Now dressed in full nature writing regalia — spear in hand and animal pelts on — I am finally ready to do battle. I am ready to leave behind the effete fear that politics will somehow taint my work, to understand that this exclusion is mere fashion, and that fashions change. I am also ready to leave behind the nature writer’s sense of impotence. What I want to carry into the fight is humor, irony and the personal essayist’s recourse to the testing ground of self. What I want to leave behind is “Oh, how lovely!” while what I want to carry into the fight are the moments — often lovely moments, yes — when I am briefly outside of myself, moments that remind me of how multifarious and delightful this world still is and that speak to my own animal wildness. What I want to leave behind is false romanticism. What I want to carry into the fight is the original romantic urge for the specific, the local, the real. What I want to leave behind is quoting Thoreau; what I want instead is to follow more deeply the complex spirit of the man. What I want to leave behind are pages of facts. What I want to carry forward are facts marshaled for purpose, facts enlivened because they follow an idea. What I want to leave behind is the sanctimony of quietude and order and “being in the present.” What I want to embrace is loud and wild disorder, growing this way and that, lush and overdone. What I want to leave behind is the virtuous and the good, and move toward the inspiring and great. And while we’re at it I want to leave behind anything false, false to me that is, false to what I feel is my experience on this Earth. What I want instead is to wade through the mess of life without ever reaching for a life ring called The Answer.

~ David Gessner @ Terrain