Doug Peacock- "Mingled" because I believe, not quite glibly- and I've written about this through the course of four books- that our fates really are the same. You know, the grizzly bear is an omnivore who lives in the same habitats humans lived in, you know, right up until we had cities. And in North America, that's always been the case. The grizzly bear came over at the same time as humans to this continent, you know, some fifty , thirty thousand years ago- we don't know exactly when. Bears and humans came down from Alaska into the country, and , you know, a lot of animals died out during the last global warming of, you know, 14,000 years ago. Humans and grizzlies were the two big critters, the two big omnivores, that survived. And I really do believe we do have a common fate. And it's not because we can't live without grizzlies. I think we lose an essential part of our soul, that part that 's going to perhaps help us survive the terrible threats to today, and especially global warming. ....
I was a Green Beret medic in Vietnam, and I was there, two tours with the Green Beret through the Tet Offensive. The Tet Offensive really seared my soul. You know I was- I had to deal with 180 civilian casualties, all women and children, as the only medic. And so, when I came back to this country, I was like a lot of other vets: I was really out of sorts. And so, I crawled back into the one place I've always called home, and that's the wilderness of the American West. Eventually, you know, I lived encamped in the Northern Rockies, eventually in Yellowstone. There I ran into grizzlies. You know, you cannot- self-indulgence is utterly impossible in grizzly country. And that's exactly what I needed. And so, in a way, these bears saved my life. You know, they allowed me to recapture the elements of my own humanity. And for the last 40 years, I've been doing the best I can to pay them back....
Monkey wrenching is - you know, it's like homeland defense, you know? and home really is our wilderness, you know, our wild nature. And in order to fight that battle, sometimes you have to take on bulldozers, the logging and mining industry. ..
Amy- I wanted to turn to a clip of Edward Abbey, in his own words. From the documentary: Edward Abbey: A Voice in the Wilderness.
Dan- I've got to see this.
Edward Abbey- I regard defending the wilderness as something like defending your own home. I regard the wilderness as my home, my true ancestral home. And when it's being invaded by clear cutters and strip miners, I feel not only the right, but the duty, the moral obligation to defend it by any means I can.
Benediction. May your trails be crooked, winding, and 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, mysterious swamps infested with crocodiles, and down from there into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone, and down, 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 lighting clangs upon the high craigs, 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 walks. So long, I thank you very much.
