It is a part of our modern folly that we think we can live without fire, especially for a culture based on the explosion (internal combustion at 2000 rpm). Fire is one of the four elements. You can’t live without Air, Water, or Earth. How then can we live without Fire?
We can’t. All the land around us, especially in the west, has adapted to fire and needs fire to be healthy. We have not adapted and we are not healthy.
So many environmental actions have been acts of resistance. And blessings to the eco-warriors who have fought so hard to save nature from human greed. But the work to do now involves acts of creation. It’s time to put things back into balance as tribal elders say, to do the Real Work as Gary Snyder says. We hope our new organization helps with that. We are calling ourselves the Northern Mendocino Ecosystem Recovery Alliance. We use the word Recovery as in bringing the ecosystem back to health and away from the boom-and-bust-resource-extraction-addiction path of the last 200 years. We call it an alliance because we hope to bring people together from all paths to work together to heal the land and ourselves. The hour is getting late.
We hope you will join us.