Nature
Only in the desert do beauty and danger exist at so optimum a ratio.
Wilderness is its own culture.
Wouldn't being "miles from nowhere" make one closer to somewhere?
The American Southwest: where even the rocks are beautiful.
Whatever a shopping mall can't be built on top of, I'm for.
Unlike the forest, the desert does not merely provide a view of our immediate surroundings; it shows us what is to come.
Open space is no more a luxury than freedom.
We are fiercely proud of our estrangement from nature. We build monuments called cities to celebrate this state of affairs.
Loving the natural world is an art; it takes much practice and devotion to maintain affection when none is ever returned.
As our collective disconnect from nature grows, it is only logical that we should despise--and be taught to despise--those among us who suggest that where we are matters just as much as--indeed, informs--our sense of who we are.
All political ideologies are of necessity humanistic. They must therefore be used as bridges to get beyond anthropocentrism, beyond human vanity. But only a fool would destroy the bridge upon getting to the other side.
To those who care only about people, overpopulation is not an especially pressing issue.
"Life" is not the highest good--at least not on a planet with six billion people and counting on it.
The American Southwest needs no further boosterism; it needs, to the contrary, more people to just shut up about it.
The world can be divided up into three different kinds of people: (1) those who search out blank spots on maps; (2) those who fear blank spots on maps; and (3) those who don't care much either way about blank spots or maps.
I can only wonder why the desert--from the Bible to Castaneda--is traditionally associated with transcendent visions, with alternate realities. It seems to me that the desert is sufficient in and of itself. The desert is the transcendent vision.
Yes, I admit it: I do find things more interesting when forests thin out into prairies, when prairies turn into plains, when plains give way to deserts. I do find brown more aesthetically pleasing than green, rock and creosote bush more satisfying than entire forests.
Place matters. It is one of the lies of modernity that it doesn't.
