My mind is constantly changing and evolving, and de-evolving. My writing below is what I am thinking about in the spring of 2008. I will undoubtedly have a different viewpoint a year from now; my experiences are consistently changing the way I look at my surroundings and myself. I am open to change.

Why I do what I do….

We live in two worlds, the biological world and the human cultural world. First, there are wild lands and species that influence and shape our minds; and then we have a vast network of human cooperation that allows much of the developed world to live and think without contemplating our essential needs such as shelter and food. We are the first life on planet earth with the capability to comprehend this notion (and not the last either!). It is a luxury and will not be around “forever” if we continue down the path we are going. I cannot even begin to imagine a world containing only humans and filler species such as cockroaches and pigeons, void of all other species of life we have today that are so very much similar to ourselves.

“We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.” –Aldo Leopold

I truly believe that it is my duty to influence my own culture and people on the pressing environmental issues near my home. Traveling around the world goes against my devotion to reducing my carbon footprint, I believe that humans are influencing the current climate shift at a monumental rate and if I cannot change myself, I should definitely not be telling others in my culture to change. In addition, I highly dislike the feeling of traveling long distances and being totally out of rhythm with the circadian and circannual biological rhythms. And if my own human culture cannot promote sustainability within the delicate balance of the biological world and human social world, then we have no business trying to move other cultures of our species to do so. My home place is where the pronghorn stream and the rivers run, it is under siege.  

The great conservation biologist Michael Soulé noted, “Facts compute, but they don’t convert.” This very notion is at the foundation of my mission. We already know what needs to be done. It’s pretty obvious to me what needs to be done with respect to the natural world, our world; I challenge you to contemplate what we have done to the biodiversity of life within the past 75 years. We are in the center of the 6th greatest extinction crisis and we all need to do something. I believe that my role lies within inspiring others to care about my nations longest river and longest land-mammal migration. They both do not necessarily need me, but I need them.

“Man’s attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature. But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself… [We are] challenged as mankind has never been challenged before to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature, but of ourselves.” –Rachel Carson

With a constant push from our current society to develop and exploit the land in which we live; I believe we must come together as a species and ask ourselves, “is it worth it? Are these irreversible actions that provide short-term solutions worth it?” I do not think so.

With the current abrupt shift in the climate coupled with the ever-increasing energy crisis that the developed world is influencing, the demands on wild places to become developed and exploited to counteract these changes will indeed increase. This quick fix for our society will come back and haunt us because these are the places that provide humans with essential elements such as clean water and food, not to mention recreation and mental healing. We owe it to our children and grandchildren to protect and restore these wild places. We as humans are just another species within Nature, a species that is intellectually superior to all other life forms. I believe that our health as a human species is directly correlated to the health of entire ecosystems on a place we call earth. I owe it to my friends, my future generations, and all life on earth to do my part in protecting and restoring its natural processes. Let my images inspire you to do your part in protecting and restoring this planet!