Between anarchy and autocracy

Let’s see: past the Summer solstice; temperatures again exceeding 90℉; thunderstorms in the forecast for the evening hours; seems like Summertime! I’ve been observing that, just as one of the problems with being more than school age is one doesn’t get the summer off, one of the problems of having reached retirement age is that retirees don’t get holidays or vacations. The laws of nature and the laws of humans are far from immutable but we keep acting as if we all know what’s best and what those laws are, or should be. Should everyone get to vote on everything all the time? Would that work? Here’s an item we’ve been back and forth on depending on who’s been elected: mining near the Boundary Waters..

In case any of you want to read the Environmental Assessment report supporting the withdrawal of the Rainy River watershed from potential federal mining leases, here’s the link, courtesy of the Star Tribune’s Jennifer Bjorhus. I’m looking forward to reading the whole thing myself.

Laurentian Divide, Birch Lake

Photo by J. Harrington

As I’ve noted from time to time in these postings, I am not a lawyer but I spent many of my younger years hanging around with some. It didn’t come up at the time, but I’ve read and observed that laws are not sacred, not even sacred laws. Laws are what those in power state and interpret them to be. There’s what the law says, what proponents and opponents claim the intent of the law was or is (have you ever read a “legislative intent?”), what many police and prosecutors and plaintiffs claim the law means, and often what a jury of peers or a judge or judges assert the law means as applied to a particular set of facts. Plus, at a minimum, there’s also what happens when one law conflicts with another.

One of the better rules of thumb I ever learned was: “If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the facts are against you, argue the law. If both the law and the facts are against you, pound on the table and yell like hell.” I believe the Republicans invented the last part of that tactic.

Many people react as though they have studied law, practiced law, understand legal processes, when, in fact, listening to or reading their opinions makes one question if the person exponding is functionally literate. [Have you noticed I’m back in a “why do I spend so much time on social media?” mode?]

All of the preceding happens in ways that we as citizens rarely get to directly affect. Our voters turned down an amendment to the constitution that would have allowed Initiative and Referendum. We do have the ability to recall elected state officers. We still are struggling to find the balance between anarchy and autocracy. The best way we can do that is to vote, but before we vote we should really spend more time talking to those with opinions that differ from ours. That would, I believe, be a healthier approach than paying attention to the stupid, misleading, attack adds that too often sway our perceptions. Remember, if we give up on voting, “They” win.

Self-portrait

By Edward Hirsch

I lived between my heart and my head,

like a married couple who can't get along.

I lived between my left arm, which is swift

and sinister, and my right, which is righteous.

I lived between a laugh and a scowl,

and voted against myself, a two-party system.

My left leg dawdled or danced along,

my right cleaved to the straight and narrow.

My left shoulder was like a stripper on vacation,

my right stood upright as a Roman soldier.

Let's just say that my left side was the organ

donor and leave my private parts alone,

but as for my eyes, which are two shades

of brown, well, Dionysus, meet Apollo.

Look at Eve raising her left eyebrow

while Adam puts his right foot down.

No one expected it to survive,

but divorce seemed out of the question.

I suppose my left hand and my right hand

will be clasped over my chest in the coffin 

and I'll be reconciled at last,

I'll be whole again.

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The wilderness and wildness of language

After participating in my first online book club meeting, I've come away with a mixed reaction. I found/find the technology (Zoom) distracting. It's rewarding and satisfying to share reactions with others about material you've all read, but the fact that there were more than 300 participants was overwhelming, even with the use of a number of smaller breakout rooms. Then again, my participation did trigger some thoughts and perspectives I probably wouldn't otherwise have had. So, like so many other things these days, it was rewarding if not entirely satisfying. The jury is still weighing the evidence on whether this form of "participation" is worth it or not.

what language to use to describe the edge of Minnesota's wilderness?

Photo by J. Harrington

The book being read and discussed is Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass:
Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Part of the intial discussion focused on the Grammar of Animacy. Although I agree with the concepts Kimmerer espouses, I'm finding it more than a little challenging getting comfortable with how to apply them and include them in my daily life and writing. It turns out I'm not the only one enjoying responding to such a challenge. Emily Stone has an enjoyable and informative column in the Duluth Reader about her efforts to use language that is respectful of its subject. I particularly enjoyed the passage she begins with:

“We no longer face a physical frontier, but a change in philosophy, a complete reversal of our attitude toward the earth that might open the door to a golden era far more resplendent than the old.” – Sigurd Olson, Reflections from the North Country

Although my college degree is in English, rarely have I considered the more technical implications of language. It may have been my growing awareness of the challenges of describing how humans and wilderness relate that prompted me to wonder about attitude and language. Gary Snyder explores the subject from a different angle in his The Practice of the Wild.

At the rate I'm going with finding books to reread, I not only have to hold off on buying new (unread) books, I'll need to live much longer to finish reading the stacks already accumulated. If that's my biggest problem this year I can't and won't complain.

Off the Trail

by Gary Snyder

for Carole

We are free to find our own way
Over rocks – through the trees –
Where there are no trails. The ridge and the forest
Present themselves to our eyes and feet
Which decide for themselves
In their old learned wisdom of doing
Where the wild will take us. We have
Been here before. It’s more intimate somehow
Than walking the paths that lay out some route
That you stick to,
All paths are possible, many will work,
Being blocked is its own kind of pleasure,
Getting through is a joy, the side-trips
And detours show down logs and flowers,
The deer paths straight up, the squirrel tracks
Across, the outcroppings lead us on over.
Resting on treetrunks,
Stepping out on the bedrock, angling and eyeing
Both making choices – now parting our ways –
And later rejoin; I’m right, you’re right,
We come out together. Mattake, “Pine Mushroom,”
Heaves at the base of a stump. The dense matted floor
Of Red Fir needles and twigs. This is wild!
We laugh, wild for sure,
Because no place is more than another,
All places total,
And our ankles, knees, shoulders &
Haunches know right where they are.
Recall how the Dao De
Jing puts it: the trail’s not the way.
No path will get you there, we’re off the trail,
You and I, and we chose it! Our trips out of doors
Through the years have been practice
For this ramble together,
Deep in the mountains
Side by side,
Over the rocks, through the trees.

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the wilds of Autumn

Each day we see more and more color in the local leaves. Still not dominant, but coming along nicely, especially around the low areas and wetlands. Tonight we have the season's first freeze / frost warning covering most of the state. We'll bring the mums and asters into the front hall and throw a sheet over the plant pots outside. Probably time to disconnect the hoses, too.

Autumn's colors developing

Photo by J. Harrington

This shift in temperatures is happening the same day the township and their contractors are paving our gravel road. We have, at best, mixed feelings about that change. Dust reduction will be nice but not if it comes at the expense of greater dangers from increased vehicle speeds. Plus, we'll not be expecting to see deer, or any other, tracks in the blacktop, nor many reptiles warming themselves on an early Spring day, although we may be proven wrong about the warming. We just don't know.

We've been reading another of Ed Abbey's books. This one a collection of essays titled One Life at a Time, Please. Mr. Abbey is known for having a dim view of much of what contemporary civilization refers to as "progress." As we age, we find ourself coming to be more and more in agreement with him about the downsides to many of the "benefits" of civilization. Climate change, confined animal feeding operations with flooded manure lagoons plus flooded and/or breached ash basins among them.

He's also known to have been a fierce defender of wild country, especially in the Southwest. Here are examples of what he fought to save: Rethinking Wilderness: Of Prairies and Deserts. We have a wild and scenic river just down the road apiece. It too looks like it needs more defenders. From the St. Croix 360 newsletter: Scandia gravel pit overflows, buries St. Croix Valley spring creek.

As we watched the heavy trucks, the blacktop machine, and the steam roller slowly proceed down what once was our gravel road, we remembered with fondness another of Abbey's works, The Monkey Wrench Gang. Try it! You might like it.

Wilderness

Carl Sandburg, 1878- 1967

There is a wolf in me … fangs pointed for tearing gashes … a red tongue for raw meat … and the hot lapping of blood—I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fox in me … a silver-gray fox … I sniff and guess … I pick things out of the wind and air … I nose in the dark night and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers … I circle and loop and double-cross.

There is a hog in me … a snout and a belly … a machinery for eating and grunting … a machinery for sleeping satisfied in the sun—I got this too from the wilderness and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fish in me … I know I came from saltblue water-gates … I scurried with shoals of herring … I blew waterspouts with porpoises … before land was … before the water went down … before Noah … before the first chapter of Genesis.

There is a baboon in me … clambering-clawed … dog-faced … yawping a galoot’s hunger … hairy under the armpits … here are the hawk-eyed hankering men … here are the blond and blue-eyed women … here they hide curled asleep waiting … ready to snarl and kill … ready to sing and give milk … waiting—I keep the baboon because the wilderness says so.

There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird … and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what I want … and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before the dew is gone, warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes—And I got the eagle and the mockingbird from the wilderness.

O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under my red-valve heart—and I got something else: it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-Where—For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness.

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Might International Mining Sustainability Standards help protect our Boundary Waters?

You may have noticed that Russia and Russians have been much in the news recently. Every mention reminds us of President Reagan's citation, when dealing with nuclear disarmament, of the Russian proverb "Trust, but verify!" We believe following that old proverb could be very helpful in protecting one of Minnesota's most treasured resources, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness from the onslaught of copper mining. Here's our logic, yet to be verified.

• Twin Metals Minnesota is a wholly owned subsidiary of Antofagasta plc of Santiago, Chile, one of the top 10 copper producers in the world. Twin Metals Minnesota maintains offices in Ely and St. Paul, Minnesota. (source: <http://www.twin-metals.com/who-we-are/>, 7/19/18, ~12:15 pm)
• Antofagasta Minerals is a member of the International Council on Mining & Metals [ICMM]. They joined in 2014.
• ICMM member companies commit to a set of 10 principles, eight supporting position statements and transparent and accountable reporting practices.
• ICMM principles of particular relevance to mining and protected areas are:

•     Principle 6: Pursue continual improvement in environmental performance issues, such as water stewardship, energy use and climate change.

•     Principle 7: Contribute to the conservation of biodiversity and integrated approaches to land-use planning.

• Further clarifications of those commitments include

• Not explore or mine in World Heritage properties. All possible steps will be taken to ensure that existing operations in World Heritage properties as well as existing and future operations adjacent to World Heritage properties are not incompatible with the outstanding universal value for which these properties are listed and do not put the integrity of these properties at risk. 

•  Identification of World Heritage properties follow standards from the International Union for Conservation of Nature [IUCN] including 

• Ib Wilderness Area: Category Ib protected areas are usually large unmodified or slightly modified areas, retaining their natural character and influence without permanent or significant human habitation, which are protected and managed so as to preserve their natural condition. more...

• II National Park: Category II protected areas are large natural or near natural areas set aside to protect large-scale ecological processes, along with the complement of species and ecosystems characteristic of the area, which also provide a foundation for environmentally and culturally compatible, spiritual, scientific, educational, recreational, and visitor opportunities. more...

would mining activities enhance this?

Photo by J. Harrington

We believe that the Boundary Waters and much of the surrounding areas largely qualify as category Ib and/or II. We've seen no indication that the question of compliance with ICMM principles by Twin Metals has been put to ICMM, IUCN and/or Angofasta. Is the pursuit of Twin Metals exploration and/or the development of the contemplated mine consistent with or in violation of ICMM principles? If the latter, is it not therefore qualified as a sustainable source of copper for the future.

We posted about this theme a couple of years ago, before the Twin Metals project was declared off limits. Now folks are trying to bring it back "on limits" so the questions again seem relevant and ripe for verification. Answers could go a very long way toward demonstrating whether ICMM principles and standards are real, or just a long-winded version of greenwash. They might also provide Minnesota with improved tools for managing mining and its impacts in the state.

History

Linda Hogan

This is the word that is always bleeding.

You didn’t think this

until your country changes and when it thunders

you search your own body

for a missing hand or leg.

In one country, there are no bodies shown,

lies are told

and the keep hidden the weeping children on dusty streets.

But I do remember once

a woman and a child in beautiful blue clothing

walking over a dune, spreading a green cloth,

drinking nectar with mint and laughing

beneath a sky of clouds from the river

near the true garden of Eden.

Now another country is breaking

this holy vessel

where stone has old stories

and the fire creates clarity in the eyes of a child

who will turn it to hate one day.

We are so used to it now,

this country where we do not love enough,

that country where they do not love enough,

and that.

We do not need a god by any name

nor do we need to fall to our knees or cover ourselves,

enter a church or a river,

only do we need to remember what we do

to one another, it is so fierce

what any of our fathers may do to a child

what any of our brothers or sisters do to nonbelievers,

how we try to discover who is guilty

by becoming guilty,

because history has continued

to open the veins of the world

more and more

always in its search

for something gold.

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Wolfing down the North Country

We spent much of the day in and around Ely. Since we neglected to pack the cables that let us download photos from any of our cameras to our laptop, and we're too lazy to email ourselves some photos, new pictures will be available during the upcoming week.

Our visit to the International Wolf Center didn't disappoint. Although we arrived about mid-day, not the best time for viewing the wolves, most of the members of the resident pack presented themselves for observation and photos. Local ravens added alternative subjects and acted as expected when members of the pack approached them. (We've got our fingers crossed that our lens' troubles with focus through a window were minimal or nonexistent. Time, and access to the proper cables, will tell.)

can you guess where in Minnesota, and in which month, this was taken?

Photo by J. Harrington

We also visited Piragis Northwoods Company and after inspecting their other departments (camping, canoeing, hiking, gifts, etc.) made a pleasant discovery that their entire second floor is a book store. Yes, we bought more books, but only a few, just part of our efforts to support local businesses and local economies, you know. (We now wonder if Amazon will ever find it advantageous to try drone delivery in Minnesota's North Woods.)

Another aspect of support to local businesses involved an extended stay at a table in Northern Grounds. The cappuccino was delicious, once it cooled enough to taste, and nicely accompanied the ghost-frosted sugar cookie we munched our way through.

 Meeting Wolf 

by Mary Oliver

There are no words

inside his mouth,

inside his golden eyes.

So we stand, silent,

both of us tense

under the speechless but faithful trees.

And this is what I think:

I have given him

intrusion.

He has given me

a glimpse into a better but now broken world.

Not his doing, but ours.

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Happy Birthday, Ed Abbey! Many happy returns!

Today's the birthday of one of my favorite writers and professed reprobates, Ed Abbey. Since the normally reliable Writer's Almanac failed to mention it, I'm serving as a substitute.

I haven't read all of Abbey's work, including the source of one of his better quotations [below]. I believe, as our world gets more crowded and contentious, we all need to pay much more attention to this thought of his.  It comes from The Journey Home : Some Words in Defense of the American West (1977).

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.

like this pair, Abbey's spirit soars above the lands that he loved

Photo by J. Harrington

At the moment, I can recall reading Abbey's Down the River, The Monkey Wrench Gang, Postcards from Ed [page 3 of linked index], and probably a couple I can't remember.

The contrast between Abbey's perspective and what we currently see come out of Washington, D.C.  is as stark as it gets. I much prefer Abbey's anarchy to T***p's wall. As noted in an online introduction:

"In a career spanning four decades, he [Abbey] wrote passionately in defense of the Southwest and its inhabitants, often mocking the mindless bureaucratic forces hell-bent on destroying it. 'Resist much, obey little,' from Walt Withman [sic], was this warrior's motto."

With models to follow, like Abbey, Whitman, Jack and Bobby Kennedy, even LBJ, we should be able to survive what's going on these days, and even begin to thrive again in the future. Our thriving, however, relies on major changes in our values and priorities. Again, Abbey tells us how with these wishes that say more about what it means to be human and, I hope, American, than our Gross Domestic Product ever can:

"Benedicto: May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets' towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone, and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you --- beyond that next turning of the canyon walls."

Edward Abbey 

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A post-post-truth, post-normalized blog post

More than an hour ago (~2:00 pm), I was driving home after doing some errands. There, in the middle of a field, next to Old Highway 61, were a pair of whitetail does. They were in their somber Winter gray dun pelage, and seemed to be feeding on something or other. Or, they might just have been hanging out at the corner of a couple of deer trails hoping a handsome whitetail buck would wander by. Since hunting season is still winding down (I think archery and black powder seasons are still open), I was really surprised to see them out in the clear near mid-day. But then, this has been a year of surprises, hasn't it. I wouldn't be terribly shocked if many of us spent the better(?) part of the next four years scratching our heads and muttering something like "What 'n hell now?

whitetail doe at road's edge

Photo by J. Harrington

For the record, I don't accept the idea that we are in a "post-truth" phase or stage or age. In fact, I reject the concept that there is such a thing as post-truth. If there is the equivalent to being a Luddite on changes in the English language, sign me up. I don't intent to "normalize" the use of the non-word "normalize." I'm trying to figure out if being an equal opportunity anti-sexist, anti-Islamaphobe, anti-anti-Semite, anti-racist, anti-[fill in group discriminated against here] means that I'm actually a full-fledged, died-in-the-wool misanthrope. That wouldn't surprise me in the least. I've long had strong leanings in that direction. As a pleasant surprise, however, I did find some wonderful language earlier today, in a Tweet from @MiaMphotography. It was a brief quotation from one of my favorite misanthropes, Ed Abbey. A longer version below appears to be from the documentary A Voice in the Wilderness.

“How strange and wonderful is our home, our earth, with its swirling vaporous atmosphere, its flowing and frozen liquids, its trembling plants, its creeping, crawling, climbing creatures, the croaking things with wings that hang on rocks and soar through fog, the furry grass, the scaly seas. To see our world as a space traveler might see it, for the first time, through Venusian eyes or Martian antennae, how utterly rich and wild it would seem, how far beyond the power of the craziest, spaced-out, acid-headed imagination, even a god’s, even God’s, to conjure up from nothing. Yet some among us have the nerve, the insolence, the brass, the gall to whine about the limitations of our earthbound fate and yearn for some more perfect world beyond the sky. We are none of us good enough for the sweet earth we have, and yet we dream of heaven.”

Abbey's words reflect much the same sentiment as Robert Travers' Testament of a Fisherman. For the sake of my sanity, I'm planning on spending lots of time during the next few years reading much more of Ed Abbey and David Brower and Robert Travers and Leslie Marmon Silko and others of their ilk. We have let the barbarians through the gates and the genie out of the bottle. Damage containment is needed. One of Abbey's best poems offers some more:

Benedicto: May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous,

leading to the most amazing view.

May your rivers flow without end,

meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells,

past temples and castles and poets' towers

into a dark primeval forest

where tigers belch and monkeys howl,

through miasmal and mysterious swamps

and down into a desert of red rock,

and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm

where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs,

where deer walk across the white sand beaches,

where storms come and go

as lightning clangs upon the high crags,

where something strange and more beautiful

and more full of wonder than

your deepest dreams waits for you--

beyond that next turning of the canyon walls.

                                  Edward Abbey

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Remembering time #phenology

More and more oak leaves are are changing from green to bronze, brass and copper. Black cherry trees are putting some of the local maples to shame. The hummingbirds and just about all the butterflies are gone. There's still an occasional dragonfly to be seen. Ladybugs, or something like them, are sputtering through the air, sometimes landing on a human neck or hair. Those mice that haven't yet been caught in a trap are still looking for warm Winter abodes. Dog-walking today, I saw a pileated woodpecker, which reminded me that, probably in several weeks (famous last words?) it will be time to set out the suet feeders (day time temperatures near freezing come a little after Thanksgiving).

black cherry tree in October

Photo by J. Harrington

Yesterday the current (November/December) issue of SIERRA, the eponymous Club's magazine arrived and I was surprised to see Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) on the cover highlighting the lead story, Border Dispute. As you would expect, it's about the problems a Twin Metals mine, if approved, could be expected to impose on the BWCA wilderness. (When I "Googled" one of the assertions in the article, I discovered that the staff at the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library compiled, last March, a resource guide on copper-nickle and sulfide mining.) The SIERRA article also notes that "Tourism today contributes $850 million annually to northeastern Minnesota's economy, but it's still viewed by some as a second-rate industry."

tourist attraction in northern Minnesota (BWCA)

Photo by J. Harrington

One of the points that I've not seen made, and I'd like to see better considered, is the long-term economic future mining offers compared to year-round tourism in northern Minnesota. Although tourism may have its negative environmental impacts, I've not seen it referred to as an extractive industry such as mining. Additional background is available in the book North Shore, but its geographic coverage is limited to areas along Lake Superior's Minnesota coastline. If copper-nickle-sulfide mining is allowed to proceed, many (most?) tourists will move on to less industrialized "wilderness" areas. Then, when the ores run out, can Minnesotans believe that, this time, mining will leave behind any better impacts than it ever has? If Minnesotans care about their children, and their children's children, maybe out seven generations?, mining as it's practiced today, managed to meet minimal legal requirements instead of minimal environmental impacts, doesn't offer a sustainable future. The SIERRA article suggests, if the reader wants to do something to help protect the BWCA, "...urging Interior Secretary Sally Jewell to withdraw all minerals in the BWCA watershed from the federal mining program: sc.org/saveboundarywaters." I'd be happier if I were sure that such action would also apply to the proposed PolyMet mine.

Northern Minnesota's phenology is going to be stressed due to climate change. Additional stresses from mining pollution could become the straws that break the back of the tourism industry. Who pays for the retraining for those employed to outfit and service tourists when the ores are gone? Phenology and Joy Harjo can help us to decide if we

Remember

Joy Harjo, 1951

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

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Is wilderness sustainable?

My normal, layabout, schedule has been disrupted this week by a trip over the holiday weekend and a visit to get measured (fitted?) for the tux I'll be wearing in a month at the Daughter Person's wedding plus an extended meeting yesterday afternoon, on Strategic Planning for the USGBC-MN chapter. So, it wasn't until this morning that I had a chance to read Ron Meador's really well done column in MinnPost, extending a happy 50th wish to The Wilderness Act. I especially appreciated his inclusion of a link to a suggested syllabus for the 50th anniversary of that Act. I find it more than mildly ironic that this week also includes the 100th anniversary of the death of Martha, the last passenger pigeon. At least one of the essays I read these past few days suggested that its basic problem was our perception of the bird's apparently inexhaustible abundance. I suspect the same can be said about the way we use and abuse a number of other resources, both renewable and not. I doubt any of us will ever see the return of the white pine stands that were logged early last century. You can probably name the rest of the usual suspects. But, after reading Meador's Wilderness column, just out of curiosity, I "googled" is wilderness sustainable? and got a very pleasant surprise.

North Woods white pine

Photo by J. Harrington

The first link to turn up was a story from yesterday's Guardian, in the Sustainable Business section, on the economics of open space. I wish that at least some of the folks living on the Iron Range would read it, especially this quotation:

The diversified nature of outdoor recreation creates a widespread and diverse economic ecosystem, including the travel industry, gear suppliers and local businesses around national parks, state lands, local parks and more. That can be a strength, Hugelmeyer says, helping to buoy the economy through uncertain times: “When you are diversified, you aren’t exposed to any one activity going out of fashion.”

To be candid, I would have liked it better is the article were in The Economist, but I'm learning to appreciate small victories. A British paper with a great photo of Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness Area isn't something to be readily discounted, especially when it also points out that access to public lands is a notable locational factor for "...faster rates of job growth and higher income levels related to the knowledge-based economy." I haven't read the report yet but am dubious tech startup founders would be as enamored of mine tailings disasters and similar disruptions of the natural environment. I don't think Minnesota should concede an economic locational competitive advantage to the states west of us. I also don't think any poet knows wilderness and sustainable better than Gary Snyder.

Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout

By Gary Snyder 

Down valley a smoke haze

Three days heat, after five days rain   

Pitch glows on the fir-cones

Across rocks and meadows

Swarms of new flies.

I cannot remember things I once read   

A few friends, but they are in cities.   

Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup   

Looking down for miles

Through high still air.

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In wildness is the preservation...

© harrington

What do you think? Is this a photo of wilderness? There's no sign of human activity (other than the photographer). No powerlines or cell phone towers visible, not even any jet contrails. In My Minnesota, we should be able to talk intelligently about what's wilderness, since we're home to the Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness Area. A recent court decision will increase the cell phone coverage by allowing a tall cell phone tower that will be visible from within the wilderness area. Do cell phones belong in a wilderness? Would Jeremiah Johnson carry a cell phone? I know, we're not mountain men any more. So, according to the Wilderness Act of 1964, wilderness is “an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man,..." But, one of the major protectors of wilderness areas in the US, the Bureau of Land Management, says on one of its web pages: "The majority of BLM Wilderness Areas allow some degradation of air quality associated with moderate industrial and population growth." That makes me think of the Monty Python scene where the Black Knight, having lost both arms in a battle with Arthur, insists "its just a flesh wound." Untrammeled means unrestricted or unrestrained. The area in the picture above is restricted by the township road from which the picture was taken. Is taking a cell phone into an area a restriction or restraint? When does a flesh wound become terminal?