California Legacy Project: Nature Dreaming

Nature Dreaming: Rediscovering California's Landscapes borrows its title from lines of a lyric poem by Robinson Jeffers, "The Beauty of Things":

. . . man you might say, is nature dreaming, but rock
And water and sky are constant—to feel
Greatly, and understand greatly, and express greatly, the natural
Beauty, is the sole business of poetry.

I am one of the featured scholar/writers for this new California Legacy Project radio/Internet program, Nature Dreaming, with writers/writing from around our state. Several of the interviews and readings are posted, and updates are being added (including my humble interview on the California Desert, my scholarly and literary work and poetic affiliations with my Mojave homeland) soon. Thanks to the amazing Terry Beers of Santa Clara University for putting this together.

http://californialegacy.org/radio_productions/Nature_Dreaming/

This program is inspired by the nature-based poetry and prose of the late Robinson Jeffers, whose Big Sur coastline/northern California writing rests large among our state, and country's, literary giants.

I can't wait to hear the entire show! We are at such a crucial time right now, in moving forward with California desert conservation and protection, given the onslaught of massive wind and solar projects already ok'd and being ok'd by the California Energy Commission and President Obama. 43,000 acres already signed away, and reports that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has said that he wants to make the California deserts - and southwest U.S. - the source of all wind and solar for the country. Endangered desert tortoises and fragile, vulnerable ecosystems are already being plowed under as I write this, never to be recovered again. We MUST act now to severely curtail, and reconsider, the Solar Gold Rush, which threatens so many levels of ecosystem, balance, and survival.

This is the time where I find myself so gratefully and determinedly joining a growing contingent of dedicated California desert conservationists and activists - Alfredo Figueroa, Preston Arrow-Weed, Chris Clarke, Terry Weiner, Laura Cunningham, Kevin Emmerich, Bob Ellis, Pat Flanagan, Tom Budlong, Steve Brown, Larry Hogue, Robert Lundahl, Joan Taylor, other Chemehuevi, Quechan, Mojave, and other Colorado River Indian leaders, including Charles Wood and Philip Smith, and others in the best, presssed-for-time grassroots campaigns that we can to make the public aware of what is at stake here in our precious California desert, and why we can't afford to lose this forever to the interests of corporate power mandating how "sustainable" energy implementation will go down in our deserts.

In other words, we can't afford to "murder to dissect," as the great philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson said, in our efforts to shift how we produce energy. Murdering the California desert by invading, blading, and forever destroying hundreds of thousands of acres of pristine land - home to endangered species such as the California Desert Tortoise, the Joshua tree, and so much of the magic of our landscape and heritage - that we are still barely learning about - in the name of "sustainability." To do so would be the most tragic form of irony, with no comic relief, that I can think of. I am posting updates and information as I receive it, best that I can, to Mojave Desert Watch on facebook; feel free to visit and "like" this page. Also, visiting there will allow you to connect with other sites such as Basin and Range Watch and other sources of information, including filmmaker Robert Lundahl's excellent series about the Blythe Intaglios and other archaeological sites of the area.


here I am at the Creator's Throne, an archaeological site near Blythe, CA, at the edge of the proposed 10,000 acre Millenium Solar Project. Much of the landscape behind me, which contains invaluable archaelogical features, is slated for destruction. Thank you, Alfredo Figueroa, esteemed historian, elder, activist, and who has been sounding the alarm on what stands to be lost longer and more vocally and with more passion and compassion than anyone else I have met - for sharing this treasure with me, on behalf of my heart and my love for my Mojave Homeland.


NATURE DREAMING PROJECT: in-progress and to be completed by early 2011. Featured writers-scholars include: David Mas Masumoto, San Joaquin Valley organic farmer/writer and award-winning author of Heirlooms, Letters to the Valley, Four Seasons in Five Senses, Harvest Son, Epitaph for a Peach, and Wisdom of the Last Farmer; and also writer-scholars Georgiana Sanchez; Gary Noy; Shaun-Ann Tangney; Kevin Hearle; and Juan Velasco.

I am beyond humbled and floored to be included as part of this series, representing the great California desert and its magic, mysteries, allure, power, indigenous genius, and known and unknown writers and writing.