I walk without purpose through a timeless forest of mile-high giants.  From ancient culms thick as Earth Herself, canopies rise up to pierce a fog that admits no sky.  These wild creatures germinated fifteen hundred years before Columbus and Ferdinand ever dreamt a rich New World was somewhere over the flat horizon.  The rings of the fallen bear witness.  

Eucalyptus, wild sage and aerosolized Redwood oil fill the air, mixed with salty organic sea-spray teaming with primordial scents of Life’s rich pageant, and Her forever faithful companion, Death, which nourishes all who come again.

Big Blue roars from three hundred feet below, harmoniously blended with countless sounds of Earth-life.  Together they saturate the airwaves uncorrupted by industrial noise, completely silencing the static in my head, guiding me always forward, focused and aware of only the present, through mile after mile of pristine Wild, eternally unbending by bending, too powerful to be harnessed by mere ferocious egos. 

This is one of Earth’s remaining sacred places, willfully evading the scars of pounding, relentless "progress".  Naïve creatures and pre-historic flora thrive in blind defiance of civilization’s media-blitz call.  No planting, tilling, herbicides, pesticides, petro-fertilizers or weeding could do good —  Earth’s most awesome habitats spring to life uncontrived.  Left alone, they could not be more successful, diverse or adaptable.  Without the meddlesome bio-engineering of technocrats, they could reach no higher level of dignity, enlightenment, purpose, or bliss.

Nature has taught us volumes.  But still not enough.  Along the way we’ve forgotten that we are nature.  It is us as we are It.  This thin skin of biosphere is our lifeblood, and our purest source of spirituality and wisdom.  Some astrophysicists believe all matter in the Universe, live and ‘dead’, to be one intertwined organism!  Imagine that.  Whatever version of reality we believe, unbridled Nature and Her incredibly wild ways are not resources to exploit or some wicked beast to tame, but our ultimate teacher and sole provider of all life on this blue-green-white-brown-red mystical marble that we call Home. 

Without the Wild, we are not only a lost race, but inert.  Chemical abstractions and technological controls are a step away, not toward, humanity’s ultimate goal.

Peace-and-harmony are all around us.  Every second we breathe.  As fish don’t acknowledge water, we swim in it like air, even though we fail to see it, because peace does not make money, and our system, as set up, is all about making money.  But peaceful co-existence is completely feasible.  It exists, very literally, out there in the woodlands, creeks, wetlands, deserts, mountains, oceans, steppes and plains.  Yet we continue to imagine the Wild as an enemy to be conquered instead of an omniscient friend to show us the way.  Let us not forget: There is no teacher with more fortitude, ingenuity, persistence, justice, generosity or grace than Nature Herself.  Call Him/Her/It God/Allah/Buddha/Nature or what you will; it does not matter.  There is some benevolent force that has made order from chaos (which goes directly against the law of entropy).  In the long run, He/She/It will prevail. We’d do well to go with the flow.

Who is more wise?  What will last forever?  A control society that requires constant growth/consumption/war/exploitation, or a self-sustaining biosphere that constantly adapts through a moneyless gift economy?  We have a choice: Continue in our abstracted scientific/religious belief systems, in which case we might annihilate all that is good, pure and true within us.  Or look deeper into natural law, embrace our Universal roots, and live in balance with all of Creation.  Let’s hope the world's 'leaders' come to their senses before Nature folds under wo/man’s weight and then rebuilds the new order without us — which… She will.  Conventional wisdom (an oxymoron) holds that humans are the wisest specie on Earth.  I remain unconvinced.  But, I think we all agree that in the present moment, humans possess the most raw power.  So for now, it’s up to us.

United with Nature/God, each other, and ourselves, as we once were in a far away space-time, we can coexist as a race that lives in synchronicity with our finite, miraculous, and oh-so gorgeous planet.   Or we can continue to rebel against Her.

Abe Lincoln, paraphrasing Jesus, noted — “A house divided cannot stand.”  Let us reunite with all the unfathomable beauty that is our Universe.

Let us all come together, again.

Peace!

 ~Gregg

___________________

Addendum 2011

A Brief History of War and Peace In Quotations

Addendum 2012

Of Civilized Men