Pave Paradise, and Put Up a Parking Lot by Peter Reum

Development and social issues do not always mix. Fifty plus years ago, the world began to respond to the desecration of wild areas by beginning to protect them. In the American West, the battle has always been between those who wish to keep wild areas undeveloped, and those who believe that the land is ours and we should profit from its development. Several years ago, I wrote a piece in this blog which addressed the need for preserving the sacred lands of the various Indigenous tribes in the Americas. For many Americans, worship takes place in a building set aside for that purpose. Churches, synagogues, and temples fill that drive that calls people to have faith in something beyond our small lives, beyond the trivial concerns of daily life. Whether our background is Indigenous, European, Asian, African, Middle Eastern, or Oriental, a common attachment to our wild lands draws us back, with feelings of awe, fear, wonder, and interdependence flowing through us.



As we propagate, fewer of us experience that feeling of wonder than the previous generations have experienced. The reasons why are too numerous to mention. A few that come to mind are urbanization, mining and drilling, a growing dependence on technology to help us survive and entertain ourselves, the automobile, lack of sufficient time, and the loss of basic survival skills needed to live in the wild...even for a weekend. Today, we look at other planets and their moons the way Nineteenth Century society viewed the wilderness. We look at our Moon, Mars, and other planets as potential places to colonize and as places to extract precious metals. Will there be a Sierra Club or a Wild Place Guardian equivalent that will protect our neighboring celestial bodies? We have already planned to visit Mars in 2020 and return with ore samples.

NASA Mars 2020 Sample Gathering Rover (NASA Image)

MARS 2020 Sample Gathering Rover Functions (NASA Image)

NASA already has potential plans for sending astronauts to retrieve the rock samples that would be obtained by the 2020 Sample Gathering Rover. What do we think of such plans.....what SHOULD we think of such plans.....

The Great Frontier still exists. It is further away, and would take longer to reach, but we are beginning to plan on how to engage ourselves with it, even today. How have we treated the American Frontier over the last five centuries, since Europeans first arrived and claimed others' lands for themselves? How do we engage our Moon this century? Do we drill and destroy the Moon the way we are drilling and destroying the aquifers that give us life? The Apache tribe has been fighting to preserve a piece of land that, while outside their reservation, is sacred to them. Tribes in Alberta and  British Columbia are fighting to stop pipelines full of highly flammable oil from crossing their reserves. Several USA tribes are fighting the Keystone Pipeline from being constructed and crossing their sacred lands. The Lakota have refused a payment from the US Government in lieu of returning The Paha Sapa-The Black Hills, sacred to their tribe.What will it take to convince us that some lands are sacred and should be respected as such?

Slowly, the growing population of humans on this planet is beginning to exceed Mother Earth's capacity to sustain us. Areas previously thought of as inhospitable to human life are being considered for growth and development. The polar regions in the North and South are being contested for ownership by nations that previously had not been as aggressive toward each other. Tiny islands in oceans are being contested for strategic reasons as much as for development.  Many biologists contend that a sixth mass extinction is already underway. The idea that other species have not only a right but also a place in sustaining other species is only beginning to be understood. Whether it be wolverines, wolves, prairie dogs, sharks, birds, or whales, less is known about their place in Earth's habitats than is known conclusively. We risk starving ourselves to death by destroying the very bees that pollenate our crops.

The  reality of the world warming is a fact. That much of it is due to fossil fuel consumption is a fact. Where we go and how we travel will have to change dramatically the first half of this century. Obfuscation of simple and proven links of fossil fuels and climate change is rampant. We have heads of major world corporations contending that the human need for fresh water is something that has a price tag attached. Animals that were plentiful in my own childhood in the 1950s are either endangered or extinct. Lions, tigers, giant pandas, whales, dolphins, polar bears, and too many more species to mention have gone extinct or are going extinct.

There is an old saying that reads something like this...."you should never defecate in your own nest." Our nest is this planet, and we have compromised its ability to self-correct and heal. What is really sad is we are talking about colonizing other planets to ruin as well. I belong to the Sierra Club. I am proud that we as an organization have begun to understand that human problems correlate with each other, some highly, some not as highly. The Sierra Club sends me petitions and notices about human problems that, on the surface, seem to have little to do with wilderness. But, through analyzing issues, the Sierra Club has realized that human issues and wilderness issues are inextricably related.

I read the other day that Shell Oil had removed their membership from ALEC because they felt that ALEC's position on climate change and fossil fuels was so ludicrously out of touch that Shell could not support it with a straight face. Corporate citizenship is essential to the preservation of wilderness and the survival of all species, including ours. Our faith in technology as an agent of change in our world is excessive. Technology is a tool that can carry our goals forward only if our attitudes for healing the Earth are adjusted and changed. We need to think as do the Indigenous Peoples, seven generations ahead of our own.

For those of you who doubt the reality of our ancestors observing us, I will share a story. On my honeymoon with my wife, we made it a point to visit many of the sacred temples of the Hawaiian people. We approached them respectfully, and felt welcome to enter each one. In Kona, there is a resort hotel which has Ahu'ena Heiau, the personal worship site for King Kamehameha I onsite. The morning before we flew back to Montana, there was a protest by the Hawaiian People at Ahu'ena Heiau. The hotel was gracious in their approach to Hawaiians and visitors alike, opening the temple to anyone who wanted to enter. 

 

'Heiau-Kona, Hawaii

When we started to pass through the gate to the Heiau, I immediately felt a feeling I have only had in a few sacred sites before. The essential message I felt was "get out, leave immediately." We turned around and departed. I had experienced a similar feeling in New Mexico at the Stone Lion Shrine and Ceremonial Cave in Bandelier National Monument, but I have been to dozens of ancient sites in New Mexico, Hawaii, and the Western USA, and only had that feeling once before Ahu'ena. It is important that we remain open to these intuitive experiences, as there is so much we don't see, hear, or comprehend in this world. I fear that as we become more detached from sacred spaces and places, our ability to hear messages from our Earth and the world we don't experience with our senses is lost. For this reason, every child, no matter how poor, how urbanized, and how technologically involved, MUST learn to hear the messages our wild Earth has for him or her. Our very survival as a species depends on it.

Text copyright 2015 by Peter Reum-All rights reserved