Too quiet!

Its gone too quiet on the blog over the weekend -hopefully everyone is learning their work! Where are the promised items? COME ON! There is less than five days left to the Wilderness exam.

John Muir said of wilderness "Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, overcivilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wilderness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but fountains of life." Consider this demand for wilderness. Put it in the context of visitors to your chosen US National Park or to the Fisherfield Forest in Scotland.

In an article rom the American Wilderness Society, Sharon Parker writes "But wilderness is not removed from our everyday lives. From the Caribbean to China, from the Arctic to Cape Horn, wilderness is an essential part of our lives. When we log forests or drain wetlands for commercial gain, we are often unaware of the ecosystems that are forever destroyed and the food and medicinal resources that we will never know. This loss begins a process of long-term pollution of water, air, soil, and plant and animal life that threatens human communities through disease, starvation, and tremendous economic hardship.

When we lose wilderness through deforestation, we experience floods, droughts, loss of agriculture. The resulting devastation costs homes, lives, and communities. A report of 1998 weather-related disasters from the WorldWatch Institute notes that 32,000 people died and another 300 million people worldwide were displaced as a result of disasters such as Hurricane Mitchell, the flooding of the Yangtze River, drought in Africa, fires in Indonesia."

So think through who it is that places demands on wilderness land.

.....and keep blogging!