‘Be fair’, say the temporizers. ‘Tell both sides of the story.’ But how can you be fair to both sides of a rape? A murder? A massacre? — Edward Abbey

Or the rape and pillage of our wild earth?

Passion… outrage… boldness… subjectivity… this is what stirs [...]]]> by pj finn

‘Be fair’, say the temporizers. ‘Tell both sides of the story.’ But how can you be fair to both sides of a rape? A murder? A massacre? — Edward Abbey

Or the rape and pillage of our wild earth?

Passion… outrage… boldness… subjectivity… this is what stirs people, what gets them off their asses, what prompts action and involvement.

One of my favorite essays by Edward Abbey is one called ‘A Writer’s Credo’ in his book ‘One Life at a Time, Please.’ This essay alone is worth the price of the book. His point is that one of the duties of any writer in a free society is to be a critic of said society. He doesn’t say that being a critic is a writer’s only duty, but it is one of them. An important one.

This blog has been online for about six years now. A couple of months back I took it offline for awhile, mostly to ponder some changes to it, but also because it was starting to feel timid and stale. I thought to shift the focus away from activism and more toward appreciation of wildness, which is all well and good, but something was missing. That something was the critic aspect Abbey wrote so well about. I decided I don’t need to change much. I just need to be more of a pest.

I’m relaunching buzztail today, and there will be some pieces about wilderness thoughts and experiences. There will be some photography. There will be some activism. There will be opinion and criticism, which I won’t waste my time debating or defending. I’ll say what I want to say, and the reader can take it for what it’s worth to them. They may agree… they may think it worthless. It doesn’t matter. I have no set schedule for posting. I’ll simply say what I want to say when I want to say it.

My debating skills are nil, my desire to debate even less. I’m not here to do that. If anything, I want to be like a thorn in your big toe — annoying and irritating as hell, but something you can’t for the life of you get rid of. That would suit my purposes quite nicely. When it comes to writing about the destruction of our wilderness, our wild home, as Abbey said, the timid need not apply.

Some things are too valuable to measure. Priceless is the term — they’re too sacred and profound to demean with a simple dollar figure no matter how high that figure may be. Dollars are a poor measure of life.

How can you put a dollar figure on the experience of waking up [...]]]> by pj finn

Some things are too valuable to measure. Priceless is the term — they’re too sacred and profound to demean with a simple dollar figure no matter how high that figure may be. Dollars are a poor measure of life.

How can you put a dollar figure on the experience of waking up to early morning on a northern lake, the mists galloping across the waters, and the wild laughter of a loon echoing from shore to shore?

How can you measure the worth of hiking around a bend in the trail and encountering a bull moose literally nose to nose?

How valuable is the experience of spending days with a band of mountain goats, and having them accept you as a being who belongs there, albeit a strange one?

Calculate the dollar value of a camp by a small mountain lake at 7000 feet, the sun crashing behind the surrounding peaks, the sound of silence and solitude accompanying you, the Milky Way filling the sky as your thoughts settle down to wilderness time. Calculate that for me — I sure can’t.

These experiences exist far beyond the measure of mere money. So far beyond that our incessant translation of the hours of our lives into dollars is so abstract as to seem ridiculous, and that’s as it should be. That’s why they’re so vital and blood stirring. And priceless.