that sustains these small windows of consciousness through which we look back into
the timeless voids.

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Like an idea suppressed, the first primitive proteins lay for unmeasured ages in warm continental
sea shelves fermenting a revolution which would one day surpass all other native forces in
shaping the development of the earth. Eventually the proteins gave birth to the algae. The tides
still beat against barren rock but within the seas new unique forms plotted an invasion which
would one day not return with the tides. Already these ancestral plants contributed to small
amounts of free oxygen which began to drift with the ammoniated and sulfurous winds.

Once on land, life began to bloom momentously under the blessing of the sun. pores and
rhizomes developed and the green spread over the gray face of the earth. Free oxygen moved up
to 10% of the earth's gasses and new vigorous, high energy forms of life became possible.

The sea prepared a new invasion. It now spawned a life form that no longer took its sustenance
directly from the transformation of sun rays and there appeared those who found a new
ecological niche generating their life source from the waste gas of this photosynthetic process.
Ironically, the wider these forms diverged the greater their interdependence. With the emergence
of angiosperms(flowering plants) these flirtatious exchanges between plants and animals grew
into a passionate embrace. Plants began to hide their seeds in succulent fruits to attract the
palates of the animals. Animals sought the nourishment of this new delightful, high energy food
and at the same time helped to propagate the plants. The rocks crumbled beneath the combined
strength of these intermingling forces. The land became fecund with a living soil. The oxygen
content of the air moved up again The living fire leapt higher. There was energy now to sustain
more than just the struggle for survival.

Out of this new potential the ape found time to stand on his hind feet and look humbly about at
the wonder of it all. In the next geologic moment you and I draw a miraculous breath and ponder
joyously over that ancient revolution. A pompous St. Helens is seen in a more humbling
perspective.

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Chapter 14

THE OLD FORD

_______________________________________________________________

Nature doth thus kindly heal every wound. By the mediation of a thousand little mosses an fungi,
the most unsightly objects become radiant of beauty...seen with the eye of the poet , as God sees
them, all things are alive and beautiful.

-Henry David Thoreau

One day last week while the road still defined the border between my place and the land of fog
below, I decided to bundle up the boys, call the dog, and go out for a short walk. By the time we
actually got started the grass was beginning to glisten in a vaporous sun which had already
crossed the billowy fog of the valley bottom and was slowly making its way back up the hillside.
The uncut grasses on the lower edge of the field hung down soggy and limp as though exhausted
by the efforts of standing on frozen guard during the night. In the upper part of he field and in the
shadows the blades of grass still stood erect and gave gentle hissing sounds as we brushed
against them.

Grouse teased the dog by flying nosily in front of his nose. Leaves were beginning to fall quietly
down from the already half-barren trees. Along with the leaves a gentle mist was also falling
from the thawing branches. Perhaps it was the frost which held both the dew and the leaves . In
any case my home would not long remain hidden in the woods.

The four of us continued on, not sure of where we were going, content to enjoy wherever the
path might lead. As we were just passing out of the birch grove and into the upper meadow I
happened to glance back down the two parallel ruts to which I have presumptuously given the
name "driveway". There sitting quietly in the shadows was the old (1965) Ford which I retired
about two months earlier. I had parked it there after a classified ad failed to turn up any
interested customer. Apparently I was not the only one who could no longer afford to run a cheap
car that guzzled lots of expensive gas.

However, it wasn't the car or anything I had done which caught my eye this frosty morning.
Rather it was nature which had been so industriously at work that held my attention so strikingly.
Obviously nature didn't want a shiny, cold, lifeless car parked out on the edge of a living green
meadow and set about to change things. Already the car was completely camouflaged in leaves.
Bright yellow leaves of birch covered the hood and trunk. Drifts of tamarack needles rolled over
the wiper blades. In a special effort some leaves froze to the sides of the car. As the ground was

83
warming around the car, a mist began to shimmer up from the earth, and I could easily imagine
the intentions nature held for my vehicle.

Over the winter the leaves would decay and melt down into cracks and low spots. In spring algae
drifting on the wind would find the slightest trace of humic acid as a good reason to colonize.
The algae would etch itself ever more securely down into the metallic fibre of my car. Eventually
the leaves, algae, and dust would commingle into a living soil. Seeds would germinate and roots
run even deeper into the dark structures of my poor vehicle. Who knows what exotic species
nature might spawn in the warm greenhouse interior.

I shook myself a bit. Things weren't going well for my vehicle or for my modest but real
investment in its operating potential. I extended my arm and brushed a few half-frozen leaves off
the fender. As I looked down into the cold ice-print of a leaf I began to see a further irony. Just
as nature called back its vital energy from the branch and caused the leaf to fall, so the vital
energy was being withdrawn from my poor Ford. Already the gentle frost of increasing gas
prices told clearly of the freeze to come. Within a few years it would cost $100 to fill the tank of
such gas guzzlers. In a short time the roads will be as bare of these old Fords as my trees would
be bare of leaves in the next week. If only the Ford had the grace to turn bright red before it went
away. I'd sell it quick!

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Chapter 15

A CHRISTMAS PAST

_______________________________________________

Save us from weak resignation to violence,

teach us that restraint is the

highest expression of power,

that thoughtfulness and

tenderness are the mark of the strong.

-Christian Prayer

After these many years I now feel free to recount the tale of a distant Christmas which I never
have, and never shall forget. The story centres on George, a man possessed of a most effusive
optimism that, at times, bore him up and would have carried him off into some greater and
happier world were it not also for the noose bound to his leg and fastened securely to the earth
below. And the worst of it was that often the more the optimism bore George up, the tighter the
noose seemed to fasten its grip about his leg and weigh him down.

When I met George we were patrolmen on the Pacific Great Eastern Railway (the British
Columbia Railway today); we ran little yellow "speeders" five to ten minutes ahead of the long
heavy freights twisting their way down the railway grade that had been chiseled out of the banks
of the Green River canyon. The speeders rattled between the poorly gauged tracks and coughed
and spewed oily fumes into the cab. But we were all glad to take what pittance the company
would hand out because, even then, jobs were hard to come by and out of a crew of six, only
George intended to stay on for any length of time.

I remember walking down the main street of the small, everyone-knows- you, village of
Pemberton, embarrassed, George at my side. "Norm, we should have clean, pressed, blue
uniforms. And they should have yellow badges that say PGE Patrolman." He was so happy as he
ranted on about how much he had always wanted to work for the railway, and his feet seemed to
almost dance as he went on to tell me about what a great company it was. I just wanted to make
it through the winter without getting bounced into the frothing waters of Green River. In the
spring, I'd go home to my farm; and maybe someday the speeder ring would leave my ears.

85
George was not always so cheerful, and as the heavy coastal snow settled ever more deeply
around our lonely company trailer, George's spirits sagged and the glitches in his conversation
became ever more frequent. He would start off talking about one thing, then suddenly the
conversation would end and start over somewhere else-someplace and time that had nothing to
do with what had just been said, like a child's graphite slate that is abruptly cleared with a stroke
of the cover leaf and some entirely new project begun. Something was troubling George deeply,
but he couldn't talk about it.

December 22, many years ago, we were down to a skeleton crew for the Christmas holiday
season. The only other patrolman was running ahead of a late night freight, leaving George and I
asleep in the trailer. Around one o'clock in the morning George began to mutter-lowly at first-but
increasingly loud as he repeated himself. "I didn't do it, I didn't do it...." As he went on his voice
rose to a shout. Concerned about both George and my sleep, I went over to see if I could rouse
George from his nightmare. As I shook him, George sat bolt up; he was trembling horribly, but
he began to recognize me and his surroundings. Looking me in the eye he began in a broken
voice, "Norm, I've never told you or anyone else around here, but I've seen things no man should
have to see-villages burning and children running and dying before the rattling guns." He
clutched at my arm. "I was there; I saw it; but, honestly, I never did it." At that he let go of my
arm and returned to the earlier chant, "I didn't do it," he muttered between sobs.

I've never been trained as any kind of confessor so I had no idea of what to say. I only comforted
him as best I could and suggested he take some time off and go home to see his wife and one-
year old son for Christmas. To this he readily agreed, and the next day he hopped the freight
south.

New Year's day the passenger train stopped in front of the work trailer. The baggage door slid
open and out jumped George. With the luggage came several large boxes. "Happy New Year,"
he said turning to the patrolman. "I really appreciate you guys working Christmas for me, and I
got sumthun for ya. Inside the trailer we pulled open the boxes to find a whole roasted chicken
and bottle of wine for each of us. After cooking for weeks on an old defunct oil stove that
wouldn't set a medium egg, we were all delighted.

Later George called me aside. "Ya know, being home with the family was real important-
especially this year; my boy's first real Christmas. Hope I didn't disturb ya too much the other
night. Guess I was pretty depressed. Ya know I came here (Canada) to forget-but I guess it'll
never leave me altogether. Still Christmas was really good for me." I nodded with interest hoping
he might continue so I could understand more of this increasingly enigmatic man.

"The dream the other night was overpowering, but I hope now it may never come again like that.
I meant what I said, ya know? I was there, and I couldn't-or didn't-try to stop it, but I emptied my
gun into the dust. It has haunted me ever since. You've probably noticed that I tend to end some
of my conversations in the middle of nowhere. It's just I get close to something I don't want to
remember, and I get all bound up and run from it, then I find myself talking about something else
entirely. Ah-but-Norm, this Christmas was good for me. Ya should'a seen my little boy playing
with the toys-actually he liked the boxes they came in best of all. It was sort of disappointing for
a while. I mean Shirley and I spent well over two hundred dollars on little Jeffry. We had great
time going from store to store trying to decide just what would make this first Christmas with our
son the most delightful event imaginable! But he didn't even give the bright red, three foot fire

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engine with the full force siren as much as a pat before he crawled into the box. With a little
coaxing he crawled back out and right pasted the giant panda bear to begin passionately tearing
up the mountain of Xmas wrap next to the tree."

"Well, George," I began with a knowing grin, "sounds like you and Jeffry had a pretty normal
Christmas. It seems that it takes kids a long time to learn that the value of things is more in the
price we pay for them than in the sensuous delight we experience in playing with them." My god,
the cynic within still spoke candidly in unguarded moments. However recognizing the
inappropriateness of such derisive remarks in the face of George's enthusiasm for his son's first
Christmas, I smiled as gently as is possible for an old scoffer, and the remark passed almost
unnoticed.

"Then the little fella smiled and reached out for me and his mom. I tell you, Norm, this son of
mine has made a real difference in my life." George's eyes were misting heavily. It seemed likely
he had missed my supercilious remark entirely.

"And some people came to the door singing. Shirley even sang along with them for awhile. It
seemed like the whole world was at peace, and we could somehow measure our wealth in what
we had to give to each other. All the quarreling Shirley and I went through during the past two
years seemed to melt away. I'm thinking, hopefully, we'll make a real family yet. It's a magical
season-really it is. Even when things or the world seem to have gone so wrong or become so
horrible, it gives ya hope to believe things'll get better. If only we could bottle up a little of the
goodness form this season and save it as salve for some of the injuries we're all bound to suffer
in the months ahead. If only I could take some..."

He broke off suddenly there, then began again-excitedly about how he had made a New Year's
resolution to try to extend the Christmas season by two days every year until it included the
whole year. George was soaring again, and I resolved to do nothing that would bring him down. I
didn't remind him that in two days the Christmas truce would be over and the war would go on.
How could I? Christmas is, indeed, a magical season and despite my oft expressed cynicism,
there is still enough hope in my heart to hope and wish such exuberant good will could be
extended a little longer.

No one wishes more than I that this story would end here on this upbeat note of joy and hope. In
deed, when this Christmas story was first published in the Grand Forks Gazette for my weekly
column it did end right here. But with you, dear reader, I have engaged in a more forthright
discussion of at least some inner truth as best I can make out its indistinct outlines.

Many years later I spent a weeklong conference listening to the fascinating ideas of renowned
dream analyst Jeremy Taylor. According to Jeremy, principle number one in understanding the
enigmatic language of dreams is: "All dreams come in the service of health and wholeness." If
painful past experiences arise in your dream material, then a self unutterably larger and more
intimately knowing than your socially constructed ego has decided that you are ready to deal
with it. Even nightmares, suggests Jeremy, are that larger voice saying, "Wake up your attention!
It is frighteningly important that you realize that the way ahead, your continued growth and
unfolding demand that you deal with these issues now. Be forgiving, be gentle, but recognize
that these stumbling blocks to your full awareness and understanding must be removed.

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Perhaps if I had sat in on Jeremy's dream circles before I met George I would not have been so
quick to reassure him in the night of his nightmares. Perhaps I would not have said, "It's OK." I
would not have been so anxious to see him forget the nightmares and return to his sleep.
According to Jeremy we all have an inner compulsion to grow to the full height of our
awareness. We have an inner guide that helps us with this, that smoothes, delays, reschedules our
progress but never falters in the belief that we are here to become fully aware and actualized
human beings.

There comes a time when we must grow, we must know and become fully alive. To ignore those
most powerful dreams is to enter into a great danger. As often happens in those moments when
the importance of the immediate experience is so overwhelming and the inner resonance so
strong, I remember with utter lucidity the authority of the words, the clear feeling tones of the
voice, the gentle, warm, embracing place, the convincing presence of Jeremy Taylor as he
explained that in his experience, "When your inner guide speaks saying that you are now ready
to explore and deal with these issues, you simply cannot respond with a polite 'No thank you, I'll
pass on this until tomorrow or the next day. It is as if (Jeremy always raises his voice with these
'as if 'statements to indicate that though the source of the voice is not fully understood, the
message is none-the-less utterly important) It is as if, the universe has decided that these
moments of growth and realization are so absolutely vital that to turn from them is like a baby
with its head already crowning in the birth canal turning to the delivery room doctor and saying,
'Sorry, I'm not ready for this tough life out here. Please send me back to the womb from which I
came'. It can't be done! To turn back in the face of your own internal imperative to grow is
utterly destructive. The path leading forward to self-actualization is a one way street. "

George never again spoke to me of his nightmares. We spoke of the railway and the envied
yellow badges. I told him of leaving my California home and I began to speak of the haunting
dream that led me across the border. But George began immediately an animated discussion of
how late the Budd Car had been the day before-coming, at last, in the middle of a shift change at
the patrol shack. He occasionally hinted that he did not mind the weeks spent in isolating at the
work trailer or the overtime. "I like to feel welcome when I get home, and it feels good to be out
the door while the welcome lasts." he said uneasily one day. I got the feeling that the Christmas
spirit was waning considerably at home.

Toward the end of January the weather turned bitterly cold for over a week. The thermometer
read a bone chilling -30 degrees F. and the wind shook the trailer like a giant passenger plane
revving for a take-off. George caught me between shifts and asked if I would consider taking a
few extra shifts now in exchange for days off later in February. I was, however, little inclined to
do a double shift in canvas draped speeder during such dangerously cold weather. "Norm," he
pleaded, " as you know, when it gets so cold the sap in the trees freezes and bursts the bark.
Exploding Birch bark sounds like gun fire-rapid gun fire sometimes, and sitting alone at a turn
around way out in the middle of nowhere, I get to thinking of things I don't want to remember."
George's veins stood out rigidly in his neck, his head was strained sideways, he looked deeply
distressed. "Look, George," I said angrily, "if you need the time off-book off. The railway can
find someone to fill in. At -30 I was determined not to spend 16 hours out in the cold. George
didn't book off-his strange pride got in the way of his good sense I suspect.

Twice that week I was asked by railway engineers if I knew where the patrolman had been the
night before. Puzzled I inquired of George who informed me that he had encountered

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intermittent problems in contacting the freights by radio. Then one morning on showing up for a
morning shift there was a message from the Roadmaster, "I'll be arriving at noon with a new man
to train for the afternoon patrol"-George's position. Later that day I learned that a southbound
freight had become stuck in a slide because there was no patrolman and one of the work crew
that had been called out noticed George siting in the cookhouse drinking coffee.

Many months later, after I had left the railway and gone back to my farm, I was sitting in the
Pemberton Cafe one day when the Stationmaster came in. He smiled and sat down across from
me. After a few saluatory exchanges, he lowered his voice and asked confidentially if I had heard
about George. No, I hadn't. My home is a long dusty, deeply potholed dirt road north of
Pemberton and I tend to live a very solitary life, I explained redundantly.

"Well, about a month ago, his wife came to see me. She wanted to know why the railway wasn't
supplying the forms George need in order to get compensation while he convalesced from the
accident. 'What accident?' I asked, trying to figure things out in a hurry. 'Well, the accident when
he got so broken up in the slide and had barely been able to get out and flag down the train.' she
explained. I hardly knew what to say, but-in the end-I decided she deserved to know the truth
and besides she'd have to find out one day anyway."

"So how did Shirley take the news?" I asked realizing for the first time how much losing the
patrolmen's position had meant to George.

"Well, she had a long cry, but then she told me she had suspected something like this had
happened when the illusive compensation didn't arrive month after month. When she left I
couldn't tell whether she was more hurt or angry."

A month later on my way to pick up supplies in Vancouver, I stopped by Whistler to visit

George and Shirley at the trailer. It didn't feel comfortable, but it seemed important. It's beyond
our Western consciousness to understand how the energy arising in even the telling of a dream
can create soulful bondings among even the most unlikely candidates. I cared for George deeply,
though even today I could not explain the grounds of it. Shirley came to the door and invited me
in. George had left on the day she returned from Pemberton. Surprisingly it had been a
wrenching though not angry parting. She still loved him, she said. He could be so alive and
present one moment and then so distant, crazy and lost the next, she wept in the telling.

I took to stopping by the trailer whenever I made a trip to Vancouver. Months and then a year
went by. Neither Shirley nor I nor anyone we knew ever heard of him again though one
acquaintance of his believes he remembers seeing him heading down the trail to the bluffs above
the Chiqumous River just after he left home. Shirley tried desperately to find him through all the
contacts she knew of and finally made inquiries to the RCMP. But he was gone without a trace.
Whether he emerged in some new life south of the border, or whether he lived, we were never
able to determine.

But I still remember the incomparable joy in his eye when he told me of that first Christmas with
his son who is now a grown man and when I last heard from him, a dedicated father. And I
remember in my heart hope-the hope for himself and Shirley and Jeffry and for at least a little
expansion of peace and goodwill each year. It was a beautiful hope and I am now utterly

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convinced that when your inner guide (spirit) speaks, its time to sit down and listen. All else can
wait-our hope, our lives rest on the listening.

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Chapter 16

HELLO, TERRIBLE WINTER

____________________________________________________________

Our normal waking consciousness is but one special type of consciousness, while about it parted
from it by the filmiest of screens lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may
go through life without suspecting their existence, but apply the requisite stimulus and at a touch
they are there in all their completeness...

-William James

Hello, Terrible Winter.

You have come at last-

Not at all unannounced.

The September wind and early frost

Whispered of your restless sleep.

The still, bright coolness of October

Spoke clearly of your waking.

The Sun retreated below the southern ridge;

As I heard your, yet distant, call

In the crystals that broke beneath my feet

In the morning.

Frightened, I ran before you,

Heaping the wood pile even higher.

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An early snow that wouldn't fade;

Frosty teeth claimed my water supply.

Another trip to town

For more warm, woolen blankets.

Barren trees withdraw their life source to the root.

The North Wind rages

Against my feeble stove pipe.

My friends curse you in the long night.

You are a timeless symbol of The End.

Those who survive the long months

Will live again in the spring.

Leave them in their houses;

Leave them with their curses.

You are my best friend.

For you I have laid up stores.

For you I have become strong.

Howl Terrible Winter!

Glass the lake;

Fill the land with ice crystal,

And I will come out to greet you.

For you I must bend into the wind.

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For you I must force my foot forward.

You have stolen the fire from the sun,

And fueled the fire that burns within.

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Chapter 17

NEW YEAR'S MORNING

________________________________________________________________

I think of those who have loved me,

Of all the mountains I have climbed

Of all the seas I have swum in.

The evil of the world sinks.

My own sin and troubles fall away

Like...falling leaves...held

Eternally in summer air.

-Kenneth Rexroth

Having spent a quiet New Year's eve, I rose early on New Year's day. Sleepily, I stumbled
toward the kitchen and drew off enough draft from the well to adequately provide for my
morning Inka. I have given up coffee, once the central theme of this ritual, but my body has
grown accustomed to the process and will not allow my eyelids to fully open until I have, at
least, gone through the basic motions. After savouring the steaming Inka for all the possible hints
of that grudgingly discarded aromatic bean, I shook the night's dreaming further from my head
and turned to the radio in hopes of broadening my consciousness of the world into which I was
waking.

Unfortunately, being New Year's day the radio was too preoccupied with the passing year to
have much to say about the day dawning before me. The few stations which I could squawkingly
tune in from the sputtering background seemed wholly concerned with one of two themes. Either
they were jabbering on in their hyped salesmen voices about hit records that I hoped would be
chucked out with the old year, or they were droning on in serious deep voices over the lists of
disasters of the preceding year. Occasionally they would interrupt the roll call of layoffs, military
takeovers, arms build up, budget cuts, pollution, interest rates, and slumping economies to
solemnly announce that in the opinion of some important official the new year would most
certainly hold more of the same.

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I yawned heavily and-with a gleam in my eye-I remembered a small stash of coffee I kept hidden
in the fridge (in case of emergency). My hand reached involuntarily out toward the refrigerator
door. "Up!" As though my very thoughts had been read, a small voice from the bedroom fortified
my sagging will and abruptly interrupted my degenerate intentions.

"Up!" It came again, but more insistent. I had to act fast or there would be three other small
people with not-so-small voices to contend with all at once. I thought of my wife who hadn't
heard the radio or the voice and was still resting quietly. Remembering it to be New Year's
morning, I set aside a sudden call for help and turned quickly toward the bedroom. My oldest son
and our young guests were beginning to stir slightly but still had their heads down and were
quiet.

Standing up fully and stretching out his arms from the crib in the back of the room my two year
old beamed out a joyous, "Goodis mornin, Daddy!" My spirits soared beyond any possible coffee
incited levels. I tiptoed around the mats on the floor, and-while I lifted up my son and drew him
close-my attention drifted out through the window above his bed to the day just breaking outside.
The sun which shone brightly across the valley was still not fully up on our eastern slope of the
valley, but already the snow was beginning to dance and sparkle with an early morning winter
song. A gentle stir moved in the birches and the light midwinter snow resting on the arched
trunks and larger branches occasionally broke free triggering a downy avalanche and leaving
behind a dance of cascading ice crystals. It was easy to imagine that life stored in the root of the
birch trees set off these events by sneaking up to look for some hint that the season might be
changing. Winter was, despite the ambition of the trees, still well frozen in about the house, but
it's nice to think that, even in January, life already grows restless with its wintry mood and
dreams of sending out yellow-green shoots to give colour to returning bird song.

I slipped a toque on my son and carried him, in his sleeper, out onto the deck. I pointed to where
the sun was cresting, then we both turned past the sleeping birches to where the river valley was
stretching and stirring its blanket of mirror-crystals under the direct rays of the ascending sun.

I drew in a deep breath and held my son even tighter. He smiled broadly and though no verbal
New Year's greeting passed between us, we looked forward with joy and anticipation to the
coming seasons.

It is strange how these moments of epiphany arise, one seemingly insignificant event triggers a
whole cascade of effects and suddenly the fog of our everyday lives lifts. The significance of gas
bills, the looming meeting at work, the bank statement, the kids dental appointments, the garage
that desperately needs straightening, waifts away like valley fog on the wings of an August Sun.
The distant horizons appear abruptly out of the cloud and we can see everything around with
such marvelous clarity. A child at play looks unpredictably our way and smiles full in our face; a
summer storm passes and we see with fresh eyes the transforming vitality of our place within the
web of life; the hand of a partner or friend slips unexpectedly into ours; all the greatly overrated
fluff falls away and we truly see those transforming values which inspire our lives with genuine
grace and meaning and significance.

It is strange also how at other times we can so easily delude ourselves into believing that the
news coming over the radio is, in fact, the bounds, bonds and only meaningful reality of our
lives; that the advertising hype presented on the television is about matters of value-that Coke is

95
it. When we know deep in our hearts that Coke isn't it, and Pampers don't make dancing/happy
children, and Cheese Sticks *tm will not make us a loveable people or caring parents. Or at least
that is the way I see it. Such utter rubbish about the needs and lives of human beings is at least as
much garbage as the mountains of waste we generate while consuming these so-called "goods".
If all these advertised products had any inherent worth they would be presented for what they
actually are and do rather than selling them as adjuncts of a romantically glamorized fantasy land
life.

Recently I looked up the word consume in the dictionary and was shocked to read such a
forthright definition. My American Heritage Dictionary says:

consume (k…n-s›m") v. consumed, con·sum·ing, con·sumes. --tr. 1. To eat or drink up; ingest.
2.a. To expend; use up. b. To purchase for direct ownership. 3. To waste; squander. 4. To destroy
totally; ravage. 5. To absorb; engross. --intr. 1. To be destroyed, expended, or wasted. 2. To
purchase economic goods and services.

It is not the definition of consumption presented on our TVs, radios and newspapers. What they
call information is really an elaborate deception concealing the effects and most importantly the
meaning of all this consumption of our planet and our selves. Even if we all suddenly switched to
using ten percent ethanol in our gasoline while a hundred million new motorists begin driving
their roomy new Toyota to work in China, there will be no reduction in the cloudy smut that
hangs over our cities or in the galloping retreat of our ice caps.

But ninety- percent gasoline fueled, privately owned vehicles makes for a wonderful opportunity
to advertise images of verdant waves of grain and scenic vistas. And while such deceptions have
incredible power over our consciousness of the effects of our consuming lifestyles on the natural
world, they are even more devastating on our perceptions of self-our knowledge of who we
really are and what it is that forms the grounds of genuine happiness. Coke is it only if we allow
ourselves to become nothing more than a manufactured image of a life-if we lose contact with
the values that all peoples before us have considered to be the most precious and defining
characteristics of human existence.

Love, not Coke is it-the ultimate grounds of human beingness and joy; that most valuable
product which we should be manufacturing in all our hearts and advertising to all the world
around. Silly? It sounds silly; it becomes increasingly silly in our advertising hyped world to
speak of values that cannot be packaged; but they are real and they can still be more
constructively powerful in their effects than the destruction unleashed by the bomb dropped over
Hiroshima or the monster machines which level whole forests like a lawnmower over a
residential lot on a Sunday afternoon.

Two years after the snowy New Year's morning with my one-year-old son, I woke rather
exhaustedly on a warm spring morning. I had spent the previous evening hurriedly cranking out
an article that was due by 10 o'clock this morning. Stumbling automatically through a list of
morning chores so I could dash off to town with the belated article, I paid little heed to the
morning that was dawning outside the perimeter walls of our rustic though well lit home.

Returning a bowl hurriedly emptied of its breakfast cereal to the sink, I distractedly thought of
the article and its many imperfections. I thought of the typewriter and the imperfect way it

96
responded to my pecking. I thought of my spelling and the obvious benefits of a computer with a
spellchecker. I was distractedly indifferent to anything or anyone around. Suddenly I realized
that Nancy was standing in the doorway to the kitchen and that she had already called gently but
persistently to me several times. I looked into her eyes apologetically. We'd been through this
before. She loved me-even if I was easily distracted.

"You should come see our son," she whispered smilingly.

I follow her quietly out into the living room. Looking through the slightly drawn drapes out onto
the deck with the garden, orchard and birch trees beyond, I see my now three-year-old son. He is
smiling and buck-naked; he doesn't notice that we are watching. He's walking directly west along
the length of the deck. His arms are broadly spread and held fully extended over his head. His
hands, palms up, point north and south. He is walking happy like the dog when I look toward the
woods exclaiming "Go for a walk!?"

At this age he is feet turn out slightly so that the combination of the high stepping saunter and the
angled step give the impression of an enchanted waddle. At the end of the deck he turns around
and heads directly back in the opposite direction. He continues to pound back and forth on the
deck and all the while he is chanting, "Trees I love you; birds I love you; sky I love you; grass I
love you..." On and on he went and then when he came to the end of a long list-he went on again,
"Trees I love you...".

A few days later sitting in the annex of the B.C. Forest Service's Boundary District buildings just
beyond the industrial park in Grand Forks, I encountered an very kind of statement of value.
Four tables had been shoved end to end. I sat among a row of local environmentalists, guide
outfitters and outdoor enthusiasts strung along the North side of the tables. The chairs along the
south side of the table were filled with representatives of the local sawmill, loggers, and forest
service employees. There were a few tape recorders resting on the table between the two sides.
No one was smiling.

Using a series of flip charts, overlays and slides the General Manager of the Forest Service was
making a well-prepared presentation on plans the forest service was making for logging the
drainages of Lynch Creek. I don't recall the exact figures presented, but the General Manager
began with charts listing how they hoped to haul out so many hundreds of thousands of cunnits
of wood.

This represented millions of dollars worth of lumber and hundreds of jobs. On subsequent charts
we learned that clearing the forest would also allow more cows to be grazed on the area creating
more beef in the supermarket and more dollars in the pockets of some local ranchers. Next we
saw a graph of the potential loss in wildlife values-less trophy hunters coming to the now roaded
area- a small but slightly significant amount of money- a job or two might even be lost. Then
there were other recreation values. Logging roads would make huckleberry bushes more
accessible to senior citizens; though might enjoy the berries, they probably wouldn't sell them.

Finally some people did hike and camp in the area, but the local sporting goods store had
informed the forest service that it doesn't sell many tents. The camera store might sell a few less
rolls of film if people were not interested in taking pictures of logged hillsides.

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Laying down the pointer which he had used through out the presentation, the manager drew in a
deep breath and looking around the room anxiously he began a short final analysis. "I know
some people here sit on the ridges and look over the horizons or meditate or something. And they
claim to get something out of it, but, quite frankly, it is virtually impossible to put anykind of a
value on that sort of thing because those people aren't paying anything to be there.

Suddenly I remembered an Outdoor Recreation Council of B.C. conference I had attended

recently where a deputy minister of the provincial ministry of Lands and Parks, had argued that
the way to create value in our wilderness and parks is to charge user fees. I remembered with
delight the young woman who responded to these ideas by suggesting that in her reading of the
history of human values, it was precisely those treasures which were not traded in the market
place which all human cultures have held in the highest regard.

Standing beside her seat, looking defiantly up at the podium which was considerably elevated
above the audience, she boomed up at the speaker. "Would you say to me that the way I can
show how much I value my children is by charging a fee to those who might wish to abuse
them?"

The deputy minister fidgeted uneasily but didn't respond so she went on. "I say that love and
family and gentleness of being and a respect for the inherent wonders of creation are values we
hold so utterly precious that they can only be corrupted by the market -most definitely not
defined by it." Then a most moving thing happened. With the deputy minister standing
speechless before the mike, a colleague who was to speak next stood up unintroduced and moved
to the podium.

He turned the microphone toward himself and began in a measured voice. "I want you to know",
he hesitated emotionally looking down at the young woman, "I want you to know that I've heard
what you have to say, and it has certainly stirred a response in me. It is so easy to get caught up
in the weight of all the mountains of facts and figures that cross my desk, that I sometimes forget
the values that brought me to his office. I thank you for reminding me of that. It is certainly an
important lesson I will take away from this conference." With that he returned to his seat.

I tried much the same argument on the Lynch Creek Planning Committee, but, while we each
received a summary of the charts, my comments didn't even make it into the minutes of the
meeting. Yet I know from the response of the second deputy minister at the ORC conference that
we all have had experiences of such incomparable value that it is absurd to even think of placing
a dollar value on them. I believe that not only does attempting to place a dollar value on such
things or experiences degrade the value of the object it, it-even more virulently-corrodes the
essential self that we are. Much like the relation between whore and john, by trading the symbols
of love for money, both degrade in their own hearts the transcendent meaning of loving relations
and the transforming experience inherent worth.

. It is many years now since that New Year's morning standing on the deck, watching the snow
cascade from the birch trees while holding my one year-old son. The years stretching out from
that fine winter morning have not been particularly easy ones for us. Nor has the message over
the radio changed a great deal over the years-the petty scandals, the advertising hype, the
scheming politicians, the greed of the corporations continue to constitute the broadcast news.
But, every time I think of my young son paddling back and forth on the deck, his arms spread in

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loving embrace of all of creation, or hear of a wilderness preserved because it has a whole living
worth greater than anything we get by dismembering it, or stand with a friend in silent awe of a
sunset, or listen unjudgingly to the story of another's struggle to find love and meaning in their
lives, I know that we were perfectly justified in looking forward with joy and anticipation to the
years ahead

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Chapter 18

A CHILD'S WONDER

___________________________________________________________

Modern man has foreclosed the possibility of experiencing life in favor of explaining it. Even in
explaining the world, however, Western man has misunderstood it.

-Vine Deloria

At the beginning of civilization, before the microscope and calculator there were natural
presences so overwhelming in the magnificence of their mystery that they could only be
translated into metaphor.

-John N. Cole

Among my most prized pictures in a menagerie of "I'll sort them someday" photos is one of my
youngest son-a dark-haired, impish, three-year-old who is one of those mercurial spirits that can
either be very up or very down.

On the day of the picture he is finely tuned to the collective enthusiasm of a flower identification
field trip led by a local naturalist, and is most definitely up. "Biscuit root" he repeats the
identification of prolific spring flower. "Unm. Yum, yum-eat all up." With that, he shakes his
head from side to side and a look of delight and deviltry flashes simultaneously across his eyes.

I took the picture shortly after one of the naturalists handed him a large hand lens, the heavy
handled four-inch kind. In a near perfect mime of a private eye, he grabbed the glass in his right
hand and swept it diagonally across his body to hold it against his left eye. Then, hunching over
more for effect than vision, he crept forward, Sherlock-style, to examine carefully a sprig of
Camus coming through a clump of Oregon grape flowers. The feeling of the picture couldn't
have jumped out more clearly if "joy of discovery" had been printed boldly across the bottom.

Indeed, there were several children along on the hike and it was a real delight to have them.
When adults are pleased they smile a lot-quietly. But children are different. They have to share
their feelings actively. When happy, the whole of a child's being seems to exude a gooey,
infectious sort of joy and the air is punctuated with short spontaneous exclamations of delight.

Of all the joys of having children, I regard the pleasures of sharing the wonders of nature with
such eager attentive associates to be among the most profound. "Dad, Dad. Hey, Dad, look, a

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coyote's been here." Pointing down at the loosely bound fury remains of a digested rabbit, the
eyes swell and beam up an immutable wonder at having announced a discovery equally as
immense as life on another planet.

This sense of joy in discovery, the passion to know and experience, the desire and will to walk
forward, arms open to embrace life, are qualities I dearly wish to preserve and nurture in my
children. Though-I must confess- the teaching has, thus far, been much greater on their side than
mine.

As adults we have learned to value too highly the significance of our words. This is a Blue Jay,
that an Evening Primrose; we know the word and miss the experience. I sometimes wonder if
snowflakes knew the name we give them, whether each would be so unique or float so gently to
the ground. With our words, schools of though, and dogmas we seek to convince ourselves we
have discovered an inner code that gives form and meaning to the universe-never guessing that
the universe in its sublimely bewildering effervescence has its own numinosity never to be
contained in the words of even our most learned.

Too often we callously believe our children share our absorption with words. However, to a child
Balsam Root is not "Balsam Root." Balsam Root, to my children here in the dry interior of
British Columbia, is the coming of Spring, the return of colour, the rainbow sign-all shall not
remain a single ubiquitous white. Colour and life will return and bud in the coming season. My
children have taught me over and over again, when looking at nature be slow to give a name, be
slow to do anything that might interfere with the reverent awe of a child before the unutterable
beauty of the first spring blossoms or pin down the soaring wonder of a child following the
exquisite flight patterns of a nesting swallow.

I have often guessed, though I will never be sure, that in a single instant of a child's wonder there
is more of the magnificent numinosity of the unfolding universe than we will ever contain in all
our words.

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Chapter 19

Song of the Sacred: Harmonies of Earth, Self and Community

My own involvement in the controversy over the "culling" of seals in the Comox Valley's
Puntledge River and estuary system began with a notice in the local newspaper. The Watershed
Alliance, a collection of groups dealing with watershed conservation issues in the Comox Valley,
called for a public meeting to "discuss" options for dealing with the rapidly dwindling stocks of
salmon returning to the Puntledge River. Experts had been called to make presentations to the
meeting.

The newspaper announcement emphasized "discussion" and "options" as the keywords.

However, on the evening of March 19 the air in the meeting hall of the Filberg Centre burned
with emotion as heavy as the smoke drenched air in the pub of the Courtenay Hotel at closing
time. Anyone with the slightest eye for the unspoken could easily read the anxious determination
in the shifting bodies and uneasy glances that sought with tense trepidation to identify friend or
foe. Long before the chair called for an ill-thought vote, it was abundantly clear that there would
be no discussion (if we accept discussion as meaning at least the appearance of an open minded
sharing of ideas and feelings) and there was only one "option" which the more than 140 citizens
had come to consider-to shoot seals or not to shoot seals.

The campaign for a seal cull had begun some six months earlier with a series of news releases to
the local newspapers. Along with stories of dwindling salmon stocks, seals were portrayed as
voracious, insatiable consumers of salmon. The argument was made even more dramatic by the
assertion that there were bad seals labeled by the Steelhead Society as "Repeat Offenders". Their
offence being that they fed on salmon more than once a day. A semblance of objectivity was
injected into the argument by acknowledging that there were some other problems as well.

Over fishing, the erection of hydro dams, siltation of spawning beds and the gutting of the river
system were acknowledged as contributing factors. However fishers (other than American ones),
hydroelectric consumers, logging operations and dredges were not seen as "offenders". Salmon
both returning to the spawning grounds and escaping back to the sea were "siting ducks" for
seals who lay on their backs and gorged insatiably on passing salmon. Some of the worst
offenders had learned to use the bridge lights in order to procure a midnight snack of tasty
salmon. However no seal has yet hijacked a seiner or even salted away a single salmon for a rain
day.

The most cogent argument asserted that yes, there were many causes of the decline in salmon
stocks, and yes, seal and salmon did once live in dynamic balance, but, with salmon numbers
down to as little as 60 escapees, continued predation by seals would mean the possible extinction
of several of the Puntledge's once abundant runs.
The scientists presented two extended slide shows on Salmon and seals. Pictures were shown to
prove that seals do eat salmon although salmon provide only 4% of the seals diet in the estuary.
In the more balanced presentation, Dr. Andre Pete of Pacific Biological Station pointed out that
Seals also eat hake a primary predator of salmon. In fact, hake are 43% of the seals diet. During

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the question period Dr. Davis of University B.C. asserted that scientists have a relatively good
"working" understanding of salmon population dynamics even though the scientific models
remain equivocal.

Following the scientific presentations a few open ended questions were asked about the ecology
of the river and estuary system, noise deterrents to feeding seals, and killer whale decoys, before
the mask of civility began to wear away beneath the grinding of hostilely stated opinion. The
applause became heated and poignantly directed. Hissing, laughing and groans of despair
became an increasingly vociferous response to questions and comments of the audience. Fishing
is a way of life and the DFO (Department of Fisheries and Oceans) has no right to deny that.
Sports fishing supports the local economy and the DFO must act to protect that fishery the rod
and gun club members argued.

The suggestion by one well known environmentalist that shooting seals would be just another
affirmation of the violence that is corrupting our society was met with hostile jeers. A
slobberingly drunk voice from the back shouted out somewhat cogently that " We farm the land,
so why don't we farm the seas." While that assertion seemed to exhaust the topic for a moment, a
short time later the same voice loudly proclaimed that " If we poison the coyotes and wolves why
don't we just shoot the seals".

Such reasoned arguments seemed inconsistent with the alcoholic stammering, but what followed
rapidly deteriorated to a continuous, though modulated string of incoherent fragments expressing
a deeply held resentment, and the speaker was asked to seek a more willing audience in the
street. One woman expressed her fear that focusing on the killing of seals would distract from the
need for humans to recognize that declining fish stocks and deteriorating environmental quality
are the result of human actions that have to change. She was immediately discredited in the
minds of many by the blurted assertion that she probably ate meat and therefore had no right to
say anything about the justifications for shooting seals.

Calls for a vote rose to a crescendo. I was, personally, deeply opposed to taking a vote at a
meeting that had been called in order to hold a discussion. If a vote were taken there would be no
further incentive to discuss. If a vote were taken now, oppositional thinking would become
ingrained in the process and who would come to the next meeting other than those who felt they
had lined up enough muscle to vote down the other side. However, to give the chair credit, the
meeting had taken on a logic of its own.

No one could deny that oppositional thinking was, above all else, the theme of the meeting. At
one point the chair asked if anyone present would consider working toward solutions on a more
long-term basis by joining the Puntledge River Restoration Society. However, that idea was
quickly killed by the president of the society who make it clear that the society was not interested
in working with any new individuals who might not be compatible with the established
members--members who came largely from the fish and wildlife associations.

Had those present been denied the vote the chairs themselves might have spontaneously arranged
themselves for a demonstration of opinion. The exegesis of the meeting had come to a vote and
no possible discussion or potential for further meetings would stop the vote now. 96 of the
people at the meeting wanted to begin shooting seals immediately. 33 people were either
adamantly opposed or unconvinced of the efficacy of the program and the ability to implement it.

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Once the hands were counted the meeting was over. Most rose to leave and those who remained
for an official closing had no further comments or questions.

Unfortunately for those who wanted to begin shooting seals, the world and even the DFO which
would have to approve any cull, recognizes realities that extend into far more complex circles
than an evening's confrontation at the Filberg Centre. The letter that came back from the DFO
was illusive. Though not stated directly the thinly veiled message suggested a seal shoot within
the municipal boundaries of Courtenay is politically unthinkable at this time. We may not know
what to do but we do know what can't be done.

I went home with a desperate need to rethink the path leading to such a tumultuous meeting.

I remembered a time, while living in a small shack along the shores of Gates Lake , when I and a
native friend from the near by Mt. Currie Reserve had gone "fishing" on the Birkenhead River.
Hector and I had worked together driving spikes for the Pacific Great Eastern's railway Section
Crew working out of the remote whistle stop community at Birken. At first "together" would
have been a big word for time we spent on the crew-side by side would have more accurately
described the relationship. Hector was an extraordinarily quiet person.

A single sentence, even broken in to phrases and spread over an entire day would have been an
exceedingly verbose day for Hector. Ray Gannon, the only other crew member, had just arrived
in B.C. from Quebec. He was a short but exceedingly excitable fellow who occasionally spoke in
short bouts of excited language while failing his arms, however I knew only a sentence or two in
French and Ray knew little more than that in English. Occasionally I could guess the meaning
these passionate utterances from the inflection and wildly gesticulating arms.

Our foreman, a huge man consumed with a most bitter angst, had come to Canada from India
with his father in the hopes of finding prosperity and a social position. While he spoke often, in
an entire year with him I cannot remember a conversation that communicated anything other
than work related instructions, except for the morning of his father's death. After hearing the
tragic news over the two-way radio, we took a short break from the driving of spikes.

I was profoundly alone on the crew in ways that I have never been alone even in the most remote
isolation. There was only the ringing of the malls striking against the steel spikes and an
occasional "tabernac" when Ray struck a glancing blow. If I gained anything from those early
days on the section it is simply that in the isolation, and we were usually miles from any other
trace of civilization, there was only the ringing of the hammers and the breathing and a stunning
silence. So in hearing the one sound backed by the breathing and silence I learned a form of
meditation I have not been able to recapture sitting cross-legged before the gas hearth of my
suburban home in Comox.

Over time I began to realize that Hector's silence was not entirely an unwillingness to
communicate. There was a movement to the eye that said "yes" and to "yes" there was an
incredible number of inflections. There was a stillness to the eye that clearly meant "no". But
even the "no" was modulated with a vast spectrum of nuance.

Increasingly I began to notice that, at times when we were either picking up or putting down the
heavy steel hammers, our eyes met and lingered long enough for me to hear a voice that I could

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not put to words. It spoke of a distant past; it spoke of longing; it spoke of a silence so vast no
word could express it; it spoke occasionally of a wounded heart.

On rare occasions, heading home on the speeder at four o'clock, I would catch his eye for the last
time that day and without uttering a sound I would be told of a dream where home was an
expansive feeling having little to do with a small railway shanty beside Gates Lake.

Then one seething day in August we were asked to leave the railway repairs for a few days and
join in the attempts to put out a wild fire that was raging up one of the steep slopes running up
from the Pemberton Valley. The hippies had started it. At least that's what the Forest Service
said. But they seemed to always say it was "the hippies". One got the impression that loggers and
hunters and fishermen and tourists were sort of fireproof. But "hippies" they were like
Spontaneous Combustion personified just moving through the bush and dragging a long tail of
fire behind.

By the time we arrived the fire was already a day old and in the early morning hours appeared to
be more of an oversized campfire that had been left to smolder into the night than the raging
inferno we had pictured in our minds. Having paid my way through the early years of college by
fighting fires, I was put in charge of a small crew consisting of Hector and several recruits from
the reserve.

We were given a small pump for the stream, a lot of fire hose and a few hand tools. Being trained
to fight fires in near urban environments and with a mentality that had come straight from the
military, I began to exuberantly lay out hose and bark instructions. After an hour of such frantic
work I became exceedingly frustrated. For all the effort we were getting precious little done.
Suddenly I recognized a most interesting relation.

The harder I worked, the slower the rest of the crew moved. I looked for Hector's eye. It spoke
ominously of "caution" with a hinting of a "no". It spoke of patience to be learned mixed with a
hint of "home" or "going home", more accurately. It clearly scoffed at my sense of urgency.
Bowing to sensibility I called for a break, which the others were already quite happily engaged
in.

Needing some time to recoup and rethink, I went for a walk toward the Lillouett river and away
from the fire. After short time on a well-established deer trail I nearly stumbled over a grouse
nest. The mother hen blinked and looked up. There was caution and patience in her eye but
nowhere was there a sense of panic either at me or at the imminent fire. Our gazes remained
fixed for a moment and the most incredible thing occurred to me. There in the depth of her eye
were traces of the very same expression I was trying to understand in Hector's glance at four
o'clock on the speeder heading home.

In a language I was only beginning to recognize, it said inclusively "I am HOME"-not in the
transitive sense of "I am occupying this place"; rather this nonverbal, ontological or existential
statement which I find most difficult to translate said something more like, "I am this place/this
place is in me/we are aspects of the same expression". It spoke of a transforming wisdom so
deeply embedded in the experience of acceptance and place that I felt permitted to view for a
brief moment the inner praxis of cosmic peace.

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I returned to the crew and we worked at a steady but unharried pace until noon. At twelve the
two young natives from Mr. Currie headed down the hill for their lunch sacks. Hector who hadn't
brought a lunch found a path leading around the ridge on the down wind side of the fire and
passing by a bluff that fell almost vertically to the valley floor.

Having received no indication of whether or not I was invited along on this jaunt, I took the
unspoken message to mean "Follow if you like." Anxious to know what nourishment he might be
seeking in this lunch without food, I followed.

Arriving at the bluff, Hector picked the sheerest rock abutment and sat with his legs over the
precipice, resting largely on his outwardly turned palms. Knowing the routine by now I sat about
four feet away silently looking over the valley below. It is an incredibly verdant valley with lush
rain nurtured forests flowing down to the rich farmlands built over the deeply silted valley.

Here on the down wind side of the fire even the haze seemed cleared away and I could make out
the road snaking along the other side of the valley. I began to think of a potato farmer I knew
whose farm must be up there just by the kink in the paved road. I would have thought more, but
the silence was absorbing and I was drawn into it.

Suddenly there was a gentle hand on my shoulder. With some effort I remember where I was and
look into the fully open eyes of Hector. He turned to direct my attention down along where the
Lillouett river flowed. I had only begun to marvel at the gentleness of this meandering river
which in its nearly regular floods terrorized the farmers and residents below, when the hand was
once again gently touching my shoulder.

This time the gaze lingered insistently. I had missed the point. Once again Hector turned to the
river. Pointing with his finger insistently, he traced the banks of the river. Yes, I thought,
incredible! beautiful, art work of the creator! I looked into his eye questioningly. "No," it said.
"Disappointment, and withdrawal from communication it said. "Bear!" he said bluntly. In his eye
I heard, "This is important! I'm speaking to you as a friend. Awaken your senses; hear what I
have to say.

I turned again to the river and followed his finger. Yes! Oh, Yes! " I see it!" We exchanged
glances. Yes, danced like fire in his eye. The bear, that dark spot by the willow thicket had come
down to the river to drink. But now it was playing in the muddy shallows of the ox bow.
Crouching down in waist deep water it would suddenly spring into the air turn itself upside down
in mid-flight and hit the water back first while splashing frantically its paws. Yes, my being
soared and danced and played in the shallow muddy water. Delighted and content the large black
bear crawled from the muddy waters and disappeared into the willow thicket. I was beginning to
hear some small whisper from the vast realm of experience which I had for so long muffled
behind a screen of attention occupying words.

Increasingly I was beginning to understand that Hector's silence was not sullenness or
withdrawal or lack of knowledge or inability to communicate. Hector was silent because what he
experienced or had to communicate was not only incapable of verbal expression, it was a realm
of experience closed off, by the world of words. In the eye of the grouse, in my utter absorption
in the water dance of the bear, I was slowly learning to foreshorten the realm of description in
order to actually experience/feel the spirituality of embeddedness.

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I sought Hector's eye. "Back to work" it said playfully and with sense of celebration. From that
day on I have regarded all verbal language as a lesser form of expression, often masking more
than it communicates.

Back on the railway, Hector and I began to speak regularly-whether any word passed between us
or not. Dave, our production obsessed foreman, became increasingly exasperated at crewmen
who simultaneously put down their hammers to stare vacantly into the distance or laugh
uproariously before returning, without a word, to the monotonous swing of the malls.

The morning of our fishing trip, Hector arrived at my rustic log cabin on the shores of Gates
Lake around 9:00 am. Dressed in a worn formal shirt and a pair of loosely fitting work jeans, he
carried a small pocketknife in a leather case strapped to his waist. in his left hand he carried a 12'
length of poly propolyene rope, but there was no fishing pole or real or net or gaffe or lunch. We
were obviously going fishing with 12' of poly rope. How? I had no idea; but I had learned to
trust. So I bade my wife a warm farewell and followed Hector across the field of glacier till,
grass, and mare's tail to the railway tracks.

After an hour of hiking along the railway, Hector turned onto a worn though recently overgrown
footpath. The path led through the woods for several hundred feet then crossed a small glade of
river rounded stones which was slowly overgrowing with Oregon Grape and wild grasses. At the
end of the glade the partially treed bank fell off parabolically down to the Birkenhead River
about 4 feet below. Hector stood in silent awe gazing over the river which was a shallow 100'
across at this point.

I knew the sockeye? were running in the river, but nothing in my wildest dreams had prepared
me for this. Coming up abreast of Hector in the small gap between two large fir trees which
framed the river in a magnificent landscape, I looked for the first time that day across the breath
of the river and was suddenly overcome by the utter magnificence of this meeting of these two
verdant streams of life. The one stream jumping, splashing cascading and burbling down the
mountains from the melting of both last winter's snows and ancient glaciers, now swept by me in
a slightly calmer mood on its way to the sea. This magnificent water cycle; stopping for no one;
endlessly renewing and refreshing; the fountain and foundation of life; pure and clean and crystal
clear. And this other stream of life running countercurrent to the water; deep red, humpbacked,
undulating, slithering ALIVE- so utterly teeming with life; the entire stream bed flowing against
the water current for as far as the eye could see.

The Sun reflecting off the splashed water and rocks and the wriggling salmon danced a thousand
thousand varied steps to the orchestrating theme of these two concurrent rivers of life. For what
seemed a very long time I stood on the bank beside Hector, overcome by this yet tiny hint of the
verdancy of life, forgetting for a moment that I had come to "fish".

Without taking time to carve a gaffe or any kind of pole or spear and without saying a word,
Hector handed me the short rope and slid down the embankment to the edge of the river. After
wading a short distance out from the bank he stopped suddenly. Bending the index and middle
finger of his right hand into the form of a hook and folding the ring and little finger under his
right thumb, Hector held his hand up briefly then it swooped down quickly into the teeming
water.

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Watching in utter fascination, I could see that he had hooked a passing salmon from behind the
gill and was raising it high into the air above him like some priestly offering to the gods of
abundance. Suddenly he was bringing the salmon down, back first, with the full force of his arm
and his knee was rising like a high stepping dancer. In a deft moment the salmon cracked across
his knee and in one continuous movement was directed to the bank where I was standing. It
flopped down on the grassy hollow motionless. Before I had finished admiring the beauty of the
limp, though shinny salmon before me, Hector already had another one heading toward the bank.

I turned my attention to Hector, but it wasn't the deft/able dark skinned Hector standing knee
deep in water that I saw; nor was it the reflected sun or undulating water or darting salmon. For a
moment I saw no one thing. I saw only Hector/Sun/Water/Salmon. For one brief moment I
glimpsed the unifying form behind the differentiating mask of existence. The Hindu images of
creation and destruction, Shiva and Kali, embraced and a myriad dancing forms moved to the
single unifying beat of the most primordial creative/sustaining energy. Underlying this dance of
the impermanence of things, of the birth and death of individual forms I heard the unifying beat
of pattern and connectedness. For one short moment I stood outside the concepts that create
separate entities and saw an inextricable unity of the parts so that water and fish and man and sun
formed an interpenetrating pattern-a holographic image of all existence with its ineffable paradox
of mutually embedded unity and diversity. It is a vision that has blessed and haunted the deepest
reaches of my perceptions.

In the late fall of 1995 I joined the Comox Valley Unitarian Fellowship in a celebration for the
returning Salmon. It was a beautiful ceremony held on the banks of the Puntledge River in a
small park of the same name. 40 exuberant celebrants singing a song of welcome and return and
a small child to cast hazelnuts on the water enjoining us all to remember well the wisdom of the
salmon. Occasionally a park visitor stopped to bend an ear to the music being directed our over
the river and turn up an incredulous eye at the nuts being cast on the waters; failing utterly to
understand the meaning or significance of what was going on. It is a wonderful thing, this return
to the celebration of the joy and utter exuberance of abundant nature this acceptance of meanings
far greater than our own consumptive greed. But for me there was also an incredible sadness to
it.

Littered occasionally along the bank were a few rotting carcasses of the beautiful red fish which
had already played their part in the undulating cycle of birth death and regeneration. Straining
my eye, over the whole river at a sweep, then checking every shoal in utter detail, I could
occasionally glimpse the shadowy movement of a few spawners. However these few fish
swimming by on this sunny but cold day in Nov. 1995 could no more evoke the sense of wonder
I experienced standing on the banks of the Birkenhead in 1973 than, driving by a few scraggly
buffalo in a wildlife park, one can begin to guess the numinous sense of the sacred which the
once vast herds of Buffalo inspired in the rituals, dreams and lives of the plains Indians.

The first Europeans were aghast at the immensity of such enormous herds roaming the plains.
According to one observer one, when the buffalo herds were passing by an area one could stand
on a tall knoll and from there the entire prairie landscape appeared to move like the waves of the
sea as the seemingly endless herds streamed by. No one would have guessed at that time that in
less than a hundred years the buffalo who numbered over 14 million would be gone entirely from
the prairie landscape-all but extinct. A few, often sick, individuals would be left for ranching as
buffalo burgers that taste almost as good as our docile cow. And the native people whose dreams

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were as big, and free as the buffalo herds would be confined to tiny patches of land called
reserves which seek economic freedom through cigarette sales and bingo halls.

Later in this paper I suggest that the idea of basing our economic and social organizations on
greed and isolation is fatally dysfunctional. But I have begun with a discussion of my own
experiences and feelings about the natural world because, ultimately I believe that even if we
could fulfill the dreams of our futurists and divorce ourselves from the needs and restraints of the
natural world; if we could dispatch with the need for rain forests by creating nuclear powered
oxygen generators in uniform locations around the globe or implant ozone misters in the
stratosphere; even if we could pave the earth and erect an ubiquitous jungle of shopping malls
and vinyl homes in which people could feed on nutritionally adjusted, flavoured pellets raining
down from orbiting food stations that effectively trap solar energy into the maximum sustained
yield of carbon fixation; even then-or most certainly then when have taken over and converted to
our sole benefit all the processes and relations of Earth-we would have failed utterly.

While I can argue that such control is not possible, that living processes on earth are so complex
and interconnected that we would die out as a species before we could possibly gain such
control, I can offer no rational argument for this assertion that success at such control would
bring with it inherent failure because I am talking about a feeling, an experience of self referring
subject. Soul the foundational experience of any self-referring subject implies freedom/choice,
spontaneity and love (empathy with/respect for/identity with an independent other). To suggest
that such a feeling has meaning due to some rational argument would be to deny that the feeling
has meaning and worth of it self.

Perhaps this can best be understood by comparison. Every parent regardless of time, place or
culture knows or learns by increasingly painful experience that in any parent/child relationship
control is an inherent and utterly self-defeating relation. Even when control is done in the name
of love and exists only to keep the child from harm, it is inherently self defeating because if the
child ends up doing everything exactly as the parent directs, then that child will not become the
independent, self directed individual that the parent most desires. Love is an inextricable
paradox; it means on one hand caring for and union with the other, but it also means respect for
the independence and self-creative freedom of the other. You cannot break the paradox and still
have love. Out of this nexus of union and creative freedom arise the necessary and defining
qualities of the human soul.

If we were to gain total control of all of Earth' abundance we would have lost everything because
in the taking charge we would have lost the experience of who we are/ of who we want most to
be/ of that core message that we human seem to need that life is good and we are worthy. A
Christian teaching asserts that "What would it profit a man if he gained the whole world and lose
his own soul." Perhaps it also is saying that the nature of the soul is such that one could not gain
the whole world with out losing one's soul.

While in the following sections of this paper I argue that we must unreservedly reevaluate our
perceptions of place if human communities and Earth's ecosystems are to survive. what I am
talking about most fundamentally is not a semantical adjustment in operating principle or a slight
change in calculations of the sustainability of ecological systems. but it is a spiritual renewal. it
involves Earth Self and Community in an intricate and inextricable interweaving of meaning and
value.

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Thinking of the vast abundance and verdancy of natural systems and knowing some of the long
ages in which seal and salmon and first nations peoples lived in a sustaining relationship, it
seems a most perverse twist of perspective to now hear these tales about the need to "cull' seals
in order to "save" the salmon. I am left to wonder how fisheries people can claim to understand
the dynamic of salmon populations so well.

Wasn't it less than 3 years ago that out of an expected harvest to 29.5 million pinks in the Fraser
River only 9.5 returned to the hungry nets? With such scientific understanding of the ways of the
salmon how is it that in 1994 only 2 million fish returned for an expected run of 15 million? Has
not this blaming of natural predators been tried before leading to the destruction of over 5000 sea
lions along the coast of Vancouver Island with little recovery in salmon stocks because natural
predators are not the cause of declining salmon stocks? Has not denial, chaos and misdirected
blame been the hallmark of a misguided fisheries policy which puts profit, corporate
concentration and global trading strategies ahead of conservation and biological reality?

Seals are not the cause of declining salmon populations anymore than predation by wolves lead
to the destruction of the once abundant herds of buffalo who have gone the way of the prairie
grasses on which they were sustained. To me the belief that we can convert the dynamically
balanced natural systems of Earth to a simple predator/prey relation where humanity takes all is
simply the deluded pipe dream of control in a fools paradise where all the signs of a finite and
threatened environment are painted out. If predation by seals in the Puntledge River were really
the cause of declining salmon stocks then we'd tow nets full of sea bound smolts past this
"gauntlet" and out into the harbour.

Only a short time ago we were told that fish farms and hatcheries were the answer to a vital
industry. Despite the example of the Norwegians, we were suppose to believe that disease and
genetic contamination would not spread to wild stocks. Now we are suppose to believe that if we
kill the seals the salmon will recover. We have done everything possible to avoid recognizing
that the natural world is full of meanings and relations and dangers that science and certainly
economics has not begun to comprehend.

The message of declining salmon stocks is not that we should shoot seals it is most emphatically
that the canary is dead; the coal gas of environmental deterioration is everywhere around us. It is
time to seriously reassess our relation to the natural world.
Before we shoot seals we should look at logging practices which cause spawning grounds to
wash out at one time and silt up at another. We should look at our treatment of our rivers as
simply recreational and commercial utility rather than living systems.

Clearly we must reexamine the suicidal notion that our oceans are simply waste management
cesspools or "resources' to be mined. We must allow salmon and seal to inform us of our
ultimate embeddedness in and unity with the function of a living, interdependent earth.

Standing on the banks of the Birkenhead River, watching a seemingly undulating and seemingly
endless parade of life swimming up to meet the sustaining waters and seeing Hector standing at
the confluence of these two vast streams so completely embedded in this vastness and unity of
life has affected my perceptions in a most profound say.

Recognizing the inability of our own geographical abstractions to define a meaningful sense of
place and the struggling attempts of our biological sciences to actually inform us of the power
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and benevolence of nature and place, I feel we must look to a source of wisdom more like the
totemism of the native people. With in the mythology of the totem way we find respect for the
vitality, spirit and interdependence of other species which allowed practitioners of this way to
live in peace and balance with the salmon for so many ages.

For time beyond human comprehension, the salmon fed and informed bear, porpoise, eagle and
killer whale. For thirty thousand years salmon have fed and shaped the spirit of the native
populations of the Pacific North West. The Salish, Kawakiutl, Haida, Tsimshian, to name a few.
ordered their lives and the flow of generations according to the delicate timing and thrust of the
salmon population.

The life of the salmon, of itself, speaks of profound wisdom and interconnectedness. For ages
Asian and North American salmon have ranged the ocean and feed together in great thousand
mile gyres -in schools numbering in the millions. At the right moment they divide into families
and split off from this great species celebration to breed and spawn in specific homes in the great
rivers and innumerable streams of the North Pacific Rim. They have brought together the oceans
and land; they have joined together people, fish, bear and eagle in an undulating, ever-renewing
river of life.

Today we see a decline in the salmon population frighteningly similar to that of the North
Atlantic cod. The implications of this decline go far beyond economic loss. To better understand
how important this is we should reflect for a moment on the consequences of decimating the
totem animal of the North American plains-the buffalo. Until a century ago the North American
plains and all its people were connected and informed by the totem of the buffalo.

As noted earlier-the buffalo were once so abundant, the prairies themselves appeared to move
like the seas under the undulating migrations of the buffalo. But the buffalo were destroyed
through the need for expansion by industrial capital. First the enormous herds were divided by
the railroads then they were shot down by an enormously efficient fur trade. Within a generation
the species that had informed humans how to live indigenously was gone. From that time on,
peoples who have now come to inhabit that range have wandered a course of random
environmental destruction, little informed by the power of the earth, and generation by
generation have become less alive because of their isolation.

Now our technological society in its deluded belief in unlimited industrial expansion and its
vision of all earth as a resource for the use of a single species has set its sight on the North
Pacific. Huge factory ships fish the mid Pacific salmon migrations taking immature fish and
decimating that population immeasurably.

It is the nature of industrial capital that it has no interest in preserving indigenous populations,
since capital is mobile and can move on once a "resource" has been exhausted. Indigenous
populations -however- cannot flee this rapacity because of their biological marriage to habitat.
What is not generally recognized is that the human species is also an indigenous population. We,
all, are inextricably married to place.

We can only be kept constantly informed of our situation as a species through regard and
recognition of our intimate interconnectedness with other species. Streams running with wild
salmon are much more than an economic concern to canneries and sporting supply stores, they

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are the warp into which human identify and the survival of Earth's natural systems are intricately
and inextricably interwoven.

The aboriginal peoples who inhabited the North Pacific Range so successfully for ten thousand
years learned to eat fish from bears and eagles. They learned to catch fish by wit and invention-
by bone hooks and seaweed lines and elegant weirs of hemlock root. The salmon-their lives and
cycles-were deeply respected by the native people. Every year a Salmon Ceremony was
practiced to honour the return of the salmon and reopen lines of communication between the
people and the salmon. Throughout the pacific Northwest conscious spirit was thought to reside
in all plants and animals. Before any plant or animal was eaten assurance would be given that
there was no desire to offend.

The spirits of plants and animals were considered to be sacred immortal. The return each year of
creatures and plants was recognized as one aspect of this sacred rejuvenation and immortality.
Native people assumed responsibility in the continuity of this immortality and used the
ceremonies as methods of assuring that proper respect for the runs, proper methods of fishing
them and proper methods of disposal of bones and viscera are practiced from generation to
generation. The ceremonies thus have the practical effect of assuring the continuity of both the
salmon and human population.

While modern industrialized fisheries are thought to be very efficient at harvesting salmon for
commercial benefit, a careful analysis shows that in terms of energy expended they are more
effective consuming energy than in producing it by a margin of at least 3 to 1.

As Freeman House argues " the further we pursue these studies the more we will become aware
that the essential attractiveness of salmon as a food lies in the fact that the fish returns to the
people. It is not necessary to pursue them in expensive machines at all: every adult fish returns to
the river of its origin.

Before the arrival of Europeans in the Columbia River Basin, 50,000 native people caught 18
million lbs. of salmon each year without damaging the stock. In 1970 a thoroughly industrialized
fleet took only 12 million lbs from the Columbia River.

"Yes", some may say "but they could have caught more if there were more fish in the river". But
there weren't more fish because of our poorly devised maps about our relation to the natural
world and its limits. Our machines which catch and process the fish also separate us from the
fundamental -life-sustaining wisdom which contact with the salmon teaches and the supermarket
disguises behind the distorted mask of economic efficiency.

Today some small remnant of the hordes of self-regulating/informing salmon return to the shoals
of the Puntledge River, and in their bodies they bring a message about life and living systems
and industrial values which we dare not bury along with the carcasses of the seals which we have
so ineptly blamed for our own failures.

Remembering the faces distorted with greed and fear as they angrily demanded the shooting of
seals and asserted their right to exploit all the wealth of the seas for human benefit alone, I
wonder how it came to this. As the roll call of species extinction grows daily and the pall of
environmental degradation becomes an every day experience for most of us, it becomes
increasingly difficult to believe that the death of forests and lakes over whole regions of the earth
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by acid deposition, the creation of holes in the earth's protective ozone layer and the destruction
of the ocean's oxygen producing phytoplankton with industrial chemicals are really mere
externalities of a social/philosophical/economic system that can, with a few changes in
accountability, become a suitable instrument for reconciling humanity with the living systems of
Earth.

The architects of the Enlightenment ethos once dreamed of a happier, more fully actualized
humanity that would develop axiomatically from the technological domination of nature.
However it now seems that, hypnotized by the vast scale of technology we have-as Einstein once
lamented-become so absorbed with the perfection of means that we have lost the ability to
formulate meaningful goals outside the perfection of techniques.

Despite the uneven distribution of current benefits from industrial mercantilism, the vast power
of technology to transform the indifferent and chaotic world of nature into an orderly and ever
increasing flow of goods to serve the material interest of the industrial powers has reaffirmed and
underscored the grandiose dreams of the Enlightenment ethos. These beliefs, originating in the
17th Century, see the highest hope for all of humankind in the universal :search for material
betterment through the continued progress of technological development flowing from the steady
accumulation of human knowledge and techniques.

Recommendations by Australia's Ranger Inquiry into Uranium Mining epitomize the West's
continuing faith in the all pervading worthiness of 17th century values. The Inquiry advises the
Australian government that it is morally right and even imperative to seize aboriginal lands rich
in uranium as long as the Aboriginals receive a fair monetary settlement. The fact that
Aborigines value their way of life more than anything they can buy with the government's money
is of little consequence because such people "are not yet able to understand the meaning of
progress". Besides the obvious cultural imperialism implied in the "meaning of progress", as
used here, this phrase also includes the sloppily constructed yet most insidious and
confoundingly tautological syllogism of our age: Progress is good; Progress means more; More
is progress; Therefore more is, of-itself, good and progressive.

Unfortunately for the argument, taking more salmon from the seas does not mean there will be
more salmon returning to the spawning grounds, More gas burning cars does not mean there will
be more clean air to breathe, And though we may not yet know what to do about it, many of us
are beginning to realize that consuming more and more of the earth does not lead to more and
more happy people.

Robert Ardey, in his book on human destiny, captures the ethos of the Enlightenment when he
argues that pre-industrial cultures and currently underdeveloped societies are simply "cultural
dead-ends." It is not that the people are, of themselves, necessarily backward or incapable.
Rather they are simply stuck with superstitions and inefficacious belief systems (paradigms) that
keep them from getting on track with the one road that leads to the inevitable destiny of
humankind -the domination, and control of nature for human use only.

Indeed, while the 1987 UN World Commission on Environment and Development recognized
that "Humanity's inability to fit its doings into that pattern (natural ecological processes) is
changing planetary systems fundamentally. (and) ... such changes are accompanied by life-
threatening hazards," it denies this implies any need for fundamental change. It suggests instead,
that under a new concept it calls "Sustainable Development" the negative impact of the industrial
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society can be mitigated through "...a new era of economic growth, one that must be based on
policies that sustain and expand the environmental resource base." Thus if a forest must be cut
down in one area, the Commission suggests that a more productive forest be planted over an
equal area somewhere else. By “more productive” the Commission means producing more return
to the human population that is in control.

That the forest, of-itself, could have value or that ecological relations that have evolved over
ages among a wide number and variety of species within the natural forest is not recognized. The
commission obviously feels that the rain forest has as little understanding of "progress" as the
Aborigine.

Clearly the creation of a supplementary concept like " Sustainable Development", which makes
little more than a minimum attempt to redefine the present ethos of sustained development,
cannot possibly solve the problem of an environmental and concomitant personal crisis which
arises as a systemic property of our distorted view of the human place in the natural world.

Replacing unmitigated development with "Sustainable Development" will not bring back the
Buffalo nor will it increase our understanding of the complex and inextricably interdependent
relations in natural systems. If anything, Sustainable Development advances even further the
agreement that the natural world is so comprehensively governed by reversible and
mechanistically determined relations that humanity can now seize the controls of such a
bountiful but otherwise chaotic and directionless ship of being.

It assumes, like the Ranger Commission and Ardrey that "development" is the inextricable goal
toward which all of the earth is moving. After standing on the banks of the Birkenhead River,
hearing the splash of the water and rippling of the undulating salmon, seeing Hector hook a fish
with his two fingers and deftly toss it toward the band, overcome by the wisdom and
magnificence of natural forces over which I have no control, I am utterly convinced that the
vision of human domination of nature rather than participation in is as pathological for the
human soul as it is inescapably destructive of the natural world.

The devastation of our natural environment, the persistence of human poverty and the continued
stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction in order to maintain the illusion of power and control
have become so pervasive they cannot be solved by small modifications to the development
imperative any more than the heroine junkie can solve his physical and psychological problems
by changing to a new brand of needle. Thus, I will try to describe my own view of a place for
humanity in the natural world which fundamentally challenges the enlightenment or
development ethic. .

In direct contradiction to the primary argument of the Brundtland Report, I suggest that
development and the implied economic growth as a goal in itself is more a pathological
condition than panacea for social and environmental health. If the junkie doesn't stop injecting
the addicting poisons into his veins the hurting won't stop-no matter what colour the syringe.

Thus rather than an occasion for finding a new label for an old paradigm, our current
environmental crisis must be seen as the stimulus for defining a new way of relating to the
natural world which allows for a human sense of belonging to and understanding of our
holistically functioning, complex, diverse and endangered biosphere.

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Relying on a mixture of a deeply felt sense of the spirituality of connectedness, organic metaphor
and articulating philosophy I suggest a concept like Ontological Embeddedness would more
accurately describe humanity's place (physical, psychic and spiritual) within the natural
functioning of a living planet. For me this emphasis on the perception of place is closely related
to the mythologies and ontological perceptions of aboriginal people all over the earth and like
them begins by locating the most primal beingness (Ontological) of humanity within the
dynamic functioning of the natural world (Embeddedness) before proceeding to elucidate a more
holistic foundation for a social, personal and environmental ethos.

Despite the optimistic view of the potential for growth and development presented by the
Brundtland Commission, the escalating environmental deterioration witnessed by declining fish
stocks and deepening holes in the Earth's protective atmosphere cause many of us to worry with
educator and environmentalist Bruce Fraser whether "Man's inability to let things be, may be
Earth's last comment on an arrogant species."

Adding to these concerns about the long-term survival value of our current direction, Jerry
Meander suggests, in his insightful book entitled, In the Absence of the Sacred, that to be even
"minimally successful, a society must keep its population healthy peaceful and contented.
Everyone should have access to the collective wisdom and knowledge of the society and should
expect that life will be spiritually and emotionally fulfilling for themselves and future
generations. (Yet) Peace, security, public and planetary health, sanity, happiness and fulfillment
are arguably less close at hand than they ever were."

Fritjof Capra points to a number of social conditions which suggest that the world view of
insular, atomized, self-aggrandizing individualism created by the economics of Adam Smith and
political theory of John Locke, has not generated the promised maximization of public or
individual good. According to Capra the source of our current social and environmental malaise
occurs at a much deeper and more profound level of the social fabric than the economic analysis
of the Brundtland report. These problems arise at the very core of the ontological and
epistemological assumptions underpinning the mechanical/Cartesian world view which so
profoundly altered the perceptions of Western society.

This pervasive paradigm which began evolving in the 17th century saw all the universe,
including human society as a grand machine composed of replaceable, autonomous parts
functioning by the rule of immutable, indifferent laws. Human consciousness and knowledge of
the universal laws which drove the machine set our single species apart from nature, allowing it
to occupy the driver's seat directing the productivity of this mechanical world to the material
benefits of humanity. In the words of Immanuel Kant, the greatest philosopher of the age, “The
fact that man can have the idea ‘I’ raises him infinitely above all the other beings living on earth.
By this he is a person...that is, a being altogether different in rank and dignity from things, such
as irrational animals, which we can dispose of as we please Animals are not self-conscious and
are there merely as a means to and end. That end is man."

While the questions of past civilizations had attempted to answer the problem of meaning in the
mysterious happenings of the natural world, Francis Bacon, father of our scientific methodology,
dismissed these early investigations into meaning as frivolous. There is no need to ask why when
one can readily understand how. Thus the natural world was seen as a giant hardware store
waiting for the hand of human effort to assemble these parts into more perfect tools for the
benefit of humankind.
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Armed with the accomplishments of the developing scientific method Bacon touted the incipient
power in this new way of viewing the world which separated the observer from the observed and
provided a ""value free" forum for the determination of "objective" knowledge.

According to Rene Descartes, through the application of mathematical formulas, one could
reduce the apparent chaotic ecologies of nature to simple, deterministic relations between objects
no more mysterious or creative than a billiard ball. Creativity, value and quality were figments of
deluded and passing ages. For Descartes the meaning of science was to "render ourselves the
masters and possessors of nature". This tremendous shift in Western consciousness which
displaced the previously held animistic, organic assumptions about the cosmos has become the
most far-reaching effect of the scientific revolution.

This evolving and increasingly comprehensive paradigm is often referred to as the Newtonian
World View because, while thinkers like Bacon and Descartes provided the philosophical
grounding for this new scientific "faith", Isacc Newton delineated the mathematical methodology
which could demonstrate the measurable utility of a world reduced to particles moving through
absolute space and time, governed only by simple, mathematically determined forces. This
simple but revolutionary model of the mechanical universe was, thus, fully delineated as a
comprehensive world view.

After demonstrating the manipulative power of reducing the natural world to mechanically
related bits of inert matter, the mechanistic paradigm was soon applied to human relations as
well. Comparing the accumulation of property by self-interested individuals to the aggrandizing,
attraction of gravity in nature, John Locke argued that in order to benefit from the new scientific
methodology, materialistic self-interest of the individual should be the sole basis for the
organization of the state, and society should be seen as nothing more than the sum of its separate
individuals. Governments existed solely to ensure the freedom of individuals to exercise their
new-found power over nature in the production of wealth.

In an argument foreboding the Brundtland Report, Locke argued that as the unifying goal of
humanity existed in the acquisition of property; scarcity and the lack of property are the only
impediments to harmony among people. However differing sharply with the 20th century,
resource strapped, vision of the Brundtland Report, Locke viewed nature as an inexhaustible
provider of goods for human satisfaction. According to Locke nature of-itself, was a useless
collection of parts. Only the transforming hand of human endeavor could create objects of value
from the "waste" of nature.

While Locke provided the social analysis for the integration of the atomistic worlds of humanity
and nature, Adam Smith provided the mechanism. Just as gravity was a natural and immutable
force driving the relation of nature, so the free market provides for the immutable attraction
between individuals and the commodities of nature.

According to Smith one could no more alter the invisible hand of the market than one could
reverse the attraction of gravity. Stating that the assignment of value outside the aggrandizing
mechanisms of the market was an unnatural act interfering with the harmony of nature, Smith
asserted that only free, unfettered trade and competition among utility maximizing (rational)
individuals could ensure an ever expanding supply of material goods for the happiness of
humankind.
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In 1859 Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution as the creative force in the origin of
species. While the theory emphasized that populations change because some organisms can
adapt to change better than others and therefore live to produce more young, proponents of the
mechanistic paradigm quickly turned the principles of natural selection into a bloody struggle
between organisms for survival. Evolution was seen as a process of ever-increasing order
brought about as a result of each succeeding -species being better able to secure its own self-
interest.

It is important to note here that where the above constellation of values comes together to form a
powerful and pervading ethos, proponents of the various aspects of the mechanistic paradigm
presented their views as literal, unbiased and objective fact rather than simply an efficacious
metaphor. Blinded by the budding ethos of progress through scientific knowledge and
technological advance, the world was not described as functioning like a machine; it was a
machine.

In the scientific quest for an objective knowledge nature was stripped of its complex
interactiveness and subjected to rigid laboratory controls. When it responded in simplified ways
to the manipulation of a single variable, the experimenters claimed to have penetrated to the core
secrets of the natural world, demonstrating conclusively that the natural world not only behaved
like the mental concepts of humanity, but reflected in almost every detail the machinery created
by the mind of humanity.

However, these scientific "truths" which saw the vast complexity of the natural world as nothing
other than the mathematical summation of matter in motion, were more accurately the result of
what science and society chose to ignore than what could be objectively observed. The notion
that meaning could be the object of knowledge and thought was rendered silly by a paradigm in
which values that could not be translated into technical tasks were declared to be irrelevant.

Creating the concept of "Sustainable Development" as a counter point to the clearly destructive
consequences of current models of "economic" development, the World Commission on
environment and development argues that under this new imperative "more rapid economic
growth in both industrialized and developing countries" will lead to amelioration of both
environmental degradation and the inequalities of development because economic growth and
diversification ... will help developing countries mitigate the strains on the rural environment,
increase productivity and consumption standards, and allow nations to move beyond dependence
on one or two primary products for their export earnings."

Many economists, like University of British Columbia's William Rees, have already begun to
describe the present level of industrial activity as the root of global environmental decline. For
them the Commission's appeal for a "revitalization" of economic growth on this scale seems
paradoxical at best. "Our mechanical perception of the biosphere is dangerously superficial and
our continued belief in the possibility of sustainable development based on the growth-orientated
assumptions of neo-classical economics is illusionary" because the mechanical metaphor is
incapable of understanding either that, functionally speaking, there is a single entity, the
biosphere, in which humanity is inextricably enmeshed, or of acknowledging the fundamental
importance of entropy (discussed in the following pages) which regulates the role of fixed stocks
of nonrenewable material and energy resources.

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Rees argues that relying on an economic system rooted in the Cartesian world-view of
humanity's place in the natural world has led directly to the environmental disasters we face
today, essentially because, as the existentialist philosopher-Martin Heidegger-suggested, in the
subject/object dualism of the Cartesian paradigm an objectified environment becomes peripheral
value serving only to provide resources and act as a sink for waste in the service of subjective
human interests.

I have discussed the United Nations Commission on the Economy and Environment at some
length because in one of the most carefully prepared and theoretically objective documents of
our times the Brundtland Commission suggests that these classical or Cartesian economic
principles form one of the unassailable pillars of stable, equitable and meaningful human society.
Intend more on preserving the status quo than defining meaningful environmental policy, the
Commission insists that we need not reevaluate these underlying principles because simply by
shifting the focus of production this pervasive and powerful paradigm can be molded into an
environmentally benign mechanism for the material benefit of all of humanity.

For Rees the Commission is unable to see the cure to the problems of economic growth as
anything other than more economic growth because it accepts unquestioningly an economic
system based on the Cartesian values of utility and self-interest combined with the Newtonian
physics of "complete reversibility" of all physical relations. These perceptions lead directly to
"not only on the possibility of continuous material growth, but to its axiomatic necessity."

As a shift to any new, holistic, environmental paradigm would mean large and difficult changes
in our present social and political organization, the Commission's attempt to reformulate
environmental policy without radically altering the economic structure and philosophical
underpinning of society would of course be the preferable option. Given the tremendous
international effort that went into the Brundtland report and its wide acceptance by a broad
spectrum of the world's political and industrial leaders, it seems fair to assume that this report is
the mechanical paradigm's best chance of adapting to humanity's need to avoid environmental
disaster and destabilizing social inequity.

In contrast to the assumptions of the Brundtland report, Rees suggests that the destabilizing
effect of environmental crisis reflects inherent contradictions within the Cartesian world-view
about the relation between humanity and the natural world which cannot continue to be
subsumed without the grave danger of our ecological and economic systems collapsing to
dysfunctional levels of organization.

Seen from a holistic or systems point of view, Brundtland's recommendations to impose the
constraints of environmental quality criteria or social equity on an economic system based on
unrestrained growth will have about the same effect as placing a loose lid over a pot of boiling
water while leaving the stove top burner set at "high".

Although the Commission recognizes the urgency of environmental decay, economic injustice
and the need for limits on material growth, perhaps the greatest environmental danger is that its
call for a gentler, more scientific development ethic will succeed superficially. Thereby we may
miss the opportunity to correct what is becoming a catastrophic human error while our biosphere
is still capable of healing itself.

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The World Commission dramatically points to indications of impending environmental disaster
brought on by humanity's cavalier disregard for the environment. However recommendations for
a cure that ignore the systemic effects of our philosophical grounding in instrumental value and
provide only a slightly revised definition of exploitation will do little to address the source of the
problem. Thus I suggest that minor alterations to our concepts of growth and development
proposed by the Commission which ignore the fundamental embeddedness of humanity in the
natural world can no more ameliorate the environmental consequences of humanity's abuse of
natural ecosystems than a stop sign and squirt gun may halt the advance of a bush fire.

The relevance of the term "development" to a social/environmental ethos can only be fully
understood in its historical context. US President Harry Truman first defined the social meaning
of this concept when, in his inaugural speech he refereed to all unindustrialized areas as
"underdeveloped areas". Writing on what he calls the archeology of the development idea,
Wolfgang Sachs describes the profound effects of this new concept: the new world-view was
thus announced: all the peoples of the earth were to move along the same track and aspire to only
one goal-development. And the road to follow lay clearly ahead: Greater production is the key to
prosperity and peace. Clothing self-interest in generosity, Truman outlined a program of
technical assistance ... (his view of development) had found its succinct definition: the degree of
civilization in a country could be measured by the level of production. There was no longer any
reason to limit the domain of development to resources only. From now on, people and whole
societies could, or even should, be seen as the object of development.

Where colonial powers had seen themselves as fulfilling dual but separate mandates: economic
profit and the elevation of "coloured races," Truman proclaimed only one unified imperative:
development. Since the degree of civilization could be measured by the level of its production
any activity that increased production bettered all of humanity; even if costs were localized and
profits exported. It is this metaphorical background which continues to permeate the
pronouncements of the World Commission.

All human societies, no matter how adapted to local conditions, unique, or expressive of the
diversity of human existence, are placed on a single, progressive track of development leading
inexorably to shopping malls, rush hour madness, sit com obliteration of the intellect., and the
existential despair of an insular, atomized and mechanical existence.

While the Commission's call for redistribution of wealth is appealing from the prospect of
distributive justice, unless preceded by a radical transformation in our source of values, such a
redistribution would likely contribute more to the deterioration of the environment, than to its
recovery.

The problem here is that wealth is as inequitably distributed within a nation as between nations.
Those in third world nations who stand to benefit most from a redistribution of wealth between
nations are those already involved in the flow of wealth in established patterns of
environmentally destructive consumption. Increased access to capital development in Brazil
would most likely result in the funding of entrepreneurs who could then afford to buy more
Caterpillar tractors to level even more rain forest for yet more profit. Such a notion is inherent in
our concept of development. Development, by definition, is the negation of allowing Amazonian
natives who do not develop resources to continue to live in peace with an unexploited
environment.

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Weir and Schapiro's book, Circle of Poison, portrays the flow of toxic chemicals banned in North
America to third world countries. These poisons are not purchased for the protection of local
crops to feed the many hungry. They are purchased to support the profit margins of a wealthy
few. Brundtland offers no reason for us to believe that, freed from the urgency of foreign
exchange, leaders of countries that now base their economies on resource extraction for the
wealthy nations would suddenly turn to economies that promote a more equitable intranational
distribution of wealth and environmental well being.

In what I regard as an environmental nightmare, Brundtland calls for the lowering of trade
barriers and an increase in the international commitment to free trade. While the Commission
suggests that free trade will cure the problem of inequity among nations, ecologist and
humanitarian David Morris points out that two centuries of such trade has not reduced the
disparities in world living standards but exacerbated them. Third World nations borrowed
enormous sums of money to develop their export capacity. Attempts to repay their loans and
maximize the "profitability" of their lands has led to drastic shifts in agricultural production from
internal consumption to food for exports.

Noting that Brazil's per capita production of basic food stuff fell 13 per cent from 1977-1984,
while the exported foodstuffs jumped 15 per cent over the same period, Morris further observes
that “Today some 50 per cent of Brazil suffers malnutrition. Yet one leading Brazilian
agronomist, still calls export promotion, 'a matter of national survival'. In the global village, a
nation survives by starving its people". There is simply no reason to believe that forgiveness of
loans will alter the inexorable rationality of profit margins.

Although the Commission refuses to even acknowledge it, there is a fundamental contradiction
between the foundations of free trade and humanity's need to define a stable relation between
itself and its natural environment in that there is often an enormous disparity between the price
an individual pays for a product and the cost that society and the environment pay for producing
the product.

As John Maynard Keynes, one of the chief architects of the global economy points out, “The
divorce between ownership and the real responsibility of management is serious within a country
when, as a result of joint stock enterprises, ownership is broken up among innumerable
individuals who buy their interest today and sell it tomorrow and lack altogether both knowledge
and responsibility towards what they momentarily own. But when the same principle is applied
internationally, it is, in times of stress, intolerable ... experience is accumulating that remoteness
between ownership and operation is an evil."

From an environmental perspective free trade simply underscores the Lowest Common
Denominator. If two countries trade in a free market and one requires that the cost of an item
include expensive pollution abatement programs but the other country allows the environmental
costs to the item to be externalized (spewed into the air) then the lower cost item will sell and the
more environmentally enlightened country will have to amend its laws or lose its markets. Thus
even with additional attention to Environmental Impact Assessment, the inherent rational of free
trade leaves a concept like Sustainable Development little meaning other than development
whose negative impacts cannot be observed immediately.

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Within an environmental frame of reference, the Commission's devotion to economic growth is,
at best, unintelligible. Economic growth is precisely the driving force behind the environmental
and distributive inequities which the Commission laments.

Most distressingly the Commission blindly implies that growth as a goal in-itself (a goal which
produced such misguided results when applied to industrial economies) will somehow cure the
problems it has created when directed to the economies of the Third World. I would not
challenge the idea that selective growth (such as growth in the number of banana plantations
given over to peasants for the cultivation of subsistence crops--a decidedly uneconomic growth)
may be necessary for the amelioration of some of Earth's distributive and environmental
problems. However, in this instance positive growth would be the highly selective consequence
of other objectives rather than a general panacea.

Underlying the Brundtland Commission's assumptions about the value of development,

economic growth and free trade as antidote to the world's environmental and social ills is the
inability of our currently accepted economic theories to acknowledge the profound effect of the
Second Law of Thermodynamics (Entropy) in humanity's relation to the natural world.

Until recently the seemingly inexhaustible supply of energy and material resources on Earth gave
the impression of an open thermodynamic system (a forever refilling cornucopia) from which
small losses like the inevitable entropic dissipation of energy (e.g. the friction induced heating of
your pants while cascading down a playground slide) could be regarded as utterly
inconsequential.

However, renowned economist Gerogescu-Roegen argues that a technological society that

chooses to consume the stock of Earth's stared energy and material resources rather than live
within the flow of radiant energy (the Sun) is living in a fool's paradise if it believes it can ignore
the laws of entropy.

Thus, while we like to think of our economies as dynamic, productive: systems, the Second Law
states that in thermodynamic terms, all material economic 'production' is in fact 'consumption'.
Any form of economic activity dependent on material resources therefore contributes to a
constant increase in global net entropy (disorder), through the continuous dissipation of available
energy and mater. It follows that contrary to the assumptions of neoclassical theory, there is no
equilibrium in the energy and material relationships between industrial economies and the
biosphere. Sustainable development based on prevailing patterns of resource use is not even
theoretically conceivable."

Under our currently dominant economic theories the term sustainable development is, in fact, a
contradiction in terms. According to Rees, instead of creating wealth, the industrial revolution
can more accurately be seen as industriously trading ecological capital for economic capital and
"Herein lies the essence of our environmental crisis".

The laws of entropy state that in the physical world every expenditure of energy inevitably
means the moving from higher potential (lower entropy) to lower availability (higher entropy)
and this movement is inherent in the greater randomness of the system. Entropy is a direct
affront to Locke's notion that nature is waste until transformed by human effort. Entropy makes
utterly absurd the suggestion that Canadians will have a more secure resource base if they dig up
all they can find and sell it off to the Americans as fast as possible.
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Implications of this Second Law of Thermodynamics challenge the most fundamental premises
of the mechanistic paradigm and are vitally important to developing a new environmental ethos
which places the highest value in the miraculous existence of nature rather than in the labour
value or capital expenditure of processing it.
Admittedly, any new environmental ethic, unlike the Brundtland Report, would contain the
considerable disadvantage of not being easily understood or implemented in terms of the large
majority of the world's current social-economic: structures. Yet, we have seen, our
environmental difficulties arise as an inevitable consequence of these structures.

Slight adjustments to our exploitative economic system will no more alter the course of human
development than slightly less aggressive males could have saved the sabre toothed tiger from
the evolutionary dead-end that granted the highest reproductive value to males with the longest
teeth.

Brundtland attempts to interpret growth as an environmental fix not because of its efficacy as an
environmental or social cure, but because economic growth is a necessary condition of the
economic system which she chooses not to challenge. However, what this recommendation
demonstrates most clearly is that our current world economic system needs a radical rethinking
before it can serve the interests of humanity in seeking a more healthy and holistic relation with
the environment.

Rather than superficial changes to the imperative to develop, an environmental ethos

authentically attempting to address the current asymmetry between society and the natural world
must recognize that: growth and development can no longer be considered to carry any inherent
worth. Not that growth or development would not occur in any circumstances, rather they would
only occur as the exegesis of other values. The first question that we would answer in
considering the use of a potential natural resource is what are our minimum requirements, what
can we not cut down, dig up, or consume?

Although such a proposal may seem ridiculous in the context of the world culture today, If our
thoughts never reach out to challenge the status quo then we will never transcend current
practice-however destructive that may be. Even if we continue blithely down the current path,
environmental disaster may provide the motivation for such a large paradigm shift that what
"makes sense"' today may seem foolish tomorrow, and what seems ridiculous today may seem
eminently reasonable a few years from now. Pointing out that there are living alternatives to the
destructive use of technology, Wendell Berry notes, “The only people among us that I know of
who have answered this question (can technology be constrained?) convincingly in the
affirmative are the Amish. They alone, as a community, have carefully restricted their use of
machine-developed energy, and so have become the only true masters of technology."

Thus the conceptualization today of an alternative constitutive principle could mean that when
faced with resource scarcity and environmental degradation, humanity may choose to
fundamentally change its ways rather than, like the dinosaur, go on pursuing an imperative to
grow large when the only hope for survival lies in adaptation.

Perhaps the gravest difficulty in defining an environmentally sound basis for a new paradigm
centres on the problem of defining a meaningful yet still workable distinction between human

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exploitation of the natural world and our dependence on the ecosystem to provide for our
sustenance.

I fully realize eyes are beginning to roll and arguments over the location and meaning of
fundamental value can easily be dismissed as a highly pedantic discussion. However, if my dear
readers will grant me a few droopy eyed paragraphs, I will try very hard to demonstrate that the
assignment of value is much more than just an academic consideration. What and how we value,
even when unconsciously held (as in the profusion of means and confusion of goals decried by
Einstein), determines in the most fundamental way how we live our lives throughout the many
facets of our existence.
Referring to the incredible power of our underlying stories and values, Harold Goddard once
said, “The destiny of the world is determined less by the battles that are lost and won than by the
stories it loves and believes in.”

Reacting to the exploitative and destructive consequences of an environmental philosophy based

on finding only an instrumental value in the natural world, many environmental ethicists have
suggested the way to develop a meaningful environmental ethic is to postulate an
intrinsic/Kantian value (an inherent value independent of its use value-the opposite of economic
value) in nature; species, ecosystems, and landscapes included. However attempts to create a
workable paradigm from this postulate of value in nature independent of any evaluator are
fraught with difficulty.

J. Baird Callicott, one of the most highly regarded environmental ethicists of our time, points to
the "problem of intrinsic value in nature (as) the most critical and recalcitrant theoretical problem
of environmental ethics".

If intrinsic value remains qualitative, how can humanity find its place in the ecosystem without
violating the intrinsic value of other parts of the ecosystem? This problem arises as a conundrum
because the intrinsic value of Kant's social ethics cannot be mapped onto the relation between
humanity and the environment.

An ecosystem is a process of complex interaction between a large number of biotic and abiotic
components. An ethical system developed to describe the proper relation between humans who
share the same ontological condition and seek to occupy the same environmental niche simply
cannot be adapted to describe the relation between humanity and the environment, of which it is
a dependent member, without causing inextricable contradiction.

Indeed, whether qualitative or quantitative, the cardinal premise of intrinsic value as a

constitutive principle holds humanity as separate from and inevitably in conflict with the natural
environment which envelops, defines and supports it; postulating an intrinsic value outside
humanity thus accepts a priori the Cartesian alienation and separation between humanity and
nature, between the consumer and consumed, between the system and its parts. The inextricable
embeddedness of humanity in the natural is implicitly denied.

As Daniel Kemmis in his book, Community and the Politics of Place, argues, “The concept of
country, homeland, dwelling place becomes simplified as 'the environment'-that is, what
surrounds us. Once we see our place, our part of the world, as surrounding us, we have already
made a profound division between ourselves. We have given up the understanding-dropped it out
of our language and so out of our thought-that we and our country create one another, depend on
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another, are literally part of one another; that our land passes in and out of our bodies just as our
bodies pass in and out of our land; that as we and our land are part of one another, so all who are
living as neighbors here, human and plant and animal, are part of one another, and so cannot
possibly flourish alone; that, therefore, our culture must be our response to our place, our culture
and our place are images of each other and inseparable from each other".

Humanity in the ethic of intrinsic worth is relegated forever to the role of a thoroughly
domesticated wolf who, however disenchanted he may become with a steady diet of
cornmeal/soy protein pellets, must NEVER consume his master's sheep because they have value
outside his appetite.

It has been argued that the use of inherent rather than intrinsic value softens the separation
between humanity and its environment by identifying value as existing independent of human
judgment, however, both concepts adequately describe only a static system. Given the dynamic
functioning of an ecosystem or more importantly the biosphere, such concepts fail to provide
meaningful information about value in a dynamic, functioning system.

While the above might appear to be solved by positing intrinsic value in the ecosystem/biosphere
(organism model), environmental ethicist Eric Katz points out that whenever value is assigned to
the natural world in the metaphor of organism, there is the ever present danger that the individual
will, in effect, be reduced to mere instrumental value in relation to the organism. He compares
the individual here to an organ such as a liver which has no value outside its service to the
organism. Katz believes this problem can be solved by placing value in a community so the
individual has value in the community but also has independent value and is free to leave and
make other voluntary associations.

However, Katz's attempt to compare the encompassing and interconnected complexity of the
natural world to the values in an isolated and atomistic system like a university where members
can chose to come and go underscores the falsity of his own metaphor. Indeed, the current
environmental malaise has developed because humanity has been deluded into believing that it is
involved in a voluntary relation to the natural world from which it can withdraw without serious
consequences if things get messed up at the institution.

In a penetrating analysis of value systems, Callicott recognizes that the fundamental problem
with intrinsic value is that it is an artifact of the subject/object-value/fact dualism of the
Cartesian world-view misplaced into a holistic ethical system trying to move beyond such
divisions. “In the Cartesian world-view, qualities which humanity observes in the mindless and
objective world around arise from three possible sources in the following hierarchical scale:
1. Primary qualities:
position, momentum, extension, and motion confer qualifies on objects intrinsically (without
being observed);
2. Secondary qualities:
colour, smell, taste, touch confer qualities on objects by stimulating the senses;
3. Tertiary qualities:
the quality of value can also arise in the opinion of a subjective observer.
Nature here has no value of its own, though it can be endowed with an ephemeral value by the
human mind.”

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Emergent or transcendent values are, as Homes Rolston III describes beyond consideration
because, ‘Nature simply unfolds in geological forces and genetic programming, like the driven
wind and developing seed. Biological and evolutionary processes are no more moral than gravity
or electricity. Nature is...a moral nullity".

In the mechanistic worldview it was recognized that things are interrelated. But conceptually
things first had their properties, and then there were mechanisms and forces with interconnected
them. In our awakening spirituality of place and the epistemology of systems things-themselves-
do not have intrinsic properties. All the properties flow from relationships.

Now for Callicott, the epistemology of quantum physics and holistic ecology dissolves the very
subject/object separation on which the Cartesian ranking of qualities is based. Instead of mind
encountering an isolated, atomistic and objective world, the universe may more accurately be
seen as an intricately related cosmic web in which the subjective and extrinsic worlds
interpenetrate thus rendering the concept of intrinsic value in a thing or institutional metaphor
unintelligible. "Values then are neither subjective nor objective, but are the progeny of two
complementary potentialities..." All properties as well as values are interactive in origin. Or, in a
revision of his nature as moral nullity assertion, Rolston III succinctly observes that, nature is not
the object of value; rather it is "the bearer of value: that both constrains and ennobles the role we
humans are called to play".

In one attempt to quantifiably overcome some of the contradictions of qualitative intrinsic value,
ethicists have suggested that while all organisms are intrinsically valuable, some are more
valuable than others or some are more valuable at one time, or in one relation than another.
Human intellect, in this scheme, holds the highest value as it represents nature becoming
conscious. While more workable than the qualitative approach, this position carries with it the
ever present danger of arrogance-if highest value rests in humanity then nature may be seen as
the rightful domain of its most exalted member. Or, more dangerous in my opinion, is the belief
expressed in the "Aquarian Conspiracy" and other "New Age" writings that humanity's destiny is
to become "co-author" with nature in the processes of both planetary management and evolution.

Such utterly optimistic views of human engineering need to review carefully not only the history
of human intervention in the environment, but also the very concept of management which
implies the reduction of diversity in structure and function so that a few variables can be
maximized or controlled.

Ontological Embeddedness which attempts to symbolize a new environmental ethos or

spirituality of place, then rejects Katz's suggestion that intrinsic value can exist if perceived in
the proper context. Rather as an ethos of place and celebration of the indigenous, it recognizes
that value can only exist in relation and that humanity can never experience its fullest human
potential, nor find a home and peace within its natural environment until it recognizes its
fundamental and inextricable embeddedness within the natural world.

In Hoimar von Ditfurth's words, “The universe, then is not that empty, cold and lifeless space
whose majestic indifference once inspired us with fear as well as an admiration. It is the living
soil from which our earth has sprung and our planet is joined to it by thousand roots. We are not
some tiny oaisis permitted to exist in a hostile universe solely because of our insignificance.
Instead our earth can be shown to be a focal point where various cosmic powers conjoin to
fashion a living world."
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Late November 1987, shortly after the release of the Brundtland Report, I sat among an overflow
crowd at Castlegar's Brilliant Cultural Centre listening to David Suzuki present some of his ideas
on the social and environmental consequences of our current view of science and technology.
Among the numerous insights I gained that night one related incident remained fixed in my mind
and forms the conceptual stimulus of the central focus of this chapter. According to Suzuki, that
summer he had flown over the Stein wilderness with a forester and a local Native leader.
Looking down from the plane the forester pointed to a number of river drainages and above the
roar of the plane explained that in the river drainages below he could see the equivalent of 15
years of work for 250 men. The Native leader looked down on the slopes running up from those
same rivers then turned to Suzuki to exclaim. "This is the sacred land of my ancestors. For
thousands of years we have lived and hunted among these woods. This land is the meaning and
strength of my people." Clearly the Native leader had no difficulty with defining a difference
between embeddedness and exploitation.

I realize there is a long list of critics who would line up for a hardy scoff at the above suggestion.
"'The noble savage is an idea that died with Rousseau some 200 years ago", they would hasten to
jibe. However, the Native leader was not savage, nor do I imply that the value in his observation
arises out of the colour of his skin. The value in his statement arises out of the strength of his
ontological perception. Humanity is as inextricably linked to and embedded in its environment as
the fetus is to the womb. If humanity deludedly believes itself to be a wolf and the womb to be a
sheep then its delusion is suicidal. While accumulating evidence an the impact of humanity's
consumption of the environment indicates both the scientific and social significance of the
observation of this Mt.Currie Indian Chief, there is also a vast literature, even in Western culture,
that points to the ontological salience of humanity's search for meaning within nature.

Ontological Embeddedness then is separate from the other value systems discussed because it
begins by describing both the nature of fact and meaning of value as following from the dynamic
functioning of natural systems. While it is closer to intrinsic value than to the
extrinsic/instrumental value of the mechanical paradigm, it does not contain the inherent
difficulty of having to find sustenance from the very nature which one is recognizing as having
its own intrinsic value. For me, the combining of Ontological with Embeddedness provides the
focus for a more profound intellectual, visceral and ecstatic understanding of the utter, intimate
and inextricable embeddedness of the very being of humanity in the natural world.

Thus I symbolize this search for an ethos of interconnectedness as Ontological Embeddedness

because a new environmental ethos must recognize that the entire beingness
(spirit/psyche/body/cultural and physical survival) of humanity is inextricably immersed in the
natural world rather than just our economic stability (Brundtland) or an extended perception of
self (deep ecology).

The need to find a beginning for a new environmental paradigm by starting with a recognition of
humanity's fundamental embeddedness in nature may be demonstrated by General Systems
Theory (an emerging scientific theory which attempts to understand the holistic functioning of
irreducibly complex and interrelated systems) which has shown that any subsystem or element of
a complex and dynamically operating system can only be adequately defined (or located) in its
context. General Systems Theory has shown that the whole of the system has meaning (or
values) which are different from just the sum of the properties of its parts. Thus the parts have
relations (values) within the system which are different from properties the part might display if
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objectively observed or isolated from the system. Conversely the system exists only by the
dynamic and functional interrelatedness of its parts.

Ontological Embeddedness begins from this principle, suggesting that humanity is not a creature
separate from nature and commissioned by its sentience or divine commandment to subdue and
develop the Earth. Thus, rather than a prescription of abject environmental limits which human
existence must recognize in resigned despair, the reawakening of an ethos of place may first of
all be a joyous return to the enchantment of Earth as nurturing mother rather than indifferent or
hostile environment.

As our environmental crisis demonstrates, though accumulated human knowledge has provided
us with the tools of a crude power this knowledge does not extend to a full understanding of the
complexity of Earth's biosphere, nor has knowledge yet produced a great deal of wisdom.
Embeddedness implies humility, interactiveness, acceptance and a sense of place; in this ethic
authenticity replaces arrogance, domination and isolation as the most fundamental human
experience.

For readers yet unconvinced of the salience of value assignment, let me extend the analogy of
fetus/womb a little further; imagine a precocious fetus that becomes aware of the mechanical
advantage of its hand, but has as yet no knowledge of its own relation to the enveloping womb. If
the fetus then begins to manipulate the sustaining womb as an independent other or resource,
both mother and child may be in grave danger. I do not want to over extend the analogy, but it
does illustrate the sense of humility, caution and intricate interrelatedness implied in the
Embeddedness perception of participatory existence versus exploitative use.

While thinkers like Bacon, Descartes, Newton, Locke and Smith may be considered founding
authors to the mechanistic paradigm, the impetus for this radical transformation in Western
thought may be traced to two catastrophic events which irrevocably shook the foundations of the
medieval world. First the plague which wiped out up to 1/2 of the population of many villages
throughout Europe challenged the efficacy of the established order causing many to long for new
powers to protect them from this frightening rampage of nature.

The other less dramatic, but more direct, cause of the dissolution of the medieval world was the
increasing rigidity of the church. Where the church had once absorbed differing customs as it
attempted to adapt to a diversity of needs and changing conditions, by the 17th century the
medieval church had become moribund relying on ever increasing levels of authority and
coercion to enforce the top-down control of members who were denied the autonomy to seek
their own levels of integration into the system.

This rigidity and dependence on centralized control to enforce the functioning of the system
produced a highly perched order in which systemic inflexibility prevented the subsystems from
spontaneously developing new, more stable relations. As the medieval way of life encountered
increasingly profound disturbances it added new layers of control (Inquisition and oppressive
state control) and attempted to strengthen the bonds of coercion over its members. Like an
overheated boiler that vents no steam, the attempts to maintain control brought the medieval
system ever closer to violent collapse.

A systemic analysis of the forces which led to the collapse of the medieval world may also
provide important insights for humanity's attempt to deal with the current environmental crisis.
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First, attempts to patch up the current system with burgeoning doses of technology should
recognize that their escalating centralization along with the ever expanding levels at which
control must be enforced cause the order of the system to become ever more dangerously
perched.

Looking back on the 17th century, it becomes clear that attempts to define a more
environmentally appropriate paradigm must do much more than simply react to the mistakes of
the past. In order to be workable a new paradigm would seek dialectical ways of defining itself
so that as the new system encounters resistance such stimulus can be fed to the organizing
principles as a message to make adjustments rather than a trigger for more rigid control.

Perhaps the most significant lesson to be learned from the momentous change in the perceptions
of the Western world which occurred in the 17th century is the inappropriateness of basing the
vast complexity of relations between humanity and the rest of the natural world on a few well
defined, relatively immutable principles.

According to Georgeicu-Roegen one of the most serious economic problems of our times is the
inability of economists to recognize that economic principles developed by Adam Smith when
resources seemed inexhaustible and the environment appeared infinite in its ability to absorb the
impact of human activity are utterly devastating when applied to a world in which neither of the
above conditions exist.

In contrast to the mechanistic paradigm which sees humanity as separate from nature and thus
exempt from ecological consequences, any ecologically aware world view must recognize that
the place of humanity in nature is closer to the relation of cell to organism where cooperation and
harmony ensure the survival and health of both cell and organism. General Systems Theory,
which attempts to describe the functioning of such systems within systems, views the integrative
relations of a living system as inherently different from a machine. Seen from a systems point of
view all living systems form concentric patterns of wholes embedded within wholes.

Each whole has the Janis-faced nature of being a self integrating whole with its tendency to
assert itself and to preserve its individuality and at the very same time a whole within the
functioning of an even larger whole. While this paradox of independence and subservience
seems intellectually unresolveable it is the everyday rhythm or inner dynamic of all healthy
living beings. The integrity of the system and apparent purpose arise as emergent properties from
the functional relations of the parts, for example, human life is much more than just the
integrating function of billions of self seeking cells.

The whole living system functions not because of some centralized control of indifferent parts
but because in the functioning of the whole the subsystems (holons) acquire an image of the
whole, most especially of their place in the whole.

This sense of place is one of the most important principles in the cohesive functioning of a living
system. Where cancerous cells were once viewed as aggressive cells that overpower their
neighbours, it is now recognized that cancerous cells are, in fact, relative weak cells incapable of
perceiving their proper relation to the whole. These "transformed" cells go on pursuing their own
interest in defiance of the organism to which they belong precisely because they have somehow
lost their sense of place and belonging, no longer perceiving their ontological embeddedness in
the whole.
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Oncological researchers, Werner and Hedrick, note that tumour cells which develop from normal
body cells, differ from normal cells in three important respects:
1. Malignant cells are immortal.
They go on dividing indefinitely, while normal cells have finite lifetimes like any macroscopic
organism. Tumour cells have been shown to go on multiplying as long as there is available
nutrient.
2. Cancer cells cannot recognize environmental restraints.
Normal cells need hard surfaces on which to grow and serum to supply growth factors. When
they are crowded they cease dividing, "Transformed" cancerous cells, however :show none of the
above limitations. They grow on soft agar or hard surfaces and divide to the point of piling up on
each other until the medium is exhausted.
3. Over time cancerous cells exhibit a progressive loss of differentiated identity.
Liver tumour cells, for instance, lose all the characteristics that delineate them as uniquely liver
cells.

Humanity would do well to study carefully the natural consequences of this loss of
differentiation with its accompanying dedication to uncontrolled growth and insatiable greed for
resources. Clearly the most vital message for all of humanity to hear today is the song of place
and the spirituality of belonging-both our differentiated self and our collective survival depend
on it.

Where the mechanistic paradigm separates controlling mind from inert matter and finds
hierarchical relations which depend on direct lines of control emanating from a command centre
which owns and operates the working of the system, the systems view sees holarchical relations
and the perception of place. The term holarchical is derived from hologram. A hologram is a
three-dimensional image created by a wave field of light scattered by an object and recorded on a
plate as an interference pattern. When this photograph-the hologram- is placed in a coherent light
beam, like a laser, the original wave pattern is regenerated in all three dimensions. Any piece of
the hologram will reconstruct the entire image. Thus holarchical implies the perception of
mutually embedded relationship as opposed to models of hierachial control where orders
emanate down from authority on the top.

The term holon, used later, refers to any part of the hologram which even though divided from
the whole still reflects the entire pattern of the whole. Metaphorically the terms hologram,
holarchical, holon imply diffuse, interpenetrating and cooperative connections between the parts
and to the whole. Interestingly the following Buddhist sutra provides one of the most insightful
descriptions of holographic reality:
In the heaven of Indra there is said to be a network of pearls so arranged that if you look at one
you see all the others reflected in it. In the same way each object in the world is not merely itself,
but involves every other object, and in fact is every other object.

Nowhere can functioning holarchical relationships be more readily perceived than in the
exquisite development of the embryo. Embryogenesis begins with one cell that divides into two.
As cells continue to divide they begin the process of differentiation. Some divide along one plane
some along another. As these orientate in new spatial relations they also differentiate new
structural properties and develop new functional relations. In the polar coordinate model of
development pattern arises from a cell's recognition of its relative position in a developing
population by assessing its physical location in a system of polar (clock-like) coordinates. The
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vast complexity of a fully developed organism arising out of the functional relation of its parts is
an exquisite miracle far beyond the ability of our relatively crude concepts to explain.

Such intricate workings as the timing of cell division, the relation between cell division,
grastulation and gene expression, the unexplained ability of cells to migrate through the
developing embryonic tissue to find the one location where it can continue to advance to its
differentiated form in proper relation to the other cells forming the developing organism, the
fundamental processes by which certain ectodermal cells become skin and others nerves, and the
pathways in which the environment interacts with the inherited potential of the individual cannot
be related simply to the DNA in a cell, or guidance of a germ cell or any other centralized control
mechanism, but more clearly arises as a holographic process of each cell perceiving its place
within and in relation to the greater whole.

Where it was once thought the natural world could be explained as an economic system in which
each unit (gene) sought to maximize its interests in a hostile and competitive environment, it
must now be recognized that Place (a sense of belonging; a sense of participation; a sense of
autonomy and self survival within the context of one's relation to the whole) is one of the most
vital operating principles in the natural world. If the holon(part) loses its vision of its relation to
the whole it is in grave danger. It becomes dysfunctional and, as the Darwinians would say, may
be selected against. If enough of the holons lose their sense of place the whole may become
confounded and die out.

The exquisite beauty in nature exists not because a few rugged self seeking, self serving
individuals survive in a deadly competitive world but rather because the whole of nature in its
infinite variety exits as an intrinsically coherent function of the natural system which provides
for a pattern that persists as autonomous parts functioning together by recognizing and reacting
to their experience of place.

The material world superficially perceived by the senses may appear to give some credence to
the Cartesian perceptions of an assemblage of objective and isolated parts held together by
indifferent forces and immutable laws. However, what we commonly perceive as objective,
material reality has been shown by psychologist Fritz Perls to be only a very limited
perception/pattern (gestalt) formed by the analytical/rational/discriminating function of human
mind.

Viewed through the nonlinear, subjective and synthesizing influence of human intuition, the
gestalt expands like a holon to include the felt presence of the greater whole. The rainbow exists,
says Perls, because we observe it, or as the Hindu mystics would say-we are the rainbow.
Without the participation of the observer reality becomes nothing more than vacuous rhetoric.
Mind then, like the dancing Shiva, appears more a map attempting to chart the ever-changing
contours of a moody sea than analyst of a deterministic and absolute reality.

Considering the map like quality of mind, Gregory Bateson proposed an ecology of mind. In
what is likely the most significant development in Western thought since the Cartesian
separation of mind and matter in the 1600's; Bateson fundamentally rejected the mechanistic
separation of mind and matter. Mind arose not as some primordial special/exceptional
dispensation to humanity, rather mind (mentation) arises as a function of the complexity of
relations in an interactive system. In an open system, with the defining constant flow of energy
through it, dissipatative structures arise and continue to exist far from equilibrium(a
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mechanical/deterministic or chemical balance of competing forces) because of the processing of
information.

The greater the complexity the greater the capacity to process information. As complexity within
the system rises to a crucial level the processes we call mentation occurs. Further complexity and
mentation can lead to the sophisticated mentation we call consciousness, but Bateson's most
significant contribution here is the recognition that even at the level of a simple ecosystem the
"mental" processes of memory and information processing are occurring in highly creative ways.
Indeed, creativity is an inherent property of being rather than a process conferred onto passive
and indifferent matter. Thus the gulf between mind and matter is no more unbridgable than the
chasm which was once thought to separate matter and energy. Bateson, claims that an
individual's only real self is the total cybernetic network of person plus society plus environment,
and further suggests that, despite the blinders of our positivistic culture, we experience our
holarchical embeddedness as such.

While Bateson's Ecology of Mind maps the general relation between the functioning of the living
whole and the perception of place by the subsystem (holon), I now turn to the eminent
psychologist C.G. Jung in order to further develop a correlation between human/holon and the
significance of the rising environmental ethos.

Jung spent his early career studying under Freud. However, rather early on Jung began to
question the validity of treating the patient ;as an isolated individual. Recognizing the abject
insanity of the world wars breaking out around his clinics, Jung wondered how sane was normal
in such a bizarre world. Reflecting further, Jung wondered whether one could ever understand
the human psyche if one's quest were limited to the boundaries of a single culture.

Thus began Jung's his exploration of a broad spectrum of human cultures in search of the
common perceptions that could, truly be called the human psyche. Studying the dreams, myths,
and cultural contexts of a large number of societies, Jung penetrated the veneer of cultural
differences.

There was, claimed Jung, a human condition of individuation that unfolded through the guidance
of generalized, crosscultural patterns (archetypes) common to all humanity. Identification of the
individual with the numinous, symbolic and ineffable representation of the archetype was much
more than just an aberrant after thought to mechanical extension or economic greed; across all
cultural differences the spiritual quest for experienced relation to the organic functioning of the
whole was the most essential meaning of human existence.

It would then seem that Robert Ardrey completely misidentified the cultural deadend. Western
civilization has since the dawning of the enlightenment with its emphasis on greed and alienation
from any self greater than the self-aggrandizing individual, from any sense of cultural outside the
market and from any sense of connectedness to the community of all life on earth , been on the
most destructive deadend in the history of human culture.

Choosing to explore the realms of experience which science ignored (i.e.; precognition,
synchronicity, psychokinesis, and the vast mythos of human culture and experience) Jung argued
that while logos and the objectifying processes of science were not entirely wrong, they were, at
best, a metaphor which when taken literally severely limited the perception of humanity.
Anticipating Bateson's concept of mind by several decades, Jung saw no clear demarcation
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between mind/body, spirit/matter, subject/object, they were all inextricably woven into the most
exquisite interconnected pattern.

Relying on information that encompassed vast realms of human experience rather than just the
reductionist logos of the Cartesian world-view, Jung argued that the most fundamental function
of human intellect was the discovery of the "spiritual connection and the dimension of meaning."

For Jung this perception of pattern exists in the collective unconscious which contains
primordial, "symbolic" expressions of a reality infinitely more complex and interdimensional
than the simplifying rationality of logos. Indeed it was through individuals experiencing the
mythos of the collective unconscious that new ideals, ethics, religious systems and even
scientific discovery come into existence for the first time. In order to document his ideas, Jung
collected a vast literature on the incredible diversity of human perception and its underlying
unity. His eagerness to see the primal patterns of relatedness among all humans and between
humanity and its natural environment, in spite of the general bigotry and exploitative values of
the age, is one of the profound contributions of Jung.

Today General Systems Theory and Bateson's Ecology of Mind help to further explain and add
significance to Jung's concepts of the archetype and the collective unconscious from which it
arises. Archetypal experiences, I suggest, are the holographic images of the individual as
subsystem experiencing the greater whole. Jung repeatedly pointed out that the archetypes (like
holograph images) are not prescriptive dogma of what is or what one must do. Rather they are
generalized guides allowing the individual to experience his general relation to the developing
whole. The response to the archetype or holograph will be as original (autonomous) as the
individual, but by reference to the guide it will also occur within the context of the whole.

Jung talked a great deal about the collective unconscious. I'm sure that if Jung were formulating
his ideas today he would draw heavily on Bateson's Ecology of Mind, According to Jung "all
reality should be regarded as a yet unknown substrate possessing material and at the same time
psychic qualities". In deed, the ecology of mind may be seen as precisely a topographical
description of the fundamental relations underlying of the collective unconscious.

Thus the collective unconscious arises out of, at least, the functional complexities of the system
we call human society, but beyond that the collective unconscious clearly contains primordial
perceptions of humanity's place in nature, of its Ontological Embeddedness in the natural world.

From the above discussion it is clear that Jung's view of the unity between value and fact is
complementary to Callicott's. For Callicott value and fact are inextricably interwoven into the
pattern of the cosmic matrix. Jung, the psychologist, felt that human thought cannot separate
value and fact (even when it claims vehemently to have done so) because value forms one of the
most fundamental conditions of human perception.
Just as cancerous cells lose not only their sense of embeddedness in the organism, but also
become progressively less differentiated from the unique identity, so for Jung as humanity's
sense of belonging becomes transformed into the isolated and insular atoms by the ontology of
the mechanistic world-view it inevitably loses touch with the mythos of its own organic identity.

For Jung this incredibly deep mythos of human perception carries instructional information about
both the complex forces which gave rise to the human species and, just as our genetic coding
provides biochemical information about the most primordial origins of life on Earth, so the
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mythos contains vast realms of information about the infinitely complex web of dimensions in
which human life is embedded.

The holistic concept of holographic or archetypal experience may be directly related to the
perception of both western and eastern religious experiences. Responding to the medieval view
of subjective, God-given and mediated value in the natural world, the mechanistic world-view
attempted to completely separate fact from value creating an objective "reality" independent of
the subjective observations and value of humanity.

As discussed earlier, the ecological effects of this dichotomy have now become obvious.
However, as Jung suggests the psychological impact of this bifurcation in perception haS been
equally as devastating on the psyche of humanity.

Many sources which attempt to understand the inner workings of human nature (writers, poets,
saints, sages, philosophers) suggest that one of the greatest satisfactions available to humanity is
its ability to feel at one with the natural world rather than the technological ability to manipulate
and control the environment.

Indeed, there are some very close parallels between this late 20th century attempt to formulate an
environmental ethos and the ancient Taoist teaching of the Chinese. For the Taoist the essential
quest of humanity is to live in harmony with the fundamental rhythms which pervades all of the
natural world. The purpose of human intellect is to learn to merge with the vast procession and
diversity of living forms rather than confront nature with a hostile, indifferent and destructive
technology.

The way of liberation called Taoism teaches that the highest form of knowledge is in learning to
be rather than to define or consume. Zen Buddhism, which adopted much of the Taoist teachings,
points to an enlightened state of mind, Satori, in which human perceptions move beyond the
limits of language bound, cognitive insight in order to experience directly the internal relatedness
of all existence.

Doukhobor and Quaker teachings hold that there is no need for exact religious dogma to be
handed down from generation to generation. As the individual is a reflection of the whole, they
believe each person is capable of perceiving the good that exists inside one's self through
contemplative attention.

The Amish of Pennsylvania have not secularized their earthly life. Thus they have not hesitated
to see communal and agricultural implications in their religious principles and these implications
directly influence their behavior. The "goal" of Amish culture is a larger harmony "among God,
nature, family, and community.

A number of eastern religions, especially Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism, clearly believe that
the purpose of human existence can only be fully understood through the direct unfolding of
individual experience Truth/Value are not separate and can only be experienced when integrated
into the holographic perception of the relation between the holon and the whole; its dialectic
nature cannot be expressed in the authoritative utterances of Mind apart.

Nowhere has there been a clearer statement of ecological connectedness and sustainability than
in the Hindu/Buddhist teaching of Karma-what we do today effects directly who we become and
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what kind of experiences we will have. If we create mountains of toxic waste now it will not
only poison our minds and bodies now, it will continue to haunt us in our future lives-our
children. The law of Karma teaches us that the most important pursuit of our time is not the
invention of a better mouse trap.

What we need most urgently is a spiritual transformation that allows us to feel emotionally,
asethetically, intellectually and spiritually the utter embeddedness of our own lives in the living,
creative natural processes all around us. Once we know that experience in our hearts, we will
fully comprehend that the only fitting relationship to such intelligence, such "mindfullness", is
one of discourse/dialogue rather than a vain attempt to dominate and control.

Any survey of current literature reveals a profound attempt by authors across many disciplines to
redefine humanity's relation to the natural world in order that we may at least avoid some of the
worst consequences of increasing environmental deterioration. Foremost in this emerging
awareness is James Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis; the self-creative, homeostatic, respiratory
properties of Earth may more properly be represented as expressions of a living planet than as
coincidental attributes of animated machines occupying an inert and indifferent geological
surface.

Lovelock suggests that some parts of the Earth organism are "vital organs" which if disrupted
would cause the whole Earth, Gaia, to malfunction. One cannot think about the Gaia hypothesis
without experiencing a profound respect for the self-organizing, miraculously creative, natural
processes which can no longer be considered mere mathematical relations between isolated
masses in space. The Earth is, of itself, self-organizing and self-actualizing. This theory which
began as just another scientific hypothesis, has struck a chord in our ecological consciousness
and has begun to resonate in the deepest foundations of our psyche. Gaia, the living Earth or
Great Mother, now forms a new context for our experience of self, Earth and community.

After a lengthy absence from any kind of academic studies, I returned to university life in the fall
of 1988. After ten years of intense involvement in environmental issues, I had become convinced
that what the environmental movement need most was more experts and the accompanying
credibility. So many times we had been forced to run for the books when confronted by the
spurious agreements of nuclear physicists espousing the benefits of proposed projects of their
employers.

Months of volunteer effort went into tracing down studies into the effects of releasing various
pesticides or toxins into the environment only to find that the research was either falsified, or so
narrowly confined or utterly ambiguous as to be meaningless. Even the seemingly harmless dust
of the derris flower used by many gardeners who would otherwise spurn the use of toxic
chemicals proved enigmatic. While studies on rodents seemed to justify its household use, new
studies with pigs indicated very toxic effects on pigs. Though little is known about rotonone's
overall toxicity to humans, because it is a "natural" product it continues to be used with little
regard around the home and garden.

Then came the Alar controversy. A chemical sprayed on apples to cause them to size more
rapidly and turn an more even and delicious red was shown to be carcinogenic when heated at
the cannery. TV coverage of these effects caused million dollar losses in the apple industry.
Determined to strike a blow that would be both defensive and peremptory of other such exposes,
the industry banded together to sue all involved and in doing so presented a most instructive
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argument to the courts. According to the industry, test that showed carcinogenic effects were
done on rodents at high dosages, but those tests can't be used to infer similar effects on humans.

Now this makes a lot of sense except that the basis for registering pesticides as safe for spraying
on human foods has been tests done at high dosages on other species. If the argument that testing
other species couldn't infer the effects on humans then not only is the basis for registering
pesticides as safe deeply eroded, but one is left with the impression that the only acceptable
assessment is to spray the chemicals then wait to see what the effect on people may be.

As many of these effects may not be detected in diverse human populations with incredibly
complex genetic constitutions and varied living and eating habits for 10 years or more, it seems
that relying on this form of toxicology would result in a perpetual series of Thalomide type
disasters. Add to the well paid obfuscations about the biological impacts of our rush into a
technologically controlled world the vertiginous grounds of acceptable risk and cost/benefit
analysis and it seems little wonder that public debates often appear to be more statements of
interests than examination of fact.

Despite the seemingly infinite ability of industry to produce new chemicals/processes and throw
them on the market, it appeared to me in 1988 that Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring had made
a big difference in the way we view the use and benefits of pesticides. It also seemed that
regardless of the obfuscations of the chemical industry, there was now enough unassailable
evidence on the relation between the release of artificially created fluorocarbons and the growing
hole in the earth's protective ozone layer to cause reluctant world governments to act.

What was needed, it seemed to me, was more irrefutable proof of the impact of the
industrialization of society on biological processes. Given enough credible information, we
would not choose to continue on this pathological course of continuing environmental
degradation, I presumptuously assumed.

Having shed almost entirely my earlier studies in chemical engineering, I now took up the
biological sciences with a passion. For three more years I memorized long enzymatic pathways
of various cellular processes, I cluttered the walls of our family home with diagrammatic
sections of body parts so that when my vocabulary was overflowing with words I could switch to
the visual lobes of my mind to go on learning the names and locations of evermore lists of
things. I dissected plants and cats and fishes and hearts and lungs and vessels. I managed to pass
statistics, ever straining to remember the calculus I had learned some 20 years earlier.

Then one day while sitting in a lecture hall with 300 other students, the professor put aside the
topic at hand for a moment to discuss a brooding controversy that had spilled over beyond the
circles of the university. "Those rats that the animal rights people claim are being abused, are not
really being treated badly at all," he claimed. In fact such careful attention was being given to the
welfare of these animals, the professor continued, that wooden sticks where taped to their jaw so
they couldn't possibly chew off their tongues as claimed. And the fact that the rats ran in
perpetual clockwise circles after a fragment of their brains were removed could not be taken as
cruel because it only mimicked a naturally occurring disease.

Well I was already having some difficulty with questions about where the dead cats came from
and I was never sure that the nausea I felt in the labs came from the formaldehyde alone.

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Following the blatantly contrived rationalization for the treatment of the rats, I became skeptical
enough to widen my studies. I tried to register for a class on Chemicals and Society but was
denied entrance on the indomitable grounds that I had taken Organic Chemistry. During the final
exam in Ecology I was asked to analyze the "meaning" in a particular ecological system. By
"meaning" the examiner meant energy flow within the system, but I became obsessed with other
definitions of the word "meaning."

Could the professor have actually believed the meaning of a living system could be expressed in
an energy flow diagram? Could our language have become so Orwellianly limited that the word
"meaning" now signified nothing more than a mathematical equation? What mark would I have
been given if I had written a poem in answer to this now troubling question about meaning?

By shifting the emphasis of my studies to include environmental studies, I was able to take a few
classes in General Systems Theory. As noted earlier, this theory inverts scientific methodology
by demonstrating that the meaning and significance of a living system arise as an emergent
property of the functioning of the whole rather than the mechanistic relation of the parts. As I
began to consider larger and larger wholes, it became increasingly apparent that more scientific
information about the spraying of a particular pesticide, the discharging a specific gas into the
atmosphere, or ever increasing rates of "harvesting" the rain forest would not alter the overall
functioning of a system based on the cancerous reduction of the human identity to the role of
consumer and the corresponding commitment of human society to undifferentiated growth and
insatiable greed for resources.

Around the time I was beginning to wonder seriously about whether I could ever memorize
enough names or microscopically examine enough tissue to benefit the environmental movement
or save the planet, I was invited to attend a lecture on animal rights sponsored by the
environmental studies students. I was already concerned about the cavalier indifference to the
suffering of animals that I had heard of in some of the experiments going on in several of the
university departments. I was, nevertheless, shocked on hearing how many animals are used in
incredibly tortuous experiments in order to justify the marketing of insignificant commercial
products.

However the issue addressed that night which has so profoundly effected my thoughts and life
since was in response to a question about medical experiments. Cannot the torturous treatment of
laboratory animals be justified if the information gained can save human lives? a student asked
with sincerity. I expected the lecturer to delineate minimal standards even in medical
experiments or differentiate between significant/life-saving research and research of primarily
commercial value or to simple state a religious-like belief that torturing animals is just plain
wrong because of the suffering that it causes, however I was unprepared for the astonishing
answer which I will always remember. "The torture of animals is wrong not just when it is
senseless, or simply because the animals suffer, it is also wrong because we cannot inflict cruelty
on other living/feeling beings without profoundly effecting the very nature of being human."

I do not remember the rest of the words exactly, but she went on to argue that in the act of
inflicting cruelty we become cruel. What we do profoundly effects who we are and how we
experience ourselves. If our compassion is confined to our own species we become cutoff from
our sense of community and continuity with other living beings. Our own beingness becomes so
diminished that we begin to fear death and illness more than we quest for life and fulfillment.
Stripped of our compassion and sense of connectedness, we attempt evermore frantically to shore
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up our increasingly isolated and vulnerable existence with increasing mechanisms of control;
increasingly we must hide from the emptiness of our inner being by the accumulation of material
goods. But nowhere does any of this really work. We end up going to our slightly belated graves
confused, isolated and frightened-unless in the act of dying, we-at last-learn the lesson of
compassionate connectedness which we could have lived by.

I went home shaken by the cogency of this proposition. For years I had been attracted to or at
least fascinated by the Buddhist precept of compassion as the meaning of human and indeed all
existence. However my attempts to understand the teaching more fully always seemed to stumble
over belief in reincarnation of which I certainly had no recollection and could not comprehend
from the explanation of others. Suddenly the transmigration of souls did not seem so important.
This short lecture on animal rights convinced me that Karma, the underlying precept of
reincarnation, was profoundly relevant to the lives we live here on this earth now-regardless of
what might come after. Restated in this contemporary version Karma was the necessary and
fulfilling and inherently interconnected corollary of Compassion: What one does, one becomes!

Recognizing that my family was becoming increasingly frustrated by my 11 hour a day, six days
a week obsession with academia, I took a much needed summer break to attend with my wife
and two rapidly growing young sons a week long retreat at Seabeck Washington's Eliot Institute
on the Olympic Peninsula. It was there relaxing with my family that I had one final experience
which utterly confirmed my growing suspicion that more science was not the key to saving our
planet or empowering our environmental awareness.

It is difficult to imagine a setting more idyllically situated for a retreat than the Seabeck camp.
Located across from a small country store and fishing wharf on a quiet little cove of one of the
many bays along the west coast of the Olympic Peninsula and surrounded by deep, west coast
rain forest on all sides that do not face directly out to sea, the grounds themselves speak of
relaxation and rejuvenation. Entrance to the camp is over a narrow, wooden bridge that thumps
rhythmically beneath the car tires as the new arrivals drive in each weekend.

Once over the bridge, the cars are suppose to remain parked for the week. No radios are played;
no televisions watched. Skateboards and even bicycles are banned from the pedestrian trails that
join the rustic cabins, meeting halls, main lodge and chapel. Replacing the radios, musical
instruments abound, with small groups gathering to play together or listen appreciatively under a
tree or on one of the porches. With no TVs to cloister around, campers meet in the evenings to
participate in theatre sports, talent shows and to tell the truth sort of interactive games.

Gathering after the morning's worship service, small discussion groups meet to share thoughts
and experiences. Following dinner, playful songs are sung and silly skits enacted by the
campfire. But most significantly the freedom from shopping and driving and organizing and
attending to a thousand small tasks, causes a profound shift in ones sense of time. Time is no
longer a thing which runs away always just out of reach always demanding more but never
content with enough.

Instead of a frantic, elusive thing, time at Seabeck becomes more of a presence which settles
over the entire grounds like the evenings sea breeze. There is time to talk and to listen; time to
walk through the rain forest, splash in the lagoon or lie on the open glen gazing quietly at the
magnificent sky overhead until the clanging of the diner bell; there is opportunity to laugh or let

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go a wall of tears recognizing the grief contained behind the rigid dam of fully occupied time and
everyday urgency.

No I don't have any shares in the YMCA nor do I have any camperships to offer for the Eliot
Institute. But to truly convey the experience of what happened, it is important that you have
some visceral feeling for the sense of timelessness and awakening of the vital inner spirit that can
happen during a week at Eliot.

On first crossing over the lagoon on the creaky old bridge it seemed it would be only a short
week until we would return to the hectic life we had just left behind, but by the end of the first
couple of days a miraculous transformation of time experience had occurred and I felt I had
already been there for a very long time and the packing up to go home to my studies was far off
in the remote future yet. Toward the middle of the week I was sitting on the dock watching my
fourteen year old son paddle around the lagoon with a new-made friend, when suddenly I
remembered that I either had to go into the nearest town to buy a lens for my camera or there
would be no pictures to show to friends or recollect over later.

Recognizing that the Sun was well below its daily zenith, but giving no thought to what that
might mean in the world outside the isolating Seabeck moat, I returned to our family quarters to
rummage through the luggage for the seemingly long forgotten car keys. Driving along the ocean
front, crossing small bridges over tidal inlets and straining to see around corners on which the
rain forest was already pushing pack to the edge of the road, I carried much of the tranquility of
Seabeck with me on my 10 mile journey into Silverdale. Without notice the pavement widened,
the salal yielded to concrete sidewalks and the road ahead passed under the freeway before
taking a sharp turn to the left and merging with the bustling main entrance to downtown
Silverdale. Whooh! I was not prepared for this.

There had been only a few cars on the Seabeck Road and they were all ambling along so the
human occupants could bask in the many scenic delights of the journey. But here on this 4 lane,
undivided thoroughfare into the heart of town things were very different. For one thing, away
from the shade of the trees it was much hotter. One block after merging with the traffic flow, I
was already beginning to sweat. And traffic! My gods, how could things change so suddenly?
All lanes in both directions were clogged. Even on the entrance ramp the guy behind me had
been forced to toot his horn before my already bristling nerves steadied themselves enough for
me to elbow my way ahead of an oncoming though slightly timid looking Volkswagen.

As I wiped the sweat from my brow, I realized that the heat wasn't coming just from the Sun.
These smoking cars, moving at an uneven 20 to 40 kilometers and hour (true I was in the US, but
my speedometre still read km/h) were pumping out all the heat their radiators could exhaust and
late in the afternoon the air was utterly still. But the intense heat didn't come from just the lack of
shade and the gas fired engines and the dead air; faced with the go/stop, yield/don't yield, this
guy's braking/that woman will force you onto the curb before giving an inch mentality of rush
hour my internal thermostat was already inching toward the boiling point.

Without warning the sports car to my immediate left accelerates rapidly and noses into the half
car length gap between me and the bright red pickup truck ahead. Alarmed and angry after
hearing the screeching tires of the child filled Volkswagen from behind as it rides up close to my
bumper while I brake sharply for the sportscar, I beep the horn in exasperation. The guy who has
just cut in extends the middle finger of his right hand and I catch his eye as he checks his mirror.
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His nose seems wrinkled and he definitely doesn't look happy. I roll down the window to cool
the interior of the car and my temper. It stinks like I have just stuck my nose up the exhaust pipe
of a rapidly idling gas engine. I roll up the window and begin to look for a way to get around to
the out of town lanes-after 15 minutes in rush hour traffic, the camera lens seems incredibly
unimportant.

Looking side to side for exit and reentry lanes, my attention is suddenly absorbed by the driver of
the 1980 metallic green Buick immediately beside me. He just switched to the left lane from
behind the Volkswagen a few moments ago and has been slowly overtaking me ever since, but
now the left lane is slowing and now the door of his car which was dead even with my headlights
has slipped to exactly opposite my windshield. The driver ,a stout man of around 40, is dressed
in a white shirt and tie. His suit coat is tossed over the back of the seat carelessly. He is sweating
heavily and gripping the steering wheel rigidly like a downing man clinging to the side of a
lifeboat in heavy seas. He looks frightfully intense. He glances momentarily towards me and I
feel vaporously nonexistent. His attention seizes distractedly on the advancing gap between my
battered dodge sedan and the pickup.

Just before he falls back to even with my back door I notice a sense of despair mixed with rage
settle over him like a drowning man slipping off the edge of a lifeboat in heavy seas! Suddenly a
shudder moves over my body and this whole scene-the snarled traffic, the heat, the fumes, the
pizza huts and gas stations, the urgency, the camera lens and the people blend into a vaporously
surreal scene.

I feel like a foreigner; NO not like the Canadian that I am. I feel strange-really strange-like
maybe a space alien. I feel small and shriveled and beady-eyed. I reach for the top of my head.
Reassuringly there are no antennae growing out of my scalp, yet I feel disturbingly alien. ALIEN
the word sticks in my mind and I remember Seabeck which I have come from such a short/long
time ago.

Indeed this world of rush hour urgency is entirely alien to what is going on back at Eliot. Back
there my wife is probably rolling along in her wheelchair from her discussion group on dreams
back to our room to prepare for supper. Perhaps someone is helping to push her up the grade that
climbs the small knoll before "The Pines". Some one is sitting on the grass overlooking the bay
with the Olympic Mountains behind and playing the last few bars of a wistfully tune on the flute.

Though the sea breeze is already beginning to chill all the rowboats are out on the lagoon. In the
meeting hall a group of teenagers are concluding their practice for their skit at the talent show
tonight.

These two worlds couldn't be less alike if they were on two different planets in separate
Galaxies. I am stunned by the thought that these two utterly different worlds could, in reality, be
separated by such a short distance. In fact the only significant separation between these two
worlds is the separation of choice. Already headed back out of town and nearing the exit to the
Seabeck Road, this issue of choice remains stuck in my mind. Choice? Do we really choose?

The possibility that, given rush hour madness on one hand and graceful living on the other, we
make an active choice to numb or minds before the insidious television set, reduce the vast
spectrum of human culture to decisions in the market place and consume our earth troubled my
thoughts deeply. . My understanding strains at such an idea and I feel acutely dismayed by the
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possibility that holding these two alternatives clearly in mind we would knowingly choose the
more environmentally and socially destructive path. Without intentionally thinking about it I
recall vividly the tortured face in the Buick. It is clearly not the face of someone making an
empowering choice. Then I see the ireful reflection of the man in the sports car with his resentful
finger and a parade of tormented rush hour faces follows.

As the images of those distraught faces fades, without consciously thinking about it a new face
appears. It is the face of a black woman in Mozambique. On the top of her head she balances a
reed woven vessel of water. I had seen this face some weeks earlier on a video clip, shown at the
Unitarian Church of Victoria. The video was about poverty in Africa and the need for us to help
Though I saw well the poverty and the need to help, I saw something else also.

Singing with the other women as they returned to their huts from the water hole, I saw a smile on
her face and in her eye I detected a penetrating sense of satisfaction. Without speaking of utter
tranquility or belying the abject poverty around, this beautiful black face spoke of a viscerally
experienced inner peace which I seldom see in the malls or on the streets of our have
everything/resource rich continent of North America.

Nearing the Seabeck store and the rickety bridge which passes over the lagoon to the Eliot
Institute camp, I rather abruptly realize how much time has been spent reflecting on this haunting
dissimilitude between these contrasting faces and perspectives. How could those with so much
material wealth seem so impoverished of spirit? How many of those who live in utterly
impoverished physical conditions appear to have such a rich and vital interior life?

Struggling with a rising sense of emotional upheaval, I remember well the words of Wendell
Berry which I have read recently. Decrying a model of farming which sees agriculture as
industrial production and the land as little more than economic capital, Berry warns that these
policies which show no respect for the living qualities of our Earth, are cultivating much more
than just barren soils Without a sense of sacredness which comes from a love of and respect for
the living land, Berry suggests our denuded spirits will: "more and more...comfort themselves by
buying things. No longer in need of the exalted drama of grief and joy, they (will) feed now on
little shocks of greed, scandal and violence".

Suddenly I realize this foreboding of Berry's corresponds very closely to the assertion of the
animal rights activists which I had listened to several weeks earlier-seeing ourselves primarily as
consumers, we become cutoff from a sense of community and continuity with other living
beings. Confused, frightened and alone we come to fear death and illness more than we quest for
life and fulfillment. In the words of the Buddhists, we become what we do.

The dinner bell rings as I drive over the lagoon. I am happy to be back at Eliot, but I am left with
a string of images and thoughts that will not go away for a life time. I know now with all my
heart and mind and soul that a few more objectifying, scientific facts or painstakingly contrived
technological feats will not cool rush hour tempers or save our planet.

What we need now is not another widget, scientific advance or removal of trading barriers
between nations, rather the most significant accomplishment that any of humanity could make
right now would be a change or heart-a spiritual renewal. If we are to survive our isolating and
destructive greeds, each of us look both within and without to reawaken the sacred sense of

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connection which interweaves all living things, all of Earth's dynamically functioning natural
systems and all of our selves in a joyful interpenetrating web of community.

I realize a term like Ontological Embeddedness, may sound more like academic erudition than a
meaningful attempt to mend the constitutive rupture in human consciousness caused by the
destructive seventeenth century fantasy of a living world transformed in the image of a machine
which humanity could seize and operate for its sole benefit. However I feel there is a
completeness and visceral experience to this term which conveys more than just a meditative
sense of mystical oneness on one extreme or a new set of calculations showing the inevitable
destructiveness of our present actions at the other swing of the pendulum.

Ontological Embeddedness, feels for me more like the coming to our collective consciousness of
an inherently archetypal image which in holographic pattern symbolizes for both the individual
and the species the essential and inextricable embeddedness of the entire being and most primal
fibres of human existence in the intricate, complex and organic patterns of the natural world.

As recounted in A War Story, I left the home of my birth in 1967 because of a dream in which I
felt first hand the horror of killing another person in a war that in any other setting I would have
treated as a friend, colleague or brother. While I knew there were others making much the same
decision, I nonetheless made this momentous decision by myself in response to this haunting
dream. Then suddenly in the spring of 1975 came the stunning news that the United States was
unilaterally pulling out of Vietnam. Immediately there was vibrant new meaning in the age old
adage of pacifism: "Suppose they gave a war and nobody came." Is it so hard, then, to suppose
they built a shopping mall and everyone went hiking?

Recognizing the incredible ability of the multibillion dollar tobacco industry to obfuscate even
the overwhelming scientifically documented effect of smoking on human health and recognizing
the almost infinite ability of industry to manufacture with new chemicals, consumer items, and
brainwashingly effective advertising hype, it seems abundantly clear that the attempt to control
these destructive technologies through legislation and government agencies is utterly doomed to
failure. There is no way we can ever win at a catch-up game in which the technological side has
such an unstoppable head start in production and the monstrous momentum of a social system
based on the underlying assumption that more is always better. However such a dismal view is
not necessarily defeatism.

To extend the paraphrase of the pacifist adage quoted above, Suppose they built a highway and
nobody drove on it. Suppose they cut down a rain forest and no one bought the wood. Suppose
we all turned off the television and following the community potluck we planted trees in the
middle of the boulevard. We could do and we could change the world, but we would have to start
somewhere and for me that starting place is inevitably a new vision of who we are and of our
proper place in the workings of the natural world.
Shortly before being invited to the lecture on animal rights, I had been goaded into trepidatiously
attending a lecture on vegetarianism by my zealously idealistic young son who had recently
renounced a meat centred diet.

The first lecturer, John Robbins, heir to the Baskin-Robbins Ice cream empire, made some
poignant arguments for reducing the amount of meat we eat. Raising meat for the North
American diet results in XXX pesticides sprayed on the vulnerable monocultures of forage and
fodder. Each cow raised to slaughter causes the pollution of enough water to float a battleship.
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Every hamburger imported from cash strapped tropical countries represents XX acres of rain
forest cut down. The raising of meat requires the concentration of so much feed that if North
Americans reduced their intake of meat by 10% there would be enough vegetable protein to feed
the world's hungry. All these statistics were impressive, but I remained skeptically aloof from the
argument.

If I learned anything from my struggles with t-tests and ANOVAs and regression analysis, I
learned a healthy respect for the often insignificant meaning of statistically "significant"
conclusions.. However the next speaker, Dr. Michael Clapper, a heart specialist, managed to
make the argument incontrovertible. Dr. Clapper began with some shocking slides showing the
progressive occlusion that occurs in the arteries due to a diet high in saturated fat(meat and
dairy). In addition to heart disease, a meat centred diet was implicated in the genesis of a number
of cancers, especially of the colon.

By now I was becoming increasingly impressed by the wisdom of my oldest son, but the turning
point, the thought which has continued to fire my imagination ever since came when Dr. Clapper
referred back to the lecture by John Robbins. Correlating the environmental impact of raising
meat to the effect of a meat centred diet on human health, Dr. Clapper proclaimed a most
fascinating relationship, "What is good for the individual is also good for the planet"

Since that lecture I have been absolutely astounded at how many times this simple correlation
turns out to be utterly true. It is true for eating vegetables free form drenches of toxic pesticides
derived from the nerve gasses of WWII. It is true for riding a bicycle rather than sitting idly in an
aggravating, fume spewing car that demands the paving over of almost all space not occupied by
buildings in our cities. It accurately points to the benefits of universally distributed solar energy
over the use of highly centralized and potently dangerous reliance on nuclear power plants. It
informs us powerfully that making peace with our planet is making peace with ourselves/making
peace with ourselves means, inherently, making peace with our planet. And this, I believe, is
what Ontological Embeddedness is about! How we think determines what we do; What we do
determines what we become.

This begin at the bottom and let the consequences of a new relation between Earth and its people
filter up perspective is in so many ways the exact opposite of the recommendations of the
Brundtland Report which goes to some length to stress the impropriety of any change of heart. In
direct contradiction to Ontological Embeddedness the essential message of Brundtland's
Sustainable Development is that what is good for industry and the development dreams of the
multinational developers, is in fact, good for the Earth and its people.

The most recent local application of Sustainable Development in resource planning is the Federal
government's new blueprint(the Mifflin Plan) for the recovery of our dwindling salmon stocks.
With many wild salmon stocks at levels that are frightening the hell out of both sports and
commercial fishers, and with some runs returning in numbers alarmingly close to extinction, this
new fisheries management plan calls for the buy back of a number of fishing licenses.

While the canneries and some of the really large fishboat owners are in favour of this new
arrangement, almost all of the small owners and fishing villages along the west coast see this as
simply more of the on going scheme to concentrate ownership and profits into the hands of a few
large investors rather than any meaningful plan for the recovery of the salmon stocks.

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One fisher I spoke to likened the situation to a hog farm where due to circumstances beyond the
farmer's control, there is a lot less corn than he expected. In fact there is just enough corn mash
to meet the daily needs of six young hogs. But, expecting a much better harvest, the farmer has
four large sows, two exceedingly hefty hogs, ten young hogs and a dozen wieners. The farmer is
painfully aware that he cannot feed all his pigs and he is also aware that to survive as a farmer he
must have both breeding stock and seed corn for the next year.

Since the farmer has had a good working relation with the exceedingly hefty hogs for some time,
he turns to them for advice. After a lengthy consultation, he comes up with a Mifflin plan for
rejuvenation of the hog farm. The farmer will fence the young hogs and wieners out in the
pasture where if he and they are lucky enough grass will struggle up through the overgrazed soil
to sustain the young pigs at some level-however minimal. The farmer will then take the daily
ration of corn and pour it into the trough. At the end of the day the farmer will scoop up the
remaining corn and save it for next year's seed. Now superficially this plan sounds a lot like the
rational thinking behind the military contingencies of triage.

However, this Mifflin plan for the hogs has one utterly confounding problem: The corn mash that
would sustain the daily needs of six young hogs will not satisfy the appetite of even one
exceedingly hefty hog and thus none of the hogs get well fed and there is no corn to plant the
next year. I'm sure the reader can think of many scenarios which would have worked better for
the farmer than this piggish plan of the exceedingly hefty hogs. Even if our farmer had been
especially unimaginative he could have simply sold all his hogs and grown corn and come out a
whole lot better.

This parable of the pigs would seem a preposterous parody of the Mifflin plan if one were not
aware of the analysis of the Columbia River fishery done by Freeman House cited earlier. Before
the coming of the whiteman, the indigenous people caught 18 million lbs. of salmon every year.
They didn't take more because decimating the salmon stock to finance a winter holiday in Hawaii
was as incoherent in their value system as the concept "enough" is to our modern growth driven
economies.

In what sounds incredibly like the story of the four big sows and two exceedingly hefty hogs, a
siege of technologically advanced fishboats took only 12 million lbs. of salmon from the same
area in 1970. Had the salmon been there they could and would have taken more than three times
that amount. However rivers with no fish are a great deal like a feeding trough with no corn-you
can't eat what isn't there; AND the food supply won't come back without a better plan.

Calling for ever more efficient exploitation of the natural world as long as there is no
immediately obvious ecological backlash, Brundtland's Sustainable Development does little
more than attempt to defend our growth based economies from increasingly urgent
environmental criticism. The status quo is left secure and undisturbed. On the other hand, people
living according to a deeply held sense of place would not only perceive things differently, the
world they lived in would step to the tune of a very different drummer. For aboriginal people the
essential attractiveness of the salmon lay in their cyclic return. Living in contact with the salmon
and ritualistically celebrating this cycle of return, the native people were annually kept informed
the ultimate unity of all living things and their place within the functioning of a self-sustaining
natural system.

143
We who get our salmon from a supermarket cooler or out of a can are cutoff from that source of
wisdom. We believe that food is food and food is money and money can as easily be mined at
sea as it can be dug up from the bowels of the earth Ignoring the haunting ontology of the
Buddhist warning that we become what we do, we see no meaning other than economic
efficiency in reducing gigantic holds full of fish to the assembly lines of indifferent industrial
processes.

However, there was another message indelibly written into the lines of greed and fear on the
strained faces of the people gathered at the Filberg Centre to demand the shooting of seals. And
that message spoke of more than just the inability to see the ecological and economic dangers in
shrinking a complex web of relations to a single predator/prey association stripped of the
resilience and stability of diverse natural environments. Most tragically I read deeply etched in
those angry faces a complete vindication of the words of Wendell Berry and the teaching of the
Buddha: cut off from compassion and a sense of belonging to a whole greater than our own
selves, we can not escape from the corrosive anger that etches at our own soul.

Clearly the image of my native friend standing knee deep in the Birkenhead River hooking a few
of the passing salmon with his two fingers is as foreign to our perception of an economically
efficient and a fully industrialized fishery as the very concept indigenous is to our ever
expanding global markets. For me the vision of Hector wading among these two verdant streams
of life speaks of a way of seeing as different from economic efficiency as the pathway of
Seabeck were from the rushhour traffic of Silverdale.

This vision has become for me a discovery laden with meanings so much more significant than
any of the revolutionary new information coming out of the barrel of a mile long cyclotron.
Remembering this vision again I hear the profound axiom of Michael Clapper: what is good for
the person is good for the planet. Yes, and what heals the planet, inevitably resuscitates the
essential, vital soul of humanity, for planet and person, oceans and land, salmon and seal, bear
and eagle, forest and glen are embedded physically and spiritually in an inextricable,
commingling river of Earth, Self and Community.

144
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