'THE LAST NIGHT ON THE RIVER we unroll goose-down bags on a tarpaulin thrown down over river sand and small stones. We do not speak of anything we have seen. We each wish in our different ways for some insurance against the disappearance of wild relationships here. These dreams of preservation for the very things that induce a sense of worth in human beings must have been dreamt seven thousand years ago on the Euphrates... dreams of respectful human participation in a landscape, generation after generation. Dreams of need and fulfillment. Common enough dreams. Poignant, ineffable, indefensible, the winds of an interior landscape. A handful of beautiful damp stones in arctic sunlight, a green duck feather stuck to one finger. Water dripping back into the river. I fumble at some prayer here I have forgotten, utterly forgotten, how to perform. I place the stones back in the river, as carefully as possible, and move inland to sleep.'
—Barry Lopez, from Crossing Open Ground. 1983
What does living in a time of overshoot and collapse tell us about being human? What are our dreams now?
The world we've made would be a different place, a better place, we think, should it become better fitted to what a human truly is.
Of course, we have no answer to what humans truly are. Each of us writes that truth with the arc of our lives. But here's an important question: do you have faith in the core nature of the human animal, despite the cultures that have come to dominate?
Join Andy Wildman and friends, taking a journey into the unknown by podcast.
Weaving our voices in friendship and love, we explore the open potential for systemic collapse, either societal or ecological, and our own potential within that context. We talk about adapting to climate change and other big change, and the possibilities for a bit of old-fashioned resilience.
And—above all—we think out loud about creative togetherness for a saner, more human-scale future.
Listen in and get in touch. We'd love to hear from you.