GreenEarthAl
08-31-2004, 04:17 PM
http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/04-5om/Rick_Bass.html
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Right from the start, Bush came after the National Forests Roadless Rule, which I and millions of others had spent countless hours on over the previous three years in our efforts to protect the last, farthest stretches of our national forests. Then the contagion spread and spilled. As I tallied the near-daily losses, I felt my life spinning, taking me further and further from hikes in the mountains, from the joys of writing, from community involvement; further from reading for pleasure; and (I could barely even acknowledge this last one) threatening to steal the hours spent with family.
All I had really wanted to do, in escaping from my work in the oil industry to this outback of Montana so long ago, was to leave behind the world of politics and policy and disappear into the senses: to the sound of the Yaak River gurgling and the honking of geese. Is it not this way for all of us in some measure, or are we truly a nation divided, beset by a war of values? Do the boys at Halliburton know what I am talking about when I speak of such things? In addressing them, to what might I compare such a sensation, such a desire? To the bliss of a noncompetitive government contract? To the physical heft of two bags of gold, one held in each hand?
The irony is this: The more I desire to live a quiet life in the garden, the more stridently I find myself called out of that garden. So imperiled are our communities today that activism is not the choice it once was, but a necessity.
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Right from the start, Bush came after the National Forests Roadless Rule, which I and millions of others had spent countless hours on over the previous three years in our efforts to protect the last, farthest stretches of our national forests. Then the contagion spread and spilled. As I tallied the near-daily losses, I felt my life spinning, taking me further and further from hikes in the mountains, from the joys of writing, from community involvement; further from reading for pleasure; and (I could barely even acknowledge this last one) threatening to steal the hours spent with family.
All I had really wanted to do, in escaping from my work in the oil industry to this outback of Montana so long ago, was to leave behind the world of politics and policy and disappear into the senses: to the sound of the Yaak River gurgling and the honking of geese. Is it not this way for all of us in some measure, or are we truly a nation divided, beset by a war of values? Do the boys at Halliburton know what I am talking about when I speak of such things? In addressing them, to what might I compare such a sensation, such a desire? To the bliss of a noncompetitive government contract? To the physical heft of two bags of gold, one held in each hand?
The irony is this: The more I desire to live a quiet life in the garden, the more stridently I find myself called out of that garden. So imperiled are our communities today that activism is not the choice it once was, but a necessity.
...