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Lovers In A Dangerous Time

By Ken Wright

"When you're lovers in a dangerous time Sometimes you're made to feel as if your love's a crime. "

- Bruce Cockburn

I've got news for you: The West is not being loved to death.

This, of course, goes against common wisdom and the constant keening of the mass-mediated modern West. There, the West is portrayed as a place where so many people have become so enamored of its open spaces, vast beauty, infinite variety and close-knit little communities that the land is being overrun by vision seekers via every conveyance possible: from foot to pedal to ski to motor to lift to helicopter to raft to jet-ski to houseboat. This, the sad tale goes, is destroying the fragile habitats that cover the dry West, whether that be mountain, forest, tundra, desert, chaparral, or even small town.

Many of these lovers of the West, the story goes, become so further enthralled with the place that they need their own first or second home here, which is so sacred it needs the grandest views, its own area of scenic open space, and, since it's certainly a power spot (not to mention a tax-deductible investment), it must have its own inherent mansion-esque grandeur.

Then there's those who love the West in a more straight-forwardly Machiavellian fashion: for the financial opportunities it offers them if they buy it, privatize it, invest in it, build on it, extract from it, expand upon it, or generally improve it toward our modern urban/suburban/industrial standards. Some of these free-market romantics love what they can get from here and bring elsewhere: the West's still-mostly-full cupboard of places to puncture for oil and gas, forests to fell, water to divert, coal and oil shale to gouge and scrape, and airspace to poison with radioactivity and power-plant emissions. And still others don't even need to come here: they're happy with a long-distance love affair with the West for its big, open and undeveloped spaces that can absorb the noxious, toxic, septic, plastic, packaged, airborne or otherwise unwanted wastes from those places already fully urbanized, suburbanized, and industrialized.

How much more of this loving can the West bear? the media cries. And rightfully so.

Well, not much, that's for damn sure. I'm with you on that one, brother. Here in my own beloved Four Corners region, some of that not-so-good lovin' includes a new four-lane highway to Albuquerque, a billionaire's plans for a mega-resort nestled between two wilderness areas, the coming of an enormous new powerplant and powerline to Phoenix and Las Vegas, the return of uranium mining, the dewatering of a major river and the flooding of rare low-elevation elk habitat for that same pork-barrel water project, a little ski area morphing into yet another world-class year-round destination resort (and the accompanying outbursts of condo developments rising like tumors among the trees in the dozen miles in either direction from there), and housing developments and mansions in every nook and cranny of every landform with improved-road access.

This love-fest afflicting the West has morphed into a full-bore greeding frenzy.

If you live here - and say you, too, love the West - you recognize this story and its familiar cast of characters: Your basic "loving the West to death" brought to you by the usual cabal of corporate raiders, real-estate pimps, stock-market carpetbaggers, and the hydrocarbon mafia. Capitalo-fascism from those who measure their love in dollar-investment-return and personal luxury.

Well, I make no claim to the name "expert" on the topic, but after thirty-or-so years of trial-and-error adventuring and learning in love and marriage, that to me ain't love. And no matter how busy and active and involved those people might be, I will dare to declare that they ain't the West's lovers.

Yes, lovers make use of each other - loving isn't a passive activity, and it is in many ways absolutely self-serving. In a relationship, each lover is gaining something valuable, even necessary. But a true lover doesn't exploit his loved to the detriment of the other's health; and the truest lovers don't manipulate their loved ones to the point of harming the other's truest, wildest, most natural self. A true lover doesn't seek to mold the loved to what he or she wants; a true love seeks only to see - to encourage, to embrace - what the loved most is, most needs to be, most can be.

No, the West is not being loved to death. It is being paved, developed, privatized, airported, resorted, second-homed, marketed, McMansioned, lift-served, Wal-Marted, reservoired, dug up, dumped on, energy-extracted, coal-fired, and uranium and gold and coal and oil-shale mined to death. That might be good for the investment portfolio . . . But it ain't love.

Real lovers - lovers as "er"-ers, as people who do - know love is an action, not merely admiration. They know that this loving is a conscious, sometimes inconvenient, frequently unprofitable choice that sometimes demands restraint, respect and responsibility, and always requires reflection, vigilance, and a willingness to act to protect both the synergy that is being in love, and the symbiosis that is actually loving another.

Real love is a space where each lover is better, freer, wilder than they are anywhere else. And real lovers create and protect each other's space to be what he or she most is, where they're most healthy - even if it means restraint, or self-control, or even if what's best is to leave your beloved alone to go his or her own way. You don't prostitute your lover. You don't try to make your lover over. You don't work your lover to death for your personal hungers, needs, wants, or gain.

And real lovers don't let others do those to their love without a fight. Because inaction is an action; silence is a statement.

So here's what I want to know: Where are all of those West Needers - those truly out here, out there, because of what the West is - when it comes time to stand up to the West Bleeders - those who can only see the West in terms of what it can be made into, what it can make for them?

You're out there - boating on the rivers, fishing in the streams, hiking and biking and stalking game in the mountains, camping and climbing and canyoneering in the deserts. And you can do that because right around us, all around us, whereever we live out here, is big, open, and wild places. And lots of public spaces where we can get out and challenge ourselves and savor the land.

But where is the accompanying boom of people standing by the land that is the West? Where is the army of defenders fighting to keep the "public" in our public land?

Outdoor recreationists claim to love the West as well, and claim to do that in a way that doesn't ravage the land. And they preach the right to use the West's abundance of public lands. For too many, though, calories burned while playing is all the energy they have for the land. Or maybe a few bucks here and there for a membership in the Sierra Club or somesuch group.

My question is: Where are all these hordes of people we see out on the trails and in the mountains and on the rivers when the county commissioners meet to discuss development and road building and tourist marketing? When the Sierra Club actually has a person-to-person meeting? When some federal agency holds public meetings on land management? Where are their letters to the editor when the Bush Administration cuts budgets to the Park Service or lets the oil and gas industry run amok over BLM land or wants sell off our Forest Service lands? Because all this - and a helluva lot more - is happening right now.

It's a dangerous time. But where are the West's real lovers now?

Out playing.

"Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul," warned Edward Abbey. Love without loving is the ruin of your lover, says I. It's time to give back, folks. To be environmentally aware means to be environmentally active, and the right to use our public lands comes with the responsibility to do something for those lands.

Why? Here are few good reasons, just for starters.

Because recreation - and the places needed for recreation - needs to be recognized for its importance to Westerners. It's the nature of our present world: Although the land has a right to exist for its own intrinsic reasons, in modern society uses must justify themselves economically and politically. Here, silence is not golden, it's fatal.

Because recreationists need to improve their images. Believe it or not, some people think bicyclists are idiotic trail and road Nazis, that rock climbers are rude little children with no respect for private property, and that hunters are armed drunks. It takes effort to dispel these distorted images. It takes education. It takes involvement. Until then, expect more rules and regulations and lock-outs.

And lastly, the most obvious and moral reason: Because love and defense go hand in hand. Because once it's gone, it ain't coming back. Because if we don't do it, who will? Because our kids - and our kids' kids - are going to need these places, these sacred, sane spaces, even more than we do now.

So, sure, spend the day boating, floating, casting, climbing, wandering, riding . . . then, sure, go drink a few beers at the pub sharing stories about your great days in the sun. But after that, there's that meeting to go to, that letter to write, that place to defend, the river to fight for, that voice of yours to raise . . .

The land needs it.

The West doesn't need more love, but it desperately needs more lovers - doers. Because I've got news for you: The West cannot be loved to death.

But it must be loved to live.

Ken Wright is the author of A Wilder Life: Essays from Home and Why I'm Against It All (Raven's Eye Press).