You should really know what the complete natural world of your region is and know what all its interactions are and how you are interacting with it yourself. This is just part of the work of becoming who you are, where you are.

For those who can, one of the things to do is not to move. To stay put. That doesn't mean don't travel; it means have a place and get involved in what can be done in that place. That's the only way we're going to have a representative democracy in America. Nobody stays anywhere long enough to take responsibility for a local community.

I try to hold both history and wilderness in mind, that my poems may the true measure of things and stand against the unbalance and ignorance of our times.

Human beings everywhere in the world are affected by the global media now. Still, what I have noticed in the east Asia, in the indigenous world, Alaska in particular, and in back country farm and ranch country, is a higher sense of etiquette, and more respectful manners. Urban middle class cosmopolitan world peoples of all races have become speedy and rude. This is a pretty big generalization though.

The mercy of the West has been social revolution; the mercy of the East has been individual insight into the basic self/void.

As a poet I hold the most archaic values on earth . . . the fertility of the soil, the magic of animals, the power-vision in solitude, the terrifying initiation and rebirth, the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe. I try to hold both history and the wilderness in mind, that my poems may approach the true measure of things and stand against the unbalance and ignorance of our times.

To work on behalf of the wild is to restore culture