if I gave a TED Talk ...

... it would start in an auditorium.

Of course it would.  And you are there, sitting in the audience, right?

But the whole point of the talk is to get you out of your seat and out into nature ... walking!

Below is a written version of the message--not a transcript but the script, or the intended outline:

* * *

Good morning, folks.  I'm the Hiking Hermit and I'm here to talk about walking.

There is NOTHING ... NOTHING!!! ...more natural to us than walking.

We exist as a species because we walk, and walk well ...

LONG, HARD, All-day Hunter-Gatherer walks.

We got smart because we walked out of the jungle on two feet.

That freed our hands to use tools.

Learning to use tools expanded our brains; and we found we could make better and better tools.

Ever-more-clever tools to do our walking for us.  To do our thinking for us.

And what happened?  (This ought to come as no surprise.)

WE GOT STUPID !!!!!

Our tools have taken over our lives.

We have become slaves ... chained to our tools, captive inside the artificial spaces we built for our comfort.  They've become voluntary jail cells, keeping us away from our true nature.

Look around you at this moment.  At least 90 percent of what we see and experience, at least 90 percent of the time, are our own tools.

They've swallowed us up!  We're drowning in them!  GASPING for air!

Our tools are destroying the world!

STUPID!!!!!!!

How on Earth did we fall into this trap?  How did we let ourselves get so stupid?

The answer is simple.  We got away from our true nature.

Our true nature IS nature itself.  We are good solid products of the natural world, crafted through Billions of years of trial and error.  We're made of good stuff.  But we're denying it.

And as I said at the start.  Our TRUE NATURE is walking.  Walking is the root characteristic that defines our species.

So the best way out of our trap -- the best way to SAVE THE WORLD -- is to GET UP, walk out of your artificial space, walk away from the Tool Monsters, and return to the lifestyle that makes walking the most important part of every day: as Thoreau put it, "The enterprise and Adventure of the day."

The GOOD NEWS is that the solution is EASY.  It's the most NATURAL thing we could do.

Because there is NOTHING ... NOTHING!!! ... that can transform your life more quickly and easily (and at practically no cost--no equipment to buy) than WALKING.

So for God's sake ... for your own sake! ... get up!  Get out of your chair and come along with me.

We're going on a REAL adventure.

Welcome to the Cloister at Three Creeks

My home and secluded hermitage retreat since summer 2020 is an off-grid tract of eleven wooded acres surrounded on three sides by noisy mountain creeks. Human sounds are limited to the sound of airplanes and jets above. This professional-quality video produced by my son-in-law presents a comprehensive tour of the grounds and a bit about me - my background and plans for the grounds.

The Seventh Generation

Decisions mankind makes today are going to have long term effects.  Carbon pollution in the atmosphere takes an average of 120 years to dissipate (the scientific term is 'half life' meaning that half of it will be gone and half still remaining).  That works out to about five or six generations.  What we do today matters to descendants in a world that we can hardly imagine, and yet the Great Law of the Iroquois (The Haudenosaunee Confederacy) states that our plans should consider the seventh generation of our descendants.

How will these distant future heirs to our planet view our actions today?  What can we do to assure that their world is as safe and comfortable as it can be?  I explore some ideas on that in this video, taken as I stroll a favorite part of the Appalachian Trail.

Right now, as this is posted, Government leaders and politicians are gathered in Glasgow Scotland to discuss policies regarding reducing Carbon pollution that will have enormous consequences to our descendants.

Will we do what is right and good for them?  Or will our selfish greed prevail?  Sadly, even if all the governments agree on strong measures to reduce Carbon emission, that underlying greed cannot be fully suppressed.  Experience shows that corporations and individuals can find ways to get around even the strictest regulation.  Ultimately there could be a black market in carbon, and control of its distribution could begin to be monopolized by organized crime.  What do we do about that?  This is an issue that is barely being discussed, and yet 'when push comes to shove', it is probably the most important issue in achieving a successful reduction in global carbon emissions.

Otherwise, there's another way.  One day all the fossil carbon will be used up.  I wrote a sort of 'doomsday' poem about that possibility once, so maybe it's time to share it again:

I can only hope that our great Mother, good old Earth, chooses to be kind to us, and that we, in turn, can find our connection with Her and with the safe and sustainable great streaming current that four billion years of life has established for us.  If only we pay attention to it.

Colonizing Space: Utopia or bust

“It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”       --J.R.R. Tolkien

One of about two trillion galaxies in our observable universe. Estimates are that within any such galaxy, there should be roughly 10 to 40 billion Earth-like rocky planets in the 'Goldilocks zone' of their parent star.  In the tradition of Western Civilization's 'Doctrine of Discovery,' all of these planets are fair game for Human colonization. All photos courtesy of NASA.

(Updated 9 Feb 2025) In my last post, titled "Is planet Earth better off with or without human beings?" I applied some ruthless, dispassionate reasoning to the question of whether man's quick-thinking mental skills deserve a permanent place among the community of Earth's living things, or whether we are simply bullies.  Our bad citizenship could signify that we are an evolutionary dead-end, doomed to quick extinction, or it could, as optimists like to argue, mark a revolutionary change in the way nature operates.  That is the subject of this post.

The problem with humankind's quick-witted choice-making is that it is largely unrestrained by nature's slow, deliberate checks and balances--the evolutionary scale 'intelligence' that DNA has accumulated over four billion years.  We do things because we can, and because they benefit us in the immediate term, even though in the longer-term we are destabilizing the living community out of which we emerged, and we could be stressing the planet toward one or more dangerous 'tipping points'.

So, maybe we're going to need an escape, a safe refuge--a clean break of the kind a colony on another world could provide.  Maybe sooner than we think.

The discussion seems timely, in light of this year's 400th anniversary of the landing of the Mayflower, and marking the 528th anniversary of 'Columbus Day', both of which are milestones in the wave of European 'settlement' that led to so many abominations carried out in the name of 'conversion of the savages' under the nefarious 'Doctrine of Discovery.'

Those of us of 'White Privilege' still largely preserve that mindset, even if we outwardly deny it. The urge to colonize space feels like a safe outlet for our sense of 'Manifest Destiny.'  But is it?

If we could plant a permanent, truly independent settlement on Mars, it could be our second chance--the 'Earth 2.0' that saves us from extinction.  Then, if we could continue to advance technologically, such that some form of interstellar human colonization becomes possible, then we truly begin to open up the realms first imagined when Olaf Stapledon wrote his seminal future histories of mankind, Last and First Men (1930) and Star Maker (1937).  Stapledon's visionary ideas influenced most of the great thinkers and early Science fiction writers of the last century including Isaac Asimov, C.S. Lewis, Arthur C. Clark, Bertrand Russell, and Brian Aldiss.

As I indicated in the caption of the photo at the beginning of the post, our own Milky Way is likely to contain somewhere around ten habitable Earth-like planets for every human couple of child-rearing age alive today.  Ten planets for each of you to be your own true Adam and Eve.  Surely at least one of them will be a Utopia--a Garden of Eden.

If only we could reach them.

And if only there wasn't some sort of indigenous life already there, laying claim to the territory.

One of the great discoveries that awaits us, which I hope will be achieved before I die, is the discovery of life on one of the other worlds in our solar system.  Perhaps deep down in the oceans of Europa, life thrives around geothermal vents.  Perhaps some life lingers on Mars.  Or Venus.  Of course we might find that there is no such life.  But if it does exist, will there be enough similarity in its chemistry to establish a relationship with life on Earth?

Maybe, just maybe, the life we know exists deep in the rocks of Earth, could have been spread across the cosmos by massive meteor impacts such as the one that killed off the dinosaurs.  Maybe, just maybe, life did not originate on Earth, but in the stars.  If so, then we will have found the Alien we've been so avidly seeking all these years, and it is us.

Mars is a few light-minutes away.  The next-nearest star is four light-years away.  Access to all the stars in our galaxy seems such a daunting task, yet there are plenty of ideas regarding future technology that propose to get us there.  One I like, and suggest in my 'Eden's Womb' novel series is a sort of light-speed 'beaming' using quantum entanglement and 1-watt radio beacons linking a network of automated space stations that would be patiently established at key locations across the galaxy by conventional slower-than-light-speed travel.  I call them 'Entanglement Tensor Nodes'.  Once in place, they simply maintain position in space and relay the signals.  Here and there are larger, more elaborate 'stations' either in space or on habitable planets, which are human outposts with the machinery needed to convert signal to material being after the manner of laser printing technology. 

In order for mankind to establish such an intergalactic network using physically realistic technology (no 'warp speed' travel or worm-holes with all their inherent paradoxes), our species would need to be stable and self-sufficient for millions of years.  This was no problem for the dinosaurs.  But then came the Chicxulub Bolide.  Yet many species survived that impact.  Multi-million-year survival has been no problem for the likes of sharks and alligators, cockroaches, birds, termites.  But for humans?  Our species is less than one million years old.  And I don't think there would be many among us who would argue that our 'civilization' has the long-term stability and sustainability that shark civilization or termite civilization has demonstrated.

So we make it to the stars in our neighborhood.  Maybe after millions of years, we establish an Asimov-style galactic empire.  What next?  What about colonizing other galaxies?  Far fetched?  Well, if we're really going to survive long-term, it might be important.  Our nearest galactic neighbor, Andromeda is two and a half million light years away and she's going to collide with the Milky Way around the time our own sun runs out of hydrogen and becomes a red giant.  That's four and a half billion years away, but it's not too soon to start planning and sending out our robotic ships.  If we have our house in order--really have our act together--we will be up for the task.

Our Voyager 1 spacecraft, launched in 1977, has already traveled 14 billion miles.  It will pass the one light year milestone in 17,720 years.  It would reach Andromeda in maybe 35 billion years, though maybe the galaxy's gravitation will speed it up.  It doesn't stretch the imagination to think we could get robotic probes to Andromeda before she gets to us, collides with our Milky Way, and starts agitating the clouds of star-making material, as has happened with the galaxy shown here:

So maybe we can colonize other galaxies.  In 'Eden's Womb' a civilization of humans that had survived trillions of years had colonized every corner of its universe.  And yet that universe was dying, as inevitably everything must.  Perhaps the mysterious Dark Energy is going to rip our universe apart, such that galaxies that are currently visible will start disappearing, accelerating away from us faster than even light can get there.  Whether or not that happens, the simple problem of a finite supply of hydrogen fuel for making new stars will ultimately bring life as we now understand it to a slow, cold end.  

There are ways that thinkers have imagined for modified beings to continue to survive after all the stars have burned out and only slowly evaporating black holes remain, but I'll limit the discussion to our human species or its direct successors, and I'll assume we continue to want nice warm stars to live around.  

Well, again, my novel 'Eden's Womb' suggests a way.  We will need to employ the process of creating child universes--universes in a test tube, for example.  This is not science fiction.  It is a process that is recognized as possible under our known laws of physics.

But it's not enough to simply create new universes, or to know where nature creates them (such as in the vicinity of black holes).  We need a way to escape our dying universe and move into a new baby one.  

It is rank speculation, of course, but 'Eden's Womb' explores this thought-space.  The novel is all about how a human man and woman might 'transcend' into a new universe, becoming the true Adam and Eve of a brave new cosmos.  In the novel, it happens almost accidentally, or so it seems.  But it is theoretically possible for information and physical material to be conveyed to a child universe; and if something is possible, it can be made to happen, and the process can be refined and controlled until it becomes routine.  

So, with our quick-witted brains, and given enough time and creativity, we humans could find ourselves hopping from Earth to Mars, then from Mars to other stars, possibly to other galaxies, and finally to entirely new universes.

Maybe it has already been done.  Not by humans, but by a much more patient, long enduring species.

Remember when I mentioned that deep impact meteors are likely to be able to send rocks containing living microbes out into space to potentially seed other worlds?  Well, one of those rocks could get sent into the quantum tunnel that creates a baby universe.

I argue that it's much more likely that single celled microbes, carrying complex DNA messages, perhaps even containing the DNA of human beings, could be transported into new universes.  Transferring a living Adam and Eve is a much taller order.  If panspermia is indeed possible (that's the word for seeding life across the cosmos), why not take the seeds of life not just to other stars and other galaxies, but to new universes?

'Eden's Womb' explores this possibility too.  Before our Adam and Eve get accidentally sent into a new universe, the little intelligent microbes I call 'Twees' had perfected the process for themselves, and were routinely hopping from one universe to the next, down a chain of inheritance (including mutations caused by quantum fluctuations) that 'fine tuned' the present universe that we find ourselves in to make it wonderfully well-suited for the little Twees to live (and for their clumsy blundering offspring, the human beings, to dodder around too.)

Okay, so back down to Earth for a reality check.

The Milky Way as seen from right here on good old Earth

What do we need to do to successfully get ourselves off this planet, to affirm the value of this experiment we call 'intelligence', and to begin to assure our long-term survival?

Well, first of all, it would help if we worked to keep our own planet as healthy as possible.  That doesn't necessarily mean that nature's 4.1 billion years of DNA 'knowledge' has to be our 'canon'; but that 'book' is by far the oldest and most comprehensive 'bible' in existence, and to ignore it certainly doesn't seem very wise.

Human's have notoriously ignored Mother Nature, tried to override her with genetic engineering, antibiotics, selective breeding, monoculture factory farming and livestock operations, letting species go extinct, and just plain ripping up the landscape, depleting resources, and spewing pollution.  Hasty, quick-witted ideas that have not stood the test of time, many of which have clearly and obviously failed all tests of sustainability.

Establishing a colony on Mars is a sexy idea, but most of the experiments we need to do in order to learn how to establish truly sustainable, self-sufficient 'colonies' or enclaves can be done right here on Earth.  One of the problems we humans have suddenly faced squarely with COVID-19 is that we are a global mono-culture.  Few humans on this planet live naturally in a way that keeps them safe from this virus.  We're just too inter-connected.  That wasn't the case 528 years ago when Christopher Columbus introduced small pox, measles, the flu, etc. to the First Peoples of the Americas.

Diversity is something that Nature values.  The more independent viable options for future offspring that there are, the greater the likelihood that the best of them will survive.  That is exactly why we're trying to colonize space.  Why not start right here at home by establishing real volunteer colonies, centered in scrupulously protected, truly isolated preserves, dedicated to solving the long-term problems of colonization in as many different ways as possible?

What else can we do right here on Earth?  Well, if we're going to achieve successful colonization, we need to respect the value of science, support research, and encourage our children to get involved.

There are lots of potential discoveries that can make our lives right here on Earth more rewarding for future generations, and many more advances that we will be able to use to more effectively reach out to the cosmos.

Isaac Asimov, writing in his visionary novel 'Foundation,' described the planet Trantor as a planet-wide city, capitol of the intergalactic empire.  It was a vision where man completely dominates a planet and all its living things.

Writing in the mid-20th century, Asimov's ideas and those that spawned the other great sci-fi universes such as Dune, Star Trek, and Star Wars, were rooted in a social order where the future seemed full of unlimited possibility.  Evil of many kinds had been soundly defeated through dedication and hard work.  The big war had just ended.  The Great Depression had been overcome by FDR's 'New Deal' and by the war effort itself.  It was a world where pollution seemed a tolerable annoyance.  Everybody smoked because nobody yet knew about the link between smoking and cancer.  Antibiotic-resistant bacteria hadn't appeared yet.  Half of those alive had grown up without electricity.  Airline travel was just transitioning to the jet age.  Television was still in its infancy.  Few cars had automatic transmissions.  Technology was making life easier and better at an astonishing pace.

Within twenty years of Asimov's publishing 'Foundation', men were walking on the moon.  Yet it has now been nearly fifty years since any human last set foot on another world.  What happened?

Once the novelty of mankind walking on the moon wore off, there was just no real motivation to stay there.  An International Space Station in close-Earth orbit was a much more affordable 'space base'.  The moon offered no real economic incentive.  Perhaps Mars suffers from the same problem.  Why spend all the money to send men there?

Human civilizations have declined before.  Look at the Ancestral Puebloans of the American southwest.  Look at the Mayan culture.  Look at the Roman Empire.  Is it possible that our culture is already on the decline?  That even if we send somebody to Mars, the novelty will wear off and eventually nobody will go back?

Then there's the question posed as 'Fermi's Paradox'.  If colonizing space is such a good idea, if quick-witted intelligence or any other form of recognizable 'advanced' civilization naturally finds a way to spread to the stars, then why haven't we already run into them, or at least found evidence of them?

There are as many answers to that conundrum as there are people thinking about it.  Maybe we're actually the first advanced civilization to think about reaching to the stars.  That would seem a pretty steep statistical oddity, given the 10 to 40 billion other habitable planets in our galaxy.

But wait.  We have only been sending out radio waves, demonstrating some level of intelligence, for less than a century.  Statistically that's a drop in the bucket compared to the 13.8-billion-year life of the universe.  And what other evidence do we have to offer to some intelligent race searching space for us?  With the exception of tiny probes like Voyager, we haven't actually gone anywhere but our own moon.  We have no burgeoning galactic empire in the making.  No.  Statistically, both in time and space, we are truly a needle in a haystack.  Using our own example as the only data point, what reason do we have to believe anybody else has done more, or even could do more than we have actually accomplished ourselves?

Is colonizing space merely a dreamy-eyed fictional fantasy?  Will it ever amount to anything more?  Aren't we spending a whole lot more money creating fictional experiences like video games and movie worlds like the Marvel and DC comics worlds and the Avatar universe?  Elon Musk seems to have an economic plan for SpaceX that relies on space tourism, rather than on actually extracting any profit from permanently living on Mars.

Certainly bringing stuff back from Mars to sell would be prohibitively expensive.  Even Antarctica doesn't sustain any real economic activity.  The only reason for a Mars or lunar colony to exist permanently is as an attractive place to live, with its own independent, sustainable, viable economy.  

It surely is 'early days' in the human quest to colonize space.  It goes well beyond saying that "the jury is out" as to whether man will succeed in reaching the stars.  The greatest part of the trial has not even begun.

 

Is Planet Earth better off with or without human beings?

My contemplation site. This is my personal beyul (Tibetan: སྦས་ཡུལ), meaning a sacred valley, a place of refuge.  This 80-foot cascade is seldom visited.  There is no trail to it.  It is a mile from my home base and a difficult bushwhack.  Deep thought flourishes here.  I try to focus on big picture issues—things that folk may overlook as they navigate their busy daily lives.

(Updated 9 February 2025) Few people would disagree with the proposition that mankind has had a large and growing impact on Planet Earth. View Earth from space and it’s easy to see. The patchwork of agricultural fields, the green circles of center-pivot irrigation in the deserts, the ribbons of high-speed highways, dammed up rivers, and of course the concentrated blotches of night-time light with its concrete, asphalt, and shingle-covered surfaces that make up our cities.

But what to make of it all?  Is this impact the sign of the success of our species or of its wanton destruction? From the broad perspective of the few thousand years it has taken us to do this to the planet, has it been a good thing or bad?

Consider this a thought experiment. An exercise in the philosophy of ethics and empathy. A test of the bounds of compassion, or of the limits of our moral responsibility to treat others justly. Or simply an exercise in objective reasoning.

Objective reasoning takes the individual and his/her feelings out of the picture.  This is a very tough question to consider objectively.  It's like asking you to consider the way a stranger might judge you as a person, or to imagine how your way of living will impact your great grandkids' quality of life.  Except for this discussion, the subject is not just you but all of us together, and our impact viewed on a planet-wide scale.

I’ll ask a series of questions and try not to impose answers because I’m interested in a broad range of responses.

So here goes:

The first line of questioning explores how we set boundaries and limits to our compassion.

Is family and community important to you? Sacred, even? To be protected and preserved at all cost?

Do you treat those within your family or community circle differently than those outside of it?  If so, can you specify the difference—the way your designated ‘insiders’ are treated differently from the rest of humanity?  Do you believe that the world would be a better place without a particular human being or a community of people?  Would you declare so publicly?  Would you act on such ideas?

Is there an objective definition of justice or fairness that applies to all humans? To all living things? Perhaps even extending to the land and its resources?

How do you define your inner circle? Who or what is excluded, and why? Are those in your household inside that circle and those who live next-door out? Are Republicans in and Democrats out? Are Americans in and foreigners out? Are human beings in and all other living things out? Do you have a pet? Are they in? What about other non-human species?

Is there a sense in which all of us—the entire planet—are in this together, striving against the forces of Chaos and destruction?

When someone is hurting, do you feel their pain? Do you want to help? Do you try to make their lives better?

What if that someone is a fan of the University of Alabama gridiron football team, and you are a die-hard Auburn fan, and they’re hurting because your team just beat theirs?

What if that injured someone is a Hatfield and you’re a McCoy and your brother just shot a Hatfield dead?

What if that someone is Black and you’re White?

What if that someone is the Wooly Mammoth, or the Costa Rican Golden Toad, or the Passenger Pigeon? Do pigeon lives matter?

What if that someone is the cockroach spreading filth in your kitchen? … Except you’re the cockroach and Planet Earth is the kitchen.

Yep. A thought experiment.

* * *

So, now put yourself in this reality show: Survivor Earth. The TV Reality show version of Survivor is all about understanding the other players—being able to put yourself in their heads—and then nurturing a dynamic balance between being too aggressive and devious and being too wimpy and malleable. It also helps to be adaptable and vigilant—to be ready to jump on unexpected opportunities.

It’s not very different in the real world. In the real version of Survivor Earth, all living things are players. Instead of sitting in a tribal council and voting one species out at the end of an ‘episode,’ everybody is voting all the time, establishing and defending their niches in the community. The game is for blood. Losers do not walk away.  Ask the dodo bird.

But what if we did hold a tribal council today? What if we brought together the world’s leading experts on each individual species to speak for them? Each species gets one vote, and can vote any one other species off the Island. It amounts to asking the question posed in the title. Which species do you think would be most likely to get booted on the first vote?

Maybe your response is that it’s ridiculous to give other species the right to vote. They don’t even understand the concept. Maybe you believe that mankind’s superior mind gives us some special dispensation.

The Judeo-Christian Bible tells us that mankind is God’s chosen species, made in His image. It tells us to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the Earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the Earth.” (Genesis 1:28).

Do you think this verse grants humanity the license to destroy whole species that God created? Species that Noah diligently sought out and herded onto his ark at God’s command, but that have since been driven to extinction? If you do not, then do you believe that ecological destruction is the sinful behavior of somebody else, something that you have no responsibility to address? After all, the Rapture is soon to come; and as a believer, you’ll be swept up to Heaven, leaving only the unrepentant behind on Earth to face the Tribulation. If they don’t open their hearts to let Jesus in, if they won’t confess that He is their personal redeemer, then they deserve what they’ve done to this planet, right?

On the other hand, Hindus and Buddhists would say that the mosquito sucking blood out of your arm, which you’re about to smack, could be your grandmother. Maybe the mouse whose back you just snapped in that mousetrap is destined to be your great grandson. These faith traditions put a much more personal spin on the ethics of how we treat other living things.

Even in Islam, animals are given a divine regard that is on a par with humankind. Consider these scriptural quotes:

“And the Earth, He has assigned it to all living creatures.” (Quran 55:10).

“There is not an animal that lives on the Earth, nor a being that flies on its wings, but they form communities like you. Nothing have we omitted from the Book, and they all shall be gathered to their Lord in the end.” (Quran 6:38).

“Seest thou not that it is Allah Whose praise all beings in the heavens and on earth do celebrate, and the birds with wings outspread? Each one knows its own prayer and praise, and Allah knows well all that they do.” (Quran 24:41)

Who’s right? Even dispassionate science talks about the interdependent web of life—the idea that there are connections, sometimes hidden, between our welfare and that of other species—animal, plant, microbe, and even the inanimate, such as the soil.

* * *

So, are we humans a rogue species? Are we being bad citizens, bullies in the community of life? Do we deserve to be voted off the Island?

Are we unwittingly voting ourselves off? Are we dooming the lives of our great grandchildren by stripping resources and soiling our own nest faster than the planet can recover? In the name of progress? On the wings of selfish greed?

How long can we sustain the current trends of deforestation, soil erosion, ground water depletion, consumption of non-renewable resources, population growth? How much longer can advances in industry and technology sustain the economic growth that we depend on?

Optimists will tell us we have always met the challenges we face as our population rushes toward the ten billion mark, and we will continue to do so. We will find a way. Perhaps we will reach to the stars and colonize other worlds. Perhaps we will manage to keep ahead of the curve right here on Earth, with improving technology, new sources of unlimited clean energy, such as fusion, and advanced efficiency, as the population grows.

Optimists have long believed that someday Earth could be an ‘Ecumenopolis’—a continuous planet-wide city such as Isaac Asimov’s Trantor from his ‘Foundation’ sci-fi novel series. I can envision a planet covered entirely in layers of urban development eight miles deep/high that intensively use and recycle every cubic foot of air and every gallon of water. In my novel series ‘Eden’s Womb’ there is an ancient universe, trillions of trillions of years old, called Kilkinney, where some Earth-sized planets support a quadrillion people (a million billion, or a hundred thousand people for every one that we have on Earth today). That is probably about the practical limit, but who knows?  The people of Ecumenopolis robotically mine their solar system’s asteroids for water and minerals, draw energy straight from the sun via vast arrays of space-borne collectors.  They eject their non-recyclable wastes into deep interstellar space.

Such a planet would be completely subdued and sanitized, with few remaining natural spaces and no wild ones, except perhaps the most restless volcanic zones. The population would not be limited to our current land areas. Ocean water would all be hard at work cycling through the planet’s vast plumbing system, just as all air would be circulating via the ventilation system.

Life in Ecumenopolis could be Utopian, assuming you like big cities and don’t mind living in what is essentially a vast space-ship. But other species, right down to the microbes, would be fully regulated. Extinction would not be a concern. All the genomes would have been preserved. But no species other than man would know ‘freedom.’

Pessimists, on the other hand, point to the inevitability of the unforeseen—the Chaos that forever lurks just beyond the limits of our control. COVID-19 is a perfect example. Maybe there will be another meteor like the one that ended the reign of the dinosaurs, or a whole shower of them from interstellar space as the sun hurtles through a debris field from some ancient super-nova. How about a mega-volcano spewing lava and poison gasses from the restless and uncontrollable core of our planet? Maybe the run-away infestation of rogue self-replicating nano-robots that reprogrammed themselves or mutated due to cosmic radiation. What about the AI 'singularity', or nuclear terrorism?  How about guerrilla war, riots and anarchy spawned by self-perceived marginalized communities?

The pessimist can perceive endless possibilities for our civilization’s bitter end. Any one of these mega-crises, or a combination of smaller ones—the ‘death by a thousand cuts’—could result in the collapse of our civilization and a return to the Stone Age, or worse--a Dystopia with Earth supporting no more than a few hundred thousand humans. This, too, is explored in ‘Eden’s Womb,’ where the main protagonist lives in an enlightened stone-age culture on a post-apocalyptic Earth.

If Earth’s non-human species could choose between the Ecumenopolis utopian dream where biology is completely regulated, or an apocalyptic nightmare, where nature restores its savage dominance, would they opt for the latter?

What would you opt for? Or is there middle ground? Could we establish significant preserves where humans are forbidden, limiting our mega-cities to a small fraction of the surface? Can our natural greed be so effectively corralled? European’s treatment of America’s first peoples suggests it cannot.  The criminal underground has been with us since civilization began.  What could lead us to change—to respect the role of wild places in our world?

Throughout this discussion I have not once mentioned climate change. I believe the most serious existential crises we will face do not come primarily from global warming. Though that is a symptom and a serious contributing factor, I believe there are many more fast-moving risks that are likely to undo us first. Look at how quickly COVID moved. War and civil unrest do not creep in on little cat feet like Carl Sandburg’s fog. Look at the swift reaction to George Floyd’s death. It is the nature of the human psyche that negative change does not come slowly. Rome was not built in a day, but on July 19, 64AD, while Nero fiddled (actually playing the lyre and singing the ‘Iliupersis’), it burned to the ground. The stock market goes down in sudden catastrophic crashes, then takes years to cautiously recover. Straw upon straw quietly piles onto the camel’s back, imperceptibly adding pressure and tension, until the bones suddenly snap.

What do you think?  What is mankind going to do with his one and only planet? Is he being wise or foolish?

I know of many diverse voices who speak up for mankind. But will anyone speak for the wilderness?

I now walk into the wild ...

Today I head out into the unknown, intending to establish a new life in a place that has been called simply 'In Back of Beyond.'

It should be a challenging adventure.  Likely, it will impact my life as much as that notorious 1992 trek into the Alaskan bush undertaken by young Chris McCandless, whose words I quote in the title.  Yet I would hope for a much longer stay and a better outcome.  I'll be glad to avoid the sort of tragic finality that made Christopher McCandless a household name.

Yet any true adventure necessarily involves risk.  My footsteps will take me away from the safe shores of man's small 'Islet of the known', as T.H. Huxley put it, and into that fathomless, illimitable ocean of the inexplicable, there to learn from nature's raw forces and her shifting, beguiling, inexorable currents.

I will be exploring physical spaces ranging in scale from a single speck of dust, as Horton the Elephant did in Dr. Seuss's beloved children's story 'Horton Hears a Who', to speculative realms beyond the fringes of the known universe.

Why do I leave the known behind?  Because even the smallest thing matters.  Because even the greatest powers yearn to be understood.  And because somebody needs to be there.  Those who blithely sit in their lounge chairs on the shore, poking at their smart phones while the world passes them by, are in danger of being caught off guard when the tide rises.

Covid-19 is a reminder of the vulnerability of our global monoculture.  It is likely to be just the first wave of an out-of-control Tsunami.  Deep beneath the sea, unseen and unknown, mankind's greedy, self-serving behaviors have been destabilizing the underpinnings of our Isle of Comfort.  Great undersea landslides come without warning, striking when least expected.  And the greatest of these could see our precious island utterly swamped, inundated, and no longer able to support the lifestyle to which we've become addicted.

It might be good to have a few souls out there in the water, well away from the thrall, watching ...

Saving the World through Gentle Witness

"Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world,

and beyond them is more than memory, Farewell!" 

—J.R.R. Tolkien

Since making the sudden ‘born-again’-like decision, on May 10, 2020 at 2:15PM, to transition from ‘dime-store recluse’ to ‘serious eremite’ (life as a hermit), thoughts and reactions have come to the surface as from a volcanic explosion.

Rather than be paralyzed trying to sort and organize the hot molten content that has been erupting and spreading over my spiritual landscape, I’ve chosen to start by simply making a list of random thoughts. So here goes.  (Last updated July 15, 2020)

1. The period of COVID-19 isolation has been an eye-opening, surprisingly positive experience. It pointed to the ‘rightness’ of a simpler life with more social isolation. This seems more the way the world used to be, and more like the direction it should be heading.
2. There is an amazing similarity between monastic life styles in various faiths around the world. This suggests that these individuals are reaching out to and tuning in to something much more fundamental than the specific dogma and rituals of their individual faiths. It is that fundamental something that I intend to seek.
3. Silent advocacy, leading by example. How can disengaging from the world be considered "saving the world"? Christian monastics regularly make that claim. I was cynical about it at first, believing their reclusive life was more about achieving personal redemption and closeness to God or nature. But there are at least two unique ways that the eremite works to improve the world. First is by providing a living example of a path that severely reduces one’s ‘footprint’ and respects Nature. The second is by being that still, solid center in a crazy, frenetic world—a safe haven and a touchstone of stability. There is a third, but it depends on one’s belief in and use of prayer, and it depends on what devoted outreaching prayer can accomplish. I’ll address that separately.
4. The vows. Christian eremites, anchorites, hermits, and monks take three basic vows: poverty (sell what you have, give it to the poor), celibacy (denying the ways of the flesh), and holy obedience (denying honors and positions of authority that feed ‘self-love,’ giving all honor and authority to God). They almost always stay in one place, even though the original hermits from the 4th century Middle East were desert wanderers. And they spend most of their day in silence. However, modern hermits come in many forms beyond Christian; and befitting the solitary lifestyle, each individual sets his/her own rules. Here are some of my tentative rules:
   
   
   • Immediate increase in ‘quiet time,’ seclusion, and time spent in nature.  Retirement from social obligations.  Inspired by the Hindu ‘forest dweller’ stage of life, which I have reached.
   • Work toward living in one place, off the grid, in a simple natural wild setting surrounded by wilderness.  Here's the final selection for the location—over ten acres of deep woods with bold mountain streams, surrounded by thousands of acres of protected land—“The Cloister at Three Creeks,” located near the tip of the orange arrow: 
     
     Settling here will involve some time of ‘apprenticeship,’ getting a routine established and settling as many of the outside-world affairs as possible.  And the start-up has been slowed because the virus limits options for some of the needed chores.  Meanwhile, there has been ample time spent finding quiet space in familiar non-wilderness settings:
     
     
     
     
   • Advocate by example for returning to simple sustainable living, for giving up technologies that cannot be sustained, and for living humbly, respecting the other life forms that share our interconnected natural system.
   • Emphasize spiritual pursuits, exploring the nature of God, with a particular emphasis on non-traditional perspectives. This has been a life-long pursuit.  God has so many meanings, and I can lose myself in any of them.  I'm listing some specifics here, though this may be more appropriate as a blog post of its own.
     
     
     1. The God represented in many faiths is a personal one, having personality, and accessibility. On the other end of the spectrum is the impersonal God, which can be as simple as the mathematical concept of 'infinity' or the physical notion 'everything.' The middle ground between these is where I have begun to settle. Here 'God' is 'nature,' at least in part. And it provides us with a fundamental 'Great Small Voice' within, which is purely physical, though it seems to produce a profound array of emergent behaviors. The 'Great Small Voice' is our DNA. It speaks through the instincts that it has instilled in us, and which human reason and logic often override. There is no more fundamental or more fully vetted 'holy scripture' than the sacred texts of our DNA.  (See the Nature's Code tab for more on this.)
     2. There is palpable power that God, by whatever definition, wields through the actions of true believers. These actions shape the reality of even the most adamant non-believers in that God.
     3. Then there is the actual physical God that Atheists cannot deny using their preferred tools of logic and reason. The argument for a real physical God stems from the near certainty that our reality is not fundamental reality, but is a simulation or thought experiment performed by some advanced culture or being. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis and consider that the parent entity need not be limited by what we observe to be the information capacity of our universe—they could live in a much bigger, more information-rich reality.) The simplest argument goes like this: If intelligent beings someday or somewhere, even just once, achieve technological prowess to do ‘Ancestor/predecessor simulations’, then the number of simulated realities far exceeds the number of physical ones. To us living inside the simulation, the race doing the simulations is obviously our ‘God;’ and since these super-beings are likely to be observing the outcomes of their models, including the thoughts and prayers of those who find the simulation (their lives) in need of repair, perhaps the ‘Watchers’ actually respond to prayer, and make changes, either to this, or to some future simulation.
     4. Back to the 'impersonal' and 'indifferent' God that follows from the logical exercise of trying to envision 'That entity of which nothing greater can be conceived'.  I've spent years pursuing this seemingly fruitless line of reasoning, and I've satisfied myself that there is indeed a meaningful fruit.  It's not one that most people find satisfying or nourishing, but it is borne on a living world-tree with roots that go as deep as it is possible to go.  For a summary, see the Paradox Tab of this blog.
   • Abandon pursuits that feed ‘self-love,’ that draw attention to the self, that aim to exert authority or power over others or seek their admiration. If respect is to be actively sought, make it respect for a way of life, not for the one following that way.
5. Sustainability and the Trappist monks: a link to the PBS video of Holy Cross Abbey. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=RD8a53KGwed0Y&v=8a53KGwed0Y&feature=emb_rel_end . This 1200 acre monastery, an hour west of Washington DC, has put in place a state-of-the-art system of agriculture and conservation. Living by example, quiet stewards of the land. There’s a lot to learn from them.
6. An apprenticeship, a period of experimentation. What will it include? Wandering in the wilderness before settling into one place? Settling all worldly affairs, reducing possessions to a bare minimum?
7. What is prayer? Virtually every culture can be seen practicing it—calling upon unseen forces to help in time of need or suffering, thanking the same forces for healing or salvation or some other unexpected grace. Who hasn’t lifted their eyes skyward and said something like “please don’t let it rain.”? Who are they asking? Though different cultures ascribe very different attributes to the unseen power, it certainly seems to be a universal human concept.
8.  What does a life look like, in which every aspect of it is inspired by the hiker's 'Leave no Trace' ethics (Take only photos, leave only footprints)?  First of all, if this approach is the right course in the wild, then it must be the right course everywhere in life.  Nobody, of course, actually leaves *no* trace at all.  We all inevitably leave Footprints in nature's Wilderness (the consequences of our actions radiating outward like ripples in a pond).  But sadly, Humans have become the only species that aspires to amplify their individual ripples, to stomp around making the biggest, noisiest, most badass footprints we can.  We call it 'making a difference' in the world.  The problem is this:  Those big waves that people make may impress their fellow humans, but the rest of the natural system almost always suffers.  The only right way to leave the world a better place than one found it is to recognize, understand, and respect the complex interdependent web of creation in which we are immersed--to work with the bigger picture, as partners with it.  And the first step toward respecting the wider realm of life and nature, is to pay attention, to learn what's around us, to stop stomping around and sit still for a moment and open our senses, smell the fragrance, watch the dance, taste the flavor, hear the song, and feel the pulse.
9.  Reasons for living separate from the modern world:  Amish culture is a good example of a way to live a simpler life in the midst of today's human 'rat race'.  As individuals, the Amish are hardly reclusive.  Their family and community connections are actually far stronger and more sustaining than those of the average person these days.  Yet their culture is arguably the most successful 'monastic' movement the world has ever known.  They reject many of man's modern ways as being too self-centered - too focused on individual aspirations at the expense of our connection with those larger, higher, powers where true, big-picture fulfillment is to be found.  There is actually a much more extreme example of a culture maintaining their separation from the world.  These are the Sentinelese--a tribe of roughly 100 people living a pure stone-age lifestyle in complete isolation on an island in the Indian Ocean west of Indonesia.  Because the Sentinelese violently reject all attempts at contact, very little is known about them.  They shoot (arrows) at any boat attempting to approach their shores.  Their isolation has been enforced by Indian Government law since 1956.  It is illegal to come within five miles of the island.  These are just two examples of ways of living that deliberately reject the direction in which the majority of humanity is headed.  So, where are we headed?  There are two very different objective ways of judging modern Human civilization, dominated as it is by Western cultural values.  The first looks only at the quality of human life, and the argument is that it has never been better.  The second looks at the condition of the world's natural balance - the condition of the interconnected living ecosystems as a whole - and the argument is that it has probably never been worse since the days of the last mass extinction following the Chicxulub bolide impact 65 million years ago.  Those who favor this big-picture view of how humans are soiling their own nest would do well to stop participating in the carnage, step aside, demonstrate better ways to live, and advocate for them.  Frankly, there are loads of people who talk the talk, but it takes a lot of courage, a lot of deep sacrifice, to actually walk the walk.
10. Do Hermits get lonely?  Probably every individual Eremite has their own response to that.  During the 2020 virus pandemic, there is probably more loneliness in the world than there has been ever before in human history.  Those who choose solitude may have important lessons to offer to the wider society.   Avoiding loneliness is a discipline.  Dealing with the feelings of loneliness when they occur is not substantially different from dealing with any other mental condition, because loneliness is an internal state of imbalance in the mind.  It has less to do with the actual reality of one’s social situation—their degree of interaction and companionship—and more to do with a feeling of being in a situation you don’t want to be in and don’t know how to get out of. For most people loneliness is the feeling of lacking human relationships that they believe they need in order to feel ‘right’ (known, understood, loved, fulfilled, accepted, validated, needed, happy, even entertained—and especially sharing these positive feelings both ways, mutually with others.) For the eremitic, a tiny amount of interaction goes a very long way, and they arguably feel less loneliness than those in the wider community. Avoiding loneliness is a matter of seeking a personal balance between what you have and what you need (or what you want—given the practical wisdom to know what you really want).   Those suffering from COVID-19 - imposed social isolation might benefit from studying those who voluntarily choose isolation.

Footprints in the Wilderness: The Calling

It happened on Sunday, May 10, 2020, at around 2:15PM.

It was a peaceful afternoon nap.  I dreamed I was back in the house I grew up in—the one on seven acres along White Clay Creek - the place we called Meadowcreek.  I had lived there between 1958, when it was built, and 1966 when I went off to college.

The house was empty now.  Everybody who lived there but me has passed on.  The house itself has passed on, with only its deepest bones remaining as part of a total rebuild and expansion.

Only me and the old bones.  It was a lonely place.  Sad, and yet somehow full of peace.  Everything had settled.

It was dusk inside my dream.  A strange hazy dimness hung in the air, like the light coming in under a thunder cloud at sunset.  Outside, far away down in the meadow, kids and young folk were hanging out beside the noisy creek, living their strange sort of 'game-lives', the way kids do, half of it virtual.  They were on a different wavelength.

Even in the dream I was lying in bed dreaming.  Not even in my own bed.  This hadn't been my house for more than fifty years.

'Ding-dong.' The doorbell rang.

How could that be?  The electricity was off.  Only the dim twilight outside provided a little light.

Jolted from a sound sleep, I hurried to yank on a pair of shorts.  Dream shorts, of course.  I couldn't get my legs through.  Finally, I pulled them on and ran to the door, still snapping them, pulling up the zipper.

Who could be there?  Who even knew I was here?  The young folk out in the meadow below weren't interested in this old ghost of a place or anybody in it.

I opened the door to find … well, Tolkien would have called it an Ent.  An animated tree, a creature older than time, full of deep wisdom and memory, with a big old snout, like a proboscis, covered in moss and lichen.

"What do you want ..." he said before I could spill the words myself.  

"I ..."

"Tell me.  What do you want to be?"

"Be?"  My life was in kind of a transition.  I needed to decide what was next - what I wanted to do with myself now that I had finished hiking to every place I'd ever lived, including this one, the only one of the twenty-one that had been torn down and survived only as a memory.

"Do?" the old spirit harrumphed.  He was reading my mind.  "Then why am I here?  Doing is what those youngsters are about.  Doing is putting off being.  What do you want to be, old man?"

"What is there left to be?" I answered his question with a question, thinking that was a pretty clever dodge.

He sort-of posed before me, his eyes opening slightly wider, spreading his bony, leafy, twiggy hands outward, just slightly.  He didn't have to say a thing--the body language said it: "I'm here.  Being has brought me here. You brought me here.  So, isn't this what you want to be, really, when you get right down to it?"

"No." I said, sure of my answer.  "I don't want to knock on people's doors."

"Ha. Got me.  Well … then what?"

"But I do love where you come from.  You're a spirit from a world before humans, pristine, natural.  A face of the forest, a voice for nature.  All the places that I love are reflected in those deep brown eyes," I said.  "The wilderness."

He barely nodded, waiting.

"So … I want to be that.  The wilderness.  A tempting rocky summit, a canyon that twists away into mystery.  A moss-covered boulder deep in a green misty glen beside a waterfall.  Or endless miles of lonely beach under the great dome of the firmament, surrounded by surf, wind, salt, sky, rain."  Then a thought struck me, and I blurted "I want to be footprints - the footprints that lead to those wild places."

"Footprints?  Mmmmm … A path to follow, perhaps.  For those who come after?"

"Not even that.  Just the knowledge that such a path is out there -- a way that can lead folk back into the wild, a way that is peaceful and comforting, full of enrichment, understanding.  Joy."

"I like it.  Yes, that ought to do nicely."

"You mean be, don't you?"

He laughed.  His delight vibrated out like ripples on a pond, pushing back the twilight gloom, surrounding us with a glowing cocoon of warmth.

"Are you ready, then?" he asked, turning to go, eyes fixed on me expectantly.

Behind me stood an empty, silent house, built of no substance, containing nothing that I needed to bring with me.

"I am more than ready, sir.  Let's be off."

… and two sets of footprints dissolve into the wilderness …

Deep in the Dirt -- Hiking Iowa's Black Dirt Kingdom

Intrepid Black-dirt excavators hard at work on a road shoulder in Grundy County, Iowa.

Okay.  We need to talk.

We don't own this world.  You do know that, right?  Genesis 1:28 notwithstanding.  It is bought and paid for by things much smaller than us, much smarter than us (see below), and very, VERY much older than our human "civilization".

For example: An estimated 10,000,000,000,000,000 ants swarm this planet at any given time -- coast to coast, sea to sea, on every continent except Antarctica.  They control nearly every square inch of land, including places we don't care about.  They've been fine-tuning their culture for at least sixty million years, and possibly as much as a hundred million years.

Now … if your civilization had been 'intelligent' for sixty million years, you would probably have figured out what the person next to you is thinking just by their smell (pheromones) and by their body language.  Talk is … well … really, REALLY cheap (inefficient) as a form of communication.

So … if you're looking for that hyper-advanced civilization -- the one that is so totally beyond our level that they barely notice us, so secure that they consider us no threat, and so dominant that they have no need or wish to communicate with us, you need to look no further.  Think about it.  What could ants possibly learn from us that would improve their lives?  How to crochet a doily?

Among the ant colony's scrupulously organized system the worker class is tasked with maintaining and expanding their underground system of tunnels and nativity chambers and fungus gardens.  Planet Earth would not be the same without the ants' tireless aeration and overturning of the soil.  The things that grow in that soil have come to completely depend on the action of ants, and we, of course, depend entirely on the things that grow in the soil.  Remind me again -- who's in charge here?

The next time you call the exterminator, stop and think for a moment. Think about just how dependent we all are on the ancient civilizations that long preceded us.  On the web of life that has been weaving its intricate tapestry for billions of years.  Ask yourself: "What are *we* doing to sustain the interdependent system that sustains us?"

It's not the ants who are the pests.

Okay, thanks for reading.  Now it's on to the 'enterprise and adventure of the day'.

-------------------------

Colorado or Bust, Days 56-59:

Conrad Iowa styles itself as the Black Dirt Capital of the World.  The soil here looks and feels like the stuff that comes out of a bag sold at a high-end nursery.  Or out of your meticulously overturned compost bin.  It remains the richest soil on the planet, though it is slowly disappearing under our stewardship.  When westerners arrived here in the 1850s to start farming, the black dirt was two feet thick in places (thanks, in no small part, to the constant overturning of ants and other critters).  Now there are only six to nine inches left.

Part of the reason the soil got so rich and so thick is that the flat terrain (an ancient sea bed) meant there was next to no erosion.  Each generation of grass died and left its remains behind for the critters to process.  Fire and dust storms brought nutrients from distant reaches.  The climate is harsh, but the land was a paradise, an American Serengeti.  I *so* wish I could spend an hour as a 'time tourist' here, to see how this land looked before man arrived.

What I do get to see is mono-cultures of corn and soybeans, horizon to horizon, with the occasional token restored patch of wetland or prairie with a 'do not spray' sign along a road shoulder.  In the middle of a lot of road walking I got to hike a piece of old railroad grade on a trail called the Comet Trail.

Often the old rail corridor was left untouched, and without fire to suppress the vegetation, trees have proliferated, creating a pleasant shady corridor for hiking.

It's hopelessly artificial and out of place here, but it "shore is damn purdy."  It's what the state of Iowa has chosen to call "Nature Trail."  Hmmmmmmm.

Out on the road, I look for distractions.  Things that break up the monotony of "corn, wheat, flat, repeat".

When I get to a town or city, there are plenty of nice distractions.  I digressed from the American Discovery Trail route in order to cut a road walk in half and add the town of Marshalltown's seven-mile Linn Creek Greenway Recreational Trail to my route.  (Why the ADT skips that, including a campground at Riverview Park, eludes me.)

Bunches of paved trail and diversity of scenery:

Okay, finally, here are the GPS tracks for the four days covered here.

The people of Iowa are peaceful, respectful, friendly, and happy with their place, as far as I've seen.  What humans have built here works.  But I think it's all built on that inherited, millennia-old black dirt.  What happens when it's gone?