I fear silence because it leads me to myself, a self I may not wish to confront. It asks that I listen. And in listening, I am taken to an unknown place. Silence leaves me alone in a place of feeling....
I do not write every day. I write to the questions and issues before me. I write to deadlines. I write out of my passions. And I write to make peace with my own contradictory nature. For me, writing i...
I care about my brother.I care about wilderness.To care is to lament.My brother is a wilderness, unknowable.
I am leaving this tower and returning home. When I speak with family, and comments are always the same, 'Won't you be glad to get back to the real world?'This is my question after two weeks of time, o...
Evidently, selling off America's public lands is not only good for democracy, but good for the economy. It will pay the bills for building more roads and make up for the losses in the decline of timbe...
Enormous cumulus clouds float above the plateau in the shape of turtles. Always turtles. The are moving so slowly, almost imperceptibly, makes me dizzy. The ground is stable, but the sky is in motion....
Desert strategies are useful: In times of drought, pull your resources inward; when water is scarce, find moisture in seeds; to stay strong and supple, send a taproot down deep; run when required, hid...
Artifacts are alive. Each has a voice. They remind us what it means to be human - that it is our nature to survive, to create works of beauty, to be resourceful, to be attentive to the world we live i...
Faith is the centerpiece of a connected life. It allows us to live by the grace of invisible strands. It is a belief in a wisdom superior to our own. Faith becomes a teacher in the absence of fact.
Wilderness is an antidote to the war within ourselves.
Where do I belong? You can’t belong everywhere. Or perhaps we can if we pay attention to the paths of our ancestors. Perhaps this is what it means to be American. Bloodlines originate in storylines. S...
When one of us says, Look, there's nothing out there, what we are really saying is, I cannot see.
We hold the moon in our bellies and fire in our hearts. We bleed We give milk. We are the mothers of first words. These words grow. They are our children. They are our stores and poems.
True eloquence has an edge, sharp and clean.
To write requires an ego, a belief that what you say matters. Writing also requires an aching curiosity leading you to discover, uncover, what is gnawing at your bones.
To be numb to the world is another form of suicide.
These handwritten words in the pages of my journal confirm that from an early age I have experienced each encounter in my life twice: once in the world, and once again on the page.
The legacy of the Wilderness Act is a legacy of care. It is the act of loving beyond ourselves, beyond our own species, beyond our own time. To honor wildlands and wild lives that we may never see, mu...
The irony of our existence is this: We are infinitesimal in the grand scheme of evolution, a tiny organism on Earth. And yet, personally, collectively, we are changing the planet through our voracity,...
If our national parks are to remain viable in the future, they must become sites of transformation where the paradigm of domination and manipulation ends and a vision of unison begins