Reboot.

How numbing an uninspiring courseload can be.  Fillers and intro classes.  Meanwhile, grad school news and finalized senior symposiums echo downstairs.  

PowerShift made me fearless.  Spread the message and make change.  Why the hell not.

Finally, something has surfaced in my readings (bare in mind, I've only just begun Bill McKibben's Deep Economy) that makes my pulse leap and heart spill.  Thank god, someone understands my thoughts:

"The received view of the wilderness may in fact be an inaccurate model of the world. First, it has a tendency to view the unspoiled wilderness as a relatively benign and temperate place. Many romantic landscape portraits suggest a lush green forest with open meadows, no underbrush, spectacular sunsets, plentiful sources of food and shelter, docile animals, and temperate climate. In reality, of course, the wilderness can be a harsh place. Deserts, Arctic tundra, and rain forest are not at all like the romanticized image of nature that a person forms while walking around Walden Pond... This model can see humans as separate from nature, perhaps drawing inspiration from it but nevertheless radically different from it. The human spirit is 'transcendent,' and although unspoiled nature is our closest contact with transcendent reality, it remains part of a lower physical reality... The suggestion is that if we simply leave it alone, the wilderness will be preserved in all its natural unspoiled wonder... Once a wilderness is set aside to be preserved, traditional indigenous activities such as hunting and food gathering may no longer be allowed. Not only does such a perspective marginalize native people to the point where they can be ignored, but it also has reinforced policies that heave lead to the dispossession and even destruction of such people and their cultures... it seems that a romantic and simple understanding of 'the' wilderness is no longer a valid option for environmental policy or ethics." (DeJardins, 158-62)

The first relevant thing brought up at Whittier in a long time, besides my glorious Macroeconomics' enlightenment that seems relentless in the face of a recession.