Tobi Luck is a gardener, living and working on the edge of the wild Atlantic, in County Sligo. His garden exists in a constant dynamic; the gentle sensitive cultivation and management of growing food against an uncontrollable elemental backdrop of an edge-dwelling location.
Between land and sea, Tobi has created a niche that exists alongside wilderness. This week’s featured thinker reminds of our interdependence with a system that does not rely on us.
Read more….
Grand Staircase, Escalente National Monument, Utah. Image: Phil Hanceford, 2008
Phil Hanceford is the Assistant Director, of The Wilderness Society’s BLM Action Center and uses his knowledge of natural resource law and policy to protect desert wildlands in the West stewarded by the Bureau of Land Management. This article co-written with his colleague, Nada Culver, senior counsel and director presents the BLM’s work to protect desert wilderness.
Illustrated with Phil’s beautiful images, the article relates the ‘coming-of-age story about an agency that was late to receive the responsibilities of its sibling agencies’.
Sea ice in the Chukchi Sea, north of Bering Strait, March 18 2015. (Image:Marine Live-ice Automobile Expedition (MLAE).
Writer and conservationist, Eleanor O’Hanlon, grew up in the rainy temperate climate of the West of Ireland and has has worked in conservation since the 1980’s, working for Greenpeace International, Environmental Investigation Agency and ITV’s Discovery channel. Winner of the 2014 Nautilus Gold Book Award for Nature Writing, with Eyes of the Wild, Eleanor re-visits her 2008 trip to Spitsbergen (Svalbard Archipelago) updated with with images and information from the Marine Live-ice Automobile Expedition (MLAE), March 2015.
We hope you enjoy Eleanor’s timely and sensitive piece, her work, guided by biologists and other observers is illustrated with beautiful images, reconnecting us and renewing our longstanding relationship with the natural world.
Artist and designer, Tara Baoth Mooney investigates the idea of sustainability and its transcendence through many different forms, particularly the boundaries of human experience. Tara returns constantly to the theme of garments as a form of outer cladding and what that can mean to humanity on a daily basis. Through clothing, personal systems of identity are forged which have been constructed with deliberation and care. External cladding or garments, can act as an interface between individuals and their immediate environment, promoting reflection and encouraging communication.
Some of you may recognize where this photo was taken – at the western border of the Latir Wilderness Area, north of Questa, New Mexico. This week’s Featured Wilderness Thinker, Victor Mascareñas, takes us deep into the Latir Wilderness with his cows and into his family’s land-based heritage; all in a 6 minutes 40 seconds PechaKucha presentation video!
A fifth-generation farmer on the New Mexico/Colorado border, he writes, “Like an old fashion cattle drive, our cows must walk almost nine miles before reaching the mountain meadows, reaching 12,000 feet and higher. I am blessed that my four children have experienced this adventure and pray there will be many more generations to go.”
Join Victor and his family on their trek into the Sangre de Cristo mountains. Read more….
Anna Keleher, from Devon, England, develops ideas, techniques, processes, skills and participatory artworks to expand 21st century perspectives. As our 24th Wilderness Thinker, Anna brings characteristic creativity, dedication to turning a topic on its head and to quote her directly, “shifting our thinking.” Her essay, “The Wilderness Inside” turns the concept of wilderness “inside out.” Read more…
Kids and Wilderness go together in so many ways, which is why I’m so excited to present our Featured Thinkers this week: Gess Healey’s Third Grade Class from Arroyos del Norte Elementary School. We covered a lot of “ground” in our short time together….Read More.
Mark Keleher hails from Devon, England and he’s a Walker – with a capital “W.” He has a unique take on wilderness: “For me there is no wilderness. There are only places where a lot of people don’t go….” Read More…
This week we welcome Alex Rykken as our 15th Wilderness Thinker with two essays from her recently published book, The Place Where Wilderness Dreams.
Alex describes her essays:
“In the Time of Rivers and Wolves” speaks to the intrinsic workings of the natural world as the core of who we are. Interrelationship, community, balance, spirit, are just words if we forget the ultimate value of the more than human world in our conversations.
“If You Go to the Mountain Take Only a Little of Yourself” honors the importance of gesture, of listening, being quiet; this essay honors the mystic, the private one within us all. This essay honors the mountain and her wild inhabitants; their words, their voices are our words, our voices uncovered.
This week, we are joined by psychotherapist and researcher, Adrian Harris presenting his essay, “Where is Wilderness?”
What do we mean by wilderness? Some claim that the notion is misleading romanticism or simply describes a kind of museum of nature (Talbot). Can we challenge such critiques or must we abandon the idea of wilderness altogether? An alternative is to step sideways and instead of trying to answer the question posed by the current debate – i.e. what is wilderness? – we consider something altogether more puzzling: Where is wilderness?
To look into this question with Adrian, Read more…..
Thinking Wilderness 