"riverman" wrote in message ...
I mean it. Four more years of President Bush could mean a lot of our
wilderness gets opened up to development and timber harvesting. I haven't
been this worried for the wildlands since James Watt.

--riverman

I have read, and reread, and posted follow ups along this thread. I
have found it stimulating and enlightening to listen to all your
input. But I have come up with a question, which I am not finding an
answer.

You say, you mean this and that, but what do you mean by "wilderness"?
It sounds like you are located near the Grand Canyon, where the air is
becoming more polluted. Others speak of the Giant Redwoods, and
Denali. But it seems to me the wilderness is already gone according to
the Souix, and Shoshone, Utes, and Blackfeet, and all the other
hundreds of tribes, many which have dissapeared as well. Even what we
call wilderness would not be so, if seen through their eyes. It seems
to me, that wilderness is something we conceive of in our own mind,
depending on our own particular interest and bias.

Who is living in the White House, has little to do with the remaining
wilderness, and the preservation of our particular corner. My
relatives were ejected in the early 1900s, from Cade's Cove in what is
now Great Smokey Mtn Nat. Park. The great enviromentalist President T.
Roosevelt decided to set aside this area of wilderness, for everyone
to enjoy. Now for my relatives this really ruined the wilderness
experience, and for the mass of humanity that decends on the loop road
during the peak tourist season, I can't see that this is much of a
wilderness experience either. Yet, there are mountains and trees,
flowering dales, and everyone seems to enjoy the vista.

Is the wilderness only to do with the big places, with big mtns, and
big trees, and big canyons. Could it be that we who are content to
paddle, should not learn to appreciate the wilderness in small
places,and be willing to share this with others. Instead of getting
involved in the blame game, and trying to hang our lack of ability to
observe the wilderness all around us on the current President, which
really just detracts from the solitude of our hidden places with all
the shouting!

The wilderness is gone, since even before the Mayflower landed. With
the first man setting foot in the wild place, we started changing it,
even if it was a mocassin clad foot on the Bering Strait. It is just a
matter of degree, and how fast it is changing. For the buffalo it
changed real fast. They were unable to adapt, we must adapt, or go the
way of the buffalo. Being a romantic about the wild places sounds
great, but will not change history. Having grown up in the 60's, and
played hippie for awhile, I love the Liberals with all their romantic
idealism. However that era is also gone. We have to learn to adapt,
and compromise, even on the enviroment, and we all will survive.

Is this dribble? Yes, but you tell me about what you mean by
"wilderness", and if we all start talking about that, then we will be
talking about what we really want to be talking about and changing.
Then the politicians will listen. That's what politicians do, is
listen (take Polls), and talk (I think we know about that part),
because they like to be popular (majority vote). Is any of this wrong,
no, it's just the way it is, and that is reality! Otherwise there is
just all this squealing in the wind, that they all tune out and turn
off, which is not what any of us want for our living place!


Thanks for bringing up the subject, no offense meant to any one.
Let's just make sure the song we are singing is what we really want to
be singing, and learn to sing in harmony. None of us are irrelevant,
nore should we be irreverent, and we should always respect the
President. Whomever he is, because he represents us all whether we
like it or not. If we fail on any of these, we will only hurt those,
and that which we love the most, the place we live!

Thanks, Tinkerntom, aka KnesisKnosis, Life, Live it!