A voice in the wilderness - writer Gary Snyder

Progressive, The, Nov, 1995 by Bob Blanchard

"Basically, we're a council of local people," says Snyder, "who use our watershed as the definition of the space we want to be engaged with. As a community, we've had the opportunity to do a biological inventory, to study the land and suggest what the long-range future of this forest ought to be."

The Institute seeks to build grassroots activism by encouraging people to become intimately acquainted with the natural world surrounding them. "For five years now, we've run an outstanding educational and community-outreach program. We organize field trips. We bring in experts in mycology, entomology, and forest ecology to talk to people on the ridge here using the old school house. We get a big turnout of old-time locals, young people, ranchers - everybody. This is ground-level knowledge - interesting and fundamental - that most people leave to high-school teachers and Boy Scouts, but in fact it's political, serious, and radical."

In addition, the Institute offers a pragmatic alternative to the currently popular anti-environmentalist rhetoric of the Wise Use movement.

"We understand the genuine fear and anxiety that propels some of our friends locally, who are in the Wise Use movement, because local environmentalists are working people, too," says Snyder. "We're not denying their problems. But we're not whining about logging issues, we're trying to figure out how to go forward rather than look back nostalgically to an era of logging that's over. Of course, the Wise Use movement was created from the top down. The corporations got hip to manipulating their own terminated workers. First they fire their workers, then they inflame them to attack the environmental movement. It's wonderfully clever. But it's not the environmentalists' fault that too many trees got cut down."

In Snyder's view, the federal government is so influenced by powerful lobbyists representing big business that legislation to protect and preserve our environment has been slow in coming and inadequate in scope.

Now, the political powers in Washington, D.C., are rolling back even these very limited regulations. But well-organized and well-educated local activists working to preserve their own watersheds might be able to effectively resist the regressive and self-destructive policies that are originating in corporate boardrooms and that are controlling the legislative agenda via campaign contributions.

Kitkitdizze remains Snyder's elegant and nourishing home base, yet he continues to travel widely and to enjoy a physically vigorous lifestyle: mountaineering, backpacking, and river rafting. Recent trips to Japan, India, Africa, and Europe enabled him to converse with a wide range of the Earth's inhabitants.

"What hits me every time I travel is that the planet is full of great-hearted, intelligent, well-informed people," he says. "In fact, it's shocking how much better informed people outside the United States are, particularly about world events, history, and politics. To me, there's something seriously wrong with American education and intellectual and spiritual life. It's full of ignorance, mean-spiritedness, and a resurgent anti-intellectualism that is so strange, considering our Founding Fathers were rational deists who appreciated learning. My conclusion is the Third World is not to be underestimated; it's not driven by greed to the extent that the capitalist world of multinational corporations is."