In Praise of Wilderness

Rather than an extended blog about wilderness for Earth Day and Earth Week, I'd rather share the words on nature and the wild by people far more eloquent than I am and share some pictures of our beautiful area. At the end, you'll get why Cathy Pedler of the Allegheny Defense Project is on our show today.

"The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild, and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the World."

~Henry David Thoreau

“Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself.”

~Edward Abbey

"Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature - the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter."

~Rachel Carson

"For unnumbered centuries of human history the wilderness has given way. The priority of industry has become dogma. Are we as yet sufficiently enlightened to realize that we must now challenge that dogma, or do without our wilderness? Do we realize that industry, which has been our good servant, might make a poor master?" 

~Aldo Leopold 

 

"We need to realize that, first, we don’t give rights to nature. Nature has rights. And more often than not, nature’s rights and people’s rights are allied as one in most places of the world, where, in places like Jaitapur, people are saying, 'This land is our mother.' This is not an esoteric idea. It’s the most relevant, potent, democratic idea of our times.” 

~Vandana Shiva 

"Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God." 

~George Washington Carver

We'll be joined by Cathy Pedler who's been active in the Allegheny Defense Project (ADP) since 2003. She's worked as an archaeological researcher and a sustainability coordinator and is an avid outdoors person. She will be telling us about the Heartwood Forest Council and the ADP's work past, present, and future to protect the forests and wilds of the Allegheny plateau and the Allegheny National Forest, Pennsylvania's only national forest. 

Listen in on Friday from 4-5 pm. Call in (814) 865-9577 with questions and comments. You can also join us on Facebook and Twitter as well.

"A full-strength antidote to the Kryptonite of corporate greed and human ignorance."

David Gessner (pictured at right with a bottle of Pennsylvania's oldest beer), an award winning nature writer best known for his edgy and humorous style and interest in ospreys and Ultimate Frisbee, will read from his work in the Foster Auditorium in the Paterno Library on the campus of Penn State, University Park, at 8:00 p.m. on Monday, February 20. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Gessner’s most acclaimed work is the book Return of the Osprey (2001) and a sequel about following osprey migration to Cuba and South America, Soaring with Fidel (2007). His work is also closely associated with Cape Cod, including a memoir of his father’s death from cancer, A Wild, Rank Place (1997) and his account of his experiences with the Cape Cod naturalist and writer, John Hay, The Prophet of Dry Hill (2005). Gessner has also published an account of his experiences as a student writer in Boulder, Colorado, in Under the Devil’s Thumb (1999), and a collection of essays, Sick of Nature (2004), in which he tangles with such topics as the influence of Thoreau on his writing and thinking; his relationship with his teacher, the literary biographer Walter Jackson Bate; and his long quest to win an Ultimate Frisbee national championship. Gessner’s work has appeared in numerous magazines, including Orion, OnEarth, The New York Times Magazine and American Scholar. His essay about pelicans, “Learning to Surf,” won a John Burroughs Award in 2007 for the best natural history essay of the year. One Orion reviewer characterized Gessner’s writing as “Comical, energetic, and reverentially irreverent.” The Atlanta Journal Constitution called The Tarball Chronicles “a a full-strength antidote to the Kryptonite of corporate greed and ignorance,” and Publisher’s Weekly dubbed it “Brilliant.”

Get a sense of his style here. You won't be disappointed.