Monday, June 8, 2009
Location: Silver City, New Mexico

I got up early this morning and headed five or six hours south to Silver City to meet up with author Stephen Harrod Buhner. The drive was long and beautiful, the deeper I head into New Mexico the more I fall in love with it. I love the desolation, the seemingly ubiquitous lack of wealth, and a sense of politics that to me doesn’t seem to know if it’s for or against ‘the man’.

I interviewed John Nichols last week and he told me that New Mexico has a patina of wealth and beauty, but in actuality, is a fairly poverty stricken rough place to live. The deeper I go the more I see the truth of his words. Since being here I’ve learned that per capita Espanola is the U.S. center of heroin, and that heroin permeates Taos to the North, Santa Fe to the South, and the rest of New Mexico. I’m not sure how the heroin gets to the center of the continent or why, but it seems like an effective way to kill people off, I can’t help but wonder, why New Mexico?

Anyway, my interview with Stephen Harrod Buhner was fabulous! We covered a lot of ground talking about the concept that Nature doesn’t make mistakes, human growth and synchronous destructive tendencies, and plants and how they behave throughout the natural world.

This idea that Nature doesn’t make mistakes stands out for me. See if humans are undeniably a part of nature, and nature doesn’t make mistakes, then this whole process of humanity, the industrial revolution, and global warming is all part of a larger process. This process is echoed everywhere throughout nature in the growth of species, the subsequent impact on the ecology, followed by the inevitable die-off of the species. Round and round we go.

Many humans hold this notion that we are separate from Nature and are on a divine quest to reach either immortality or global enlightenment. I would agree that our quest is clearly divine in nature, however I would argue that we’re really not going anywhere. We’re simply a divine play… maybe a tragedy.

But hey that’s not all so bad when you realize that being here is an extraordinary gift in and of itself. This place is magical and extraordinary, filled with wondrous incarnations and manifestations of life in all its beauty. So what if it’s tragic… it’s only tragic if we fasten our seat belts tightly around our personal egos, holding onto the belief that it’s more than just a ride.

The industrial revolution took place in under two hundred years… the earth is four billion years old… and in that time has changed A LOT.

peace,d