By Dave Wheelock
The following essay is the opinion of the author and does not reflect that of the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance or its members.
My first act as a brand new board member of the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance was to offer a brief self-introduction to my 14 new colleagues at our recent meeting. As expected it was a fairly humbling experience to throw in with a crew bristling with advanced degrees and career experience in biology, earth sciences, finance and economics, educational outreach, nonprofit organizing and fundraising, etc. etc.
How can a small college sports administrator and rugby coach with a mere bachelor’s degree in history help such a highly qualified group guide “the protection, restoration, and continued enjoyment of New Mexico ’s wildlands and Wilderness areas?”
Presumably some of the sitting board members had read an installment or two of this column, and thought they detected something of value. Not that the need to protect and restore wild places has been an obvious thread throughout 132 issues of The Pencil Warrior. Instead I look back through the PW archives to find most pieces concerned with the issues of Homo sapiens: the struggle for an equitable share of one’s labors, trustworthy public information, fair and responsive government, universal access to quality education and health care, and so on.
Yet perhaps somewhere between the lines of these biweekly attempts to point readers to the underlying roots of the troubles growing in so many aspects of their lives, these good people had made the connection I always intended to be there.
I realize the platitude “all things are connected” has probably become so passé as to have lost its meaning for most people. Yet if any belief has inspired and informed this column it’s this corny-sounding truism.
As far back as I can remember I’ve judged quality and beauty in terms of place, particularly wild places. As a kid growing up in a Midwestern town surrounded by corn and wheat fields girded by straight blacktop roads, the rare event of wading up an unspoiled stream in Idaho was an epiphany. What made it so was the absence, other than the nearby dirt road, of any signs of human activity.
Only nature was at work here: trout seemingly suspended in water so clear as to be nearly invisible, smooth stones of endless colors lining a stream bed free of silt, the mountains green all around. This was a place of consummate beauty and quality, precisely because the biological processes at work there ensured that nothing went to waste. This place, and others like it since, have been my standard of quality and beauty, something too precious to lose.
To this day I find it difficult to accept the casual alteration or abuse of wild places. Whether a place fits my preconceived concept of beauty or not, I know if nature still reigns there, something vital is lost in its transformation. In traditional native communities building projects, even on apparently “empty” land, don’t commence without a shared pause to show respect for the land and all its residents; human and animal, past and present.
There is, or at least there should be, a connection between these ancient and ongoing traditions of respect and this confusing, destructive, and seemingly suicidal society about which I find myself compelled to write. “What we do to the land, we do to ourselves” is another proverb with literal meaning. What it suggests is that in the absence of respect for the earth, we find it easy to disrespect ourselves and each other. The ability to kill or maim nature without feeling increases the prospects of doing the same to members of our own species. Until we learn as a society to voluntarily respect the earth and ourselves, designated wilderness, “where the earth and community of life are untrammeled by man” (1964 Wilderness Act) remains of our highest form of protection for the few remaining perfect places. It is not coincidence that people who visit these places experience feelings of peace.
One last maxim before I close. I read somewhere that “things that cannot last, don’t.” Within this simple adage lies a fundamental truth and signal for our times.
The so-called “free market” ideologues that have seized power in our country (and not coincidentally the world) these past three decades have unleashed not only a cruel exploitation and oppression of the actual majority - indigenous people and minorities, wage earners, the young, infirm, and elderly – but also the relentless plunder of the earth’s remaining wild places. “All things are connected.”
We need to recognize that this system of worldwide exploitation - “a thing that cannot last”- is on its way down, not up. The landing may be softened somewhat through the actions of citizens, or things may descend into chaos. If we are to escape obsolescence, those of us hoping “to protect, restore, and continue to enjoy New Mexico’s wildlands and Wilderness areas” would be well-advised to put some energy into helping shape the fundamental changes to come.
Dave Wheelock, a member of the Oneida Nation, lives and works in Socorro. Contact him at davewheelock@yahoo.com. Mr. Wheelock’s views are not necessarily those of the Mountain Mail.
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