For Barry Lopez and Debra Gwartney
There have been some big ideas every now and again that masquerade as truth, or shortcuts to truth ideas that find cunning attachment to the lock-and-key architecture of the hemispheric globes of our brains. These artificial truths weigh as heavily upon us, I suppose, as a deep blanket of snow, or even a covering of stones. They try to bury us and, over time, sometimes they succeed. Where I live, in a tiny garden of Eden in northwest Montana, up against the Canadian border the beleaguered Yaak Valley we have only 25 grizzly bears remaining, the problem being that the US Forest Service keeps building roads deep into the forest and clearcutting the mountains. I know, I know, there’s a pandemic, but hear me out about these bad ideas the trouble they get us into, once they’ve attached to our gray-matter and then replicate, first in individuals, then populations, then cultures, then globally.